Darkness Too Visible

If you're a writer who's been anywhere near Twitter tonight, you'll recognize this as the title of an article published in the Wall Street Journal. about how horribly dark YA literature has become.

It begins with a forty-six-year-old mother lamenting the lack of acceptable reading material for her thirteen-year-old daughter. It was all "too dark", according to this woman, who apparently made the cliche literary faux pas of judging an entire wall of books by their covers.

On one hand, I have to ask why, if this woman makes a habit of buying reading material for her kids, this came as such a shock. The darker / more realistic tone to even paranormal YA has been trending for quite a while now. It's certainly nothing new. On the other, I have to ask if the article's author intended her title as ironic.

The only way to fight the darkness is to make it visible.

Sure, the girl who caught fire isn't the same as Buddhist monks or former soldiers who set themselves on fire to force attention onto the things and places the general public would rather forget exists, but books like The Hunger Games can make a social splash without the clinging stench of scorched flesh in the air.

Perhaps the person who penned this article, and the mother who objected to the books she's never read, are unaware of what drives YA writers to choose their content and audience.

Perhaps they're unaware that while Americans entertain themselves with shows like Survivor, real teens and children are fighting each other for scraps of food and garbage so that they can survive long enough to do it again the next day.

Perhaps they're unaware that while top teacher concerns in the day of Judy Blume, who they mention in the article as a comparison, were things like talking in class, chewing gum and skipping school, today's concerns are violence, rape, and gunfire.

Perhaps they're unaware that teens struggling with their sexual identity are at a higher risk of violence and suicide.

Perhaps they're unaware that Native Americans who still live in reservation communities have the highest suicide rates in the country, despite their small population.

Perhaps they're unaware that there are areas where hunger is a daily reality for kids in American public schools, and that the same kids beaten down by those in authority are often "difficult" because at home, they ARE the authority for their brothers and sisters because their parents are at work before they wake up and come home after they're asleep.

Perhaps they're unaware that there are families who "camp" for a living because a tent at national park gets them access to bathrooms and running water, and the weekly fee for their space is all they can afford.

Perhaps they're unaware that too many kids today feel like they're shouting into a hurricane without anyone on the other side to hear them and that they're being crushed by pressure from their parents, themselves, their friends and society to the point that if they don't make those tiny cuts in their arms and legs they'll be sliced to ribbons from the inside out.

Perhaps they're unaware that, statistically, someone that thirteen-year-old goes to school with will commit suicide or overdose or be raped or murdered or otherwise impacted by violence before graduation.

Perhaps they're unaware that girls the world over are victims of violence by family and friends. That they're sold and used until their AIDS and other STD riddled bodies are no longer profitable, at which point they're taken out with the trash. That they're kidnapped in areas where gender-bias has led families to destroy the girls born to them, in favor of sons, leaving an entire generation of men without enough women.

Perhaps they're unaware that a 140 degree, metal, semi-truck trailer can hold more than 100 people standing up as it rattles across borders, or that the people who choke to death on their own waste and body heat have paid out their life savings for a crap shoot that will end one of three places: freedom, death, or human bondage.

Perhaps they're unaware that most of the time, it isn't freedom.

Perhaps they're unaware that the electronics we use and the jewelry we wear often comes at the price of innocence on a scale most couldn't imagine, because it's the youngest who procure the raw materials under pain of death, until they die.

Perhaps they're unaware that in certain parts of the world, being larger than the gun you carry is the only qualification required for being a soldier.

I see an article lamenting that literature has lost its innocence and that the days of Judy Blume are past. But what I also see, that the article writer and the woman she featured don't, is a time when teens are no longer told they have to be quiet. They can speak and scream and share their pain before the burden of carrying breaks them. They can purge the poison that comes from hiding a canker until it festers beyond control and leads to something far worse than a fictional account of violence.

For the outsider, this is a time when they can find a sympathetic ear and someone willing to tell their story. This is a time when those forced to eat their sorrow can find others who are willing to stand up and scream the things their voices can't say. This is a time when it's no longer acceptable to pretend that things are nice and neat behind white picket fences where life is beautiful for everyone.

Is the darkness visible? Yes.

Should it be? Absolutely.

Grab a match and light it up. Burn the darkness until it has nowhere left to hide.