The intoxication of reading Who says Young Adult books are only for young adults?
Young Adult or YA is a category usually found in children’s book-lists referring to books that address readers from the mid-teens to the early twenties. This is the crossover group that doesn’t fit the description of ‘children’ and yet is not entirely ‘adult’. In a sense, this is a somewhat notional classification given that many mid-teens and above are pretty adult-like and many in their early twenties are still children. However, it serves a practical and useful purpose in the world of books.
So then, having deliberately tried to establish the profile of young adults, what do I mean when I assert that YA books are not just for those in the age-group that has been mentioned in the previous paragraph? Until quite recently, there was a proliferation of books all over the world popularly called ‘chicklit’. These were/are basically romance novels featuring young people in a plethora of contexts and geographies, ranging from the light to the racy, and generally thought to be popular with female readers, mostly young but a lot of older women as well.
This term also carries with it a whiff of the derogatory as well as the snobby, as if to say chicklit is not really literature. If you believe that reading choices are subjective, then this attitude holds no water. Further, the presumption that chicklit is ‘girly’ was demolished when I discovered, during the course of a teaching assignment with business management students in the age-group 24 to 30 years, that men, too, enjoy chicklit. And write it as well. Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Dutta, Chetan Bhagat and many more are as popular as Anuja Chauhan, Sonali Dev, Rupa Gulab, Swati Kaushal, Preeti Shenoy and enjoy a fan following among all sections of society, age no bar, depending upon individual tastes.
And of course, YA books don’t just comprise romance, there’s a whole range of subjects including science, history and nonfiction. A book that I’d like to recommend was on the shortlist for the 2024 Neev Book Award (NBA): Zen by Shabnam Minwalla. And no, it’s not some philosophical treatise on Zen, but a combination of mystery, history, romance and politics. It centres around Zen, short for Zainab, a 17-year-old Mumbaikar with wild hair, the child of a mixed marriage who feels strongly about political narratives and personal positions that differentiate between and discriminate against people on the basis of religious affiliation. It is also about 20-year-old Yash, visiting from the US to attend a wedding. He has different views; he carries emotional baggage even as he struggles with the demands made on him by members of his family and a particularly clingy young woman. In the midst of family fireworks, wedding dhamakas, a controversial school debate on the status of the Constitution and an anti-CAA protest march, out pops a diary.
Here, a small diversion: In an interview I caught on YouTube, Shabnam speaks of how the idea came to her after a cousin showed her a diary kept by her grandmother in the 1930s in which she writes about the Independence movement, her impending marriage and her attraction to someone involved in the freedom struggle. ‘Do something with this,’ her cousin said to Shabnam. And she did, by writing the Zen. In Zen, the diary that Zen finds belongs to another Zainab caught up in the Independence movement and out of it spills love and longing, patriotic fervour, dark mystery, even a murder. Zen traverses two timelines, that of 1935 and of 2019, and what happens through the 600 pages of layered storytelling makes for compelling reading.
The more we read the better we realise how little we know. Reading helps calm the mind, settle the soul, soothe the spirit.
Incidentally, the 2024 winner of the NBA was The Henna Start-Up by Andaleeb Wajib, another powerhouse of a storyteller, with some 40 titles to her credit. She was featured in the March 2022 issue of Rotary News. The award is linked to the Neev Literature Festival (NLF) organised annually by the Neev Academy in Bengaluru when the school campus comes alive with writers, illustrators, publishers, librarians, translators, anybody with anything to do with books, as students, teachers and other staff go all out to ensure that events are held seamlessly and invitees and visitors are well looked after. Workshops, panel discussions, readings, performances happen simultaneously and the ‘marketplace’ spills over with books for all ages from all over. Both Zen and The Henna Start-Up were gobbled up in next to no time! Punctuating the events at various venues on the school campus are reviews of books presented by students of all ages. Some of them are startlingly insightful, a positive reflection of the school’s emphasis on encouraging reading.
This brings me to my favourite subject: the importance of reading. It doesn’t matter what you read so long as you do because for one, we may think we know things but in fact we don’t, and the more we read the better we realise how little we know. So, that’s one myth busted. For another, reading helps calm the mind, settle the soul, soothe the spirit. Whether you read fiction or nonfiction, it’s all about stories — and who doesn’t like stories. Go ahead, then, and pick up YA titles because they are knocking madly on your door!
Incidentally, writer and historian Marc Aronson objects to the use of the word ‘nonfiction’. ‘I prefer curiosity,’ Aronson pointed out at an interaction. ‘Curiosity’ books, because they help you discover things. A teacher at Rutgers University, Aronson has several books to his credit. Many of them are collaborations and all of them explore connections between cultures and across borders. Take Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Spice, Magic, Slavery, Freedom and Science, written with Marina Budhos. According to the teacher’s guide, it looks at geography, science, history, economics and civics even as it examines sugar through language, the arts and the senses. He has written about the rescue of the young Thai football team trapped in a flooded cave in Rising Water, and about the rescue of 33 miners in Chile where they were stuck 2,000 feet underground in Trapped. A book for our times is Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel. Touted as his most personal book in an amazon.com write-up, it explores the history of Israel including the conflicts, the Palestinians and the Jewish settlements. Although intended as a YA book, it asks hard-hitting questions: ‘Can a religious state also be a democratic one? Is Israel the victim or the aggressor?… What kind of Israel should exist?’ The write-up about Race: A History Beyond Black and White says ‘Racism. I’m better; she’s worse. Those people do those kinds of things. … Where did those feelings come from? Why are they so powerful? Why have millions been enslaved, murdered, denied their rights because of the colour of their skin, the shape of their eyes?’ Again, a YA book, but such a wealth of provocations for everyone to reflect on.
And for those who enjoy history, Devika Rangachari has a whole host of titles. Her Queen of Ice about a 10th century Kashmiri ruler called Queen Didda is an NBA winner. Queen of Fire is about the Rani of Jhansi. Queen of the Earth is about Prithvimahadevi, daughter of a powerful king of Kosala. All of likely interest to many of us. So, no, YA books are not for young adults alone. They are for everyone — fiction, nonfiction, and everything in between, depending upon the curiosity quotient.
The columnist is a children’s writer and senior journalist
