Remembering

This is a repost of a blog I wrote last June. It just feels like the best way to remember those we lost, be grateful for how we’ve grown, and acknowledge that we’re still moving forward without forgetting our past. I might be really sad at some point today, but right now I feel hopeful. And I think that’s good.

Thanks for listening.

June 5^th, 2011:

So The Wall Street Journal has written an article about darkness in YA. And they aren’t happy. It seems they rarely are, but whatever. In the wake of this, Miss Maureen Johnson started a hashtag #yasaves and has asked people to share how YA has saved them. My story needs a bit more than 140 characters, but here it is:

I live in Blacksburg, Virginia. If you’ve heard of this town at all, it’s probably in reference to Virginia Tech and our fantastic football team. Go Hokies!

But about four years ago, we were famous for an entirely different reason. A gunman opened fire on our campus killing 32 people and himself. It devastated the school as well as the town. If you don’t live here, it’s kind of hard to explain how integrated the two are, but they’re both fluid and impress upon each other.

This is my home.

At the time, my husband worked on campus, my best friend lived on campus, and since we go to a campus-based church, nearly everyone I knew was a student. Even as a townie, I lost someone I knew. It’s hard to explain just what this did to me, and I know I’m not alone.

At first, I kept busy and did okay, but as the year passed, I was emotionally unstable. I would cry if I tried to experience any emotion. I cried at Disney World, I cried in church, I cried doing anything. I started forgetting things, and poor Callaway was in a constant state of repeating himself. I stopped smiling. I remember that now, just how little I smiled or laughed.

In the fall, I caved and went to a therapist, and she helped me find some things to give me order and routine. That worked a little, but the thing that helped the best was something I stumbled into accidentally.

Just after the first anniversary of the shootings, I was like “That’s it. I’m just going to write a story and give my problems to a character and see how she deals with them, because I can’t anymore.” And I did. But I never finished that story. A few weeks in, I woke up with the idea that would become The Siren. I wrote every day for a month to finish that story, and after that the idea for The Selection and a bunch of other little stories were born and are waiting their turn to be told.

The Siren has language, a near rape, assault, and thoughts of suicide. And it saved my life. It was my path back to normal. The Selection (pending editing) will have some heavy issues in parts of the trilogy too. It’s just part of the story. But now, a year out from publication, it has become something amazing and is already making people excited, and every second of this journey is a gift to me. It’s saving me.

Maybe YA is dark sometimes, sure. But you know what? A few months ago when I sat down and read Jennifer Brown’s Hate List, I felt comforted. I’m glad someone wrote that story, because I needed to read it. I felt stronger when I was done. And I’m 30.

It’s okay to talk about the bad stuff because the bad stuff is out there. It makes us weirdos feel not quite so weird. The lovely thing about this country is the right to not read or listen to or watch things we don’t want to. It’s freedom. So I’ll write what I want, and I’ll be stronger for it, and if you don’t want to read it… don’t.

Comments

[Jessie Marie]

Thank you for posting this (again), Kiera. I can't tell you how much it means to me to know that once again, the Hokie Nation is bigger than even I imagined.

I'm a Hokie. I was a freshman in April 2007 and I lost somebody that day, too. I have a Hokie Nation behind me but my bookish & blogging friends can't really comprehend the bone crushing ache. It's a relief to know that somebody out there, an author who writes so wonderfully, feels the same as I do - hopeful but aware that today hurts...

Today is painful but there is still a tomorrow on the horizon. I suppose really living for 32 is the best way to remember them and to know they weren't lost in vain.

Jessie Marie, a fellow Hokie

[Sarah M.]

Yes, thank you Kiera, you are a great example of an author who cares enough about their fans to tell them this, it's hard core, but necessary. :)

[Jessica]

It's actually funny that you pin pointed this article. I actually just went through a writing class for fall semester (I go to ODU in Norfolk,Va) where you pick a topic and basically write about it for the semester and mine was incorperating young adult literature into school systems. I did an interview with a teacher from Grassfield and then put her opinions against the same article that you just referred to! I completely agree that good comes from YAL.Its kinda long but if you want to read it here you go! Also I just picked up the selction and read it in a day, then looked at the book jacket and realized you went to radford and I was doubly happy I picked it up in the first place :)

The Key to Young Adult Literature
“What’s your topic?” “I want to look at incorporating young adult literature into school systems.” “Oh! So you mean like fun books.” This is a conversation that took place in my Advanced Composition class at ODU while I explained my topic to a fellow student. Her response to my topic is exactly why I’m diving right into it. Students deserve to have fun and be interested in their classroom settings using Young Adult Literature, or literature produced for and marketed to young adults.
This isn’t always happening when students are stuck reading the same classic literature that their parents read 20 years before when they were in school. Young Adult Literature can and should be incorporated into classroom curriculums. I’ve seen the opposition to my stance, but I have also seen and heard the call for change. Education.com is not the first site that I have come across that is dedicated to helping teachers with their curriculum. Under its “Books for High School” tab, there are a total of twelve articles dedicated to helping teachers, five of which are dedicated to Young Adult Literature, both fiction and nonfiction. The articles stress the use of Young Adult Literature in classrooms and how it would be very beneficial for students. In addition to the support of educators, Young Adult Literature has enlisted the support of Librarians. The American Library Association, ALA, now has a sister association or more precisely a teenage sister association called YALSA, Young Adult Library Services Association. Its main purpose is to promote the growth of young adult literature and encourage young readers to dive in. The opposition I have begun to see stems mostly from parents or people thinking like parents. An article in the Wall Street Journal by Meghan Cox Gurdon examines the decline in content of the young adult novel. She finds the literatures to be too violent, too sexual, and too full of contents that should only be for adults. She is a frequent writer for the journal on children’s books, and her article implies that she is against incorporating Young Adult Literature into school curriculums.
For my interview I spoke with Kendra Cotterell from Grassfield High School. She is an English teacher and has been teaching for 12 years in Chesapeake Public School System. She has taught grades 9-12, making her very qualified to speak about her feelings for Young Adult Literature and its incorporation into school systems. Our interview started at the beginning, with a definition of Young Adult Literature. She defined it as more “pop culture literature” or whatever “peers/students deem as cool at the time.” Kendra herself isn’t trying very hard to start incorporating this genre into her class, not because she does not see the value in it, but because of school policies. She does, however, bend the rules a bit with an alternative assignment.
For one assignment, she allows students to pick their own book and write a paper about it. She gives out loose guidelines, page numbers, reading levels, etc., and some generic essay questions to go along with their readings. Does she see a difference in student reaction to this assignment? Kendra says, “I guess reaction wise it’s an assignment they actually do.” She feels that the biggest pro of adding these literatures into the curriculum is most obviously student interest, which “adds to class room discussion and just engaging them (students).” Kendra sees the cons of incorperating it in content and parent reaction, or as she puts later “parent reaction due to content”.
The phrase “it only takes one” comes up in our interview, when Kendra explains that this is the reason administration is hesitant to allow teachers to incorporate Young Adult Literature into classrooms. She says that administration isn’t willing to take on the battle with possible repercussions with testing and parent disapproval. When asked about who was opposing the incorporation or Young Adult Literature, her immediate response was “It’s never the students.” The students are actually begging for these literatures. Kendra is asked constantly by the students to incorporate Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter. What’s her opinion? “For a student to be that engaged in a story that they can relate it to other things is what, I mean we (teachers) would kill for kids to be able to do that. And they can with that kind of work.” She says the value comes from Young Adult Literature because students are interested in it and will then take time to relate it with other things as opposed to if they start off not wanting to read because they have to and then they won’t interact with the novel. We ended the interview with the obvious question, “Do you think that Young Adult Literature can and should be incorporated into classrooms?” Should it: Kendra says yes because it “definitely has its benefits”; Can it: “In small steps, very small steps”.
The relationship between my interview with Kendra Cotterell and my secondary sources is clearly visible. The secondary sources from Education.com and YALSA website, Young Adult Library Services Association, support Kendra’s assertion that Young Adult Literature is an important genre mostly for its appeal to teenagers. The article, “Young Adult Literature and the School Curriculum” and the mission of YALSA, touch on similar observations that Kendra has made in the classroom. Kendra addresses children’s interest as the driving force as to why Young Adult Literature needs to be implemented into school systems. The YALSA makes it clear that the use of young adult fiction is “…to engage, serve and empower teens” (“About YALSA”). They focus mostly on the library aspect of furthering Young Adult Literature, but Education.com focuses on the teaching aspect. The article, “Young Adult Literature and the School Curriculum”, takes it a step further, saying that allowing students to read young adult literatures pushes their interest, which encourages independent reading “which will, in turn, help adolescents develop the skills necessary to succeed” (Bucher/Manning).
It seems as if the article from Education.com and the YALSA website know that the process of incorporating Young Adult Literature is a slow one. The YALSA is still recruiting for its cause, even with a membership count over 5,400. They have a strategic plan for furthering the use of Young Adult Literature, and every five years they release a new plan about the new goals and objectives of the YALSA. No matter how long it takes, the article on Education.com is still adamant that “What is essential is that teachers and library media specialists recognize the need” (Bucher/Manning). They have to recognize the need for incorporation, the need for interesting students, and the need for change.
My second secondary source supports my findings in Kendra’s interview, as well. The article by Meghan Cox Gurdon is direct support of the opposition that Kendra faces with incorporating Young Adult Literature into her classroom. Meghan takes on the role of the overbearing parent who will launch complaints with administration and derail the progress of incorporating Young Adult Literature into classrooms. She feels that Young Adult Literature is too dark for the age group it is geared towards. She argues against the notion that reading about murder doesn’t make you a murderer with this response, “But the calculus that many parents make is less crude than that: It has to do with a child's happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart” (Gurdon). It seems that any kind of reading with violence and crude language is a problem to Gurdon and parents out there. This is true in the interview Kendra spoke of having to replace a classic, Of Mice and Men, with a different classic, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, because of the cursing in the first book. Kendra says that classics in general face less opposition from parents simply because “it’s a classic”; however sometimes even that isn’t enough to validate the literature. Gurdon is a clear cut example of that, but there are also teachers and administrators that feel the same way about Young Adult Literature.
The only conclusion left to be drawn from these different sources is that Young Adult Literature would be very beneficial for students if it is incorporated into school curriculum; however, the process of incorporating it will be a slow one. At what point is parental input too much or even too detrimental to children’s learning? How can administrators be convinced that this genre is a new and great way to connect young adults with their learning? Educators and even education experts agree on the benefits of the use of Young Adult Literature, but, according to Kendra and others like her, “…in education we are so hesitant to make any changes.” These types of parents, administrators, and even teachers are the key to incorporating Young Adult Literature. They need to be convinced that YAL is a new tool for education and the benefits it will offer are worth the risk. As for a more specific solution, it’s yet to be found, but it doesn’t feel as if it is too far off at this point.