For the past 3 months, I have successfully read (which I seldom do lately – of course I blame it on the time), 5 young adult novels and also 8 locally written young adult short stories. From my readings, I can see some peculiar characteristics of the recent young adult genre as compared to the traditional ones.
The most obvious characteristics is that its protagonist is an adolescent. This means that the young adults who read such novels are able to internalize what the protagonist’s is going through in life because age wise, they are somewhat similar.
The characters are also realistic characters with no super power to change the world.
The novels basically focus on ‘a life yet to be lived’ where they portray the obstacles and conflicts faced by young adults in their process of growing up. The conflicts occur because of young adults’ confusions, social pressure, norms, parents and society expectation and what not.
Traditional young adult literature was somehow a bit gender bias. The protagonists are always male. Well, we can see the reason why . The society put high expectations on the male rather than the female who would just sooner or later turn up to be a plain housewife, looking after children and husband. They do not find the females’ roles as challenging at all. The females are just seen as silent followers to the more powerful and dominant sex - the male. No wonder the protagonists are always males!
The focused issues is also different . This is obvious because the novel relates to the time when it was written. Tradition novels focused on the life during the feudal age when there were social bias towards the poor. Also on social injustice, exploitation and hard life faced by people, including the young adults at that time.
Time changes and so do literature. The issues are different now- to suit our time. To be more contemporary.
Come to think of it…. What issues will there be in the young adult literature, say, 20 years from now? Would the setting be around the cyber space? Let’s just wait and see. Hopefully we will live long enough to ‘enjoy’ their literature.
The most obvious characteristics is that its protagonist is an adolescent. This means that the young adults who read such novels are able to internalize what the protagonist’s is going through in life because age wise, they are somewhat similar.
The characters are also realistic characters with no super power to change the world.
The novels basically focus on ‘a life yet to be lived’ where they portray the obstacles and conflicts faced by young adults in their process of growing up. The conflicts occur because of young adults’ confusions, social pressure, norms, parents and society expectation and what not.
Traditional young adult literature was somehow a bit gender bias. The protagonists are always male. Well, we can see the reason why . The society put high expectations on the male rather than the female who would just sooner or later turn up to be a plain housewife, looking after children and husband. They do not find the females’ roles as challenging at all. The females are just seen as silent followers to the more powerful and dominant sex - the male. No wonder the protagonists are always males!
The focused issues is also different . This is obvious because the novel relates to the time when it was written. Tradition novels focused on the life during the feudal age when there were social bias towards the poor. Also on social injustice, exploitation and hard life faced by people, including the young adults at that time.
Time changes and so do literature. The issues are different now- to suit our time. To be more contemporary.
Come to think of it…. What issues will there be in the young adult literature, say, 20 years from now? Would the setting be around the cyber space? Let’s just wait and see. Hopefully we will live long enough to ‘enjoy’ their literature.
No comments:
Post a Comment