Keeping it weird

Young adult books push the envelope


Can a book aimed at teenagers ever be raunchier than their own imaginations? Parents and teachers always worry that’s true but it’s easy to argue that Young Adult fiction is only now starting to keep pace with the hormonal thoughts of its readers.

Take the kerfuffle over Raziel Reid’s When Everything Feels Like the Movies, winner of a Governor-General’s Literary Award, finalist for Canada Reads 2015 and subject of a good old-fashioned moral clutch-one’s-pearls boycott. And all because its glorious anti-hero Jude has the sex drive and cynical wit of any small-town gay teen today? It’s like there are straight people who’ve never read Catcher in the Rye! I cheered when Canada Reads panelist Lainey Lui gave the book a full-throated defence on CBC last week:

Critics of Reid’s book who suggest that he might be leading young readers astray miss the point — he’s only going to where they already are. Parents concerned about what’s on their children’s reading shelf might want to first have a conversation about what’s in their internet browsing history, but that’s a whole other topic. Like no other medium, a novel can bring you into another person’s head and if that mind is crazed with teenage anxieties and audaciousness, Young Adult novels need to be weird.

A former editor of the late, lamented fab magazine, Scott has been writing for Xtra since 2007 on a variety of topics in news pieces, interviews, blogs, reviews and humour pieces. He lives on the Danforth with his boyfriend of 12 years, a manic Jack Russell Terrier, a well-stocked mini-bar and a shelf of toy Daleks.

Keep Reading

The United States Capitol appears in front of Trans Flag colours; hands holding a smartphone with the TikTok logo on it are shown in front, under a blue filter.

How a U.S. TikTok ban would censor trans people

ANALYSIS: Conservatives are trying to leverage censorship to promote their own anti-trans agenda

In ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt,’ Brontez Purnell balances on a knife edge between hilarity and despair

Purnell's new memoir turns heaviness into humour, and exposes the bleakness under what seems silly and light

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 16, Episode 12 power ranking: Designing women

Who among our top five will fall short of the finale?

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 16, Episode 12 recap: Bathroom babes

The infamous room design challenge returns, this time with … restrooms?