Confessions of a YA writer

I have a confession. I like to write YA books, but I don't read that many YA titles. My Goodreads YA shelf is on the light side. It's not that I don't like the genre, I just like to read about adults. Some of my favourite books so far this year are Ha Jin's A Map of Betrayal about a Chinese spy living in the US, Jane Gardam's Old Filth trilogy and JG Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur. 
 

And then, I fell into the YA world of Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. The main character, Cath Avery, is a very anxious college freshman. She worries about her roommate, her classes, her twin sister Wren, her mentally unstable dad and boys in general. The one thing that Cath feels good at is writing fan fiction, specifically about Simon Snow, a character attending a Hogwarts-like magic school. Cath has thousands of fans reading her online fanfiction where she creates alternate love stories about Simon Snow and his roommate Basil. Yep, that's right, she writes stories where a Harry Potter-like character falls in love with a Draco-Snape hybrid.

Another confession: I had never checked out fanfiction before. I spent an evening sucked into fanfiction, which has more than 700,000 entries just in the Harry Potter category. If fantasy isn't your thing, there's alternate versions of Pride and Prejudice, Bridge to Terabitha, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Anne of Green Gables, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'm overwhelmed by the sheer volume of entries.

While Fangirl is heavy on plot (a lot happens in this novel, including multiple trips to the hospital) Cath's intense and personal narrative voice drew me into this story. I was rooting for her to start eating in the cafeteria (instead of eating power bars in her room), and for her to befriend her roommate. Mostly I must confess that I fell in love with the book's love interest, Levi. I've never fallen in love with a literary character before, never swooned over Mr. Darcy or Mr. Rochester. (Although I do have a little crush on Cherry Jones' character Leslie in Transparent.) And now, well, I'm in love with Levi. He's too tall, and gangly and he has a wicked receding hairline and he smiles at absolutely everyone. He's relentlessly cheerful and tells bad jokes in a way that I find annoying, but apparently endearing, since my husband has similar attributes. Levi is a knight with a rusting truck and he's endlessly patient with Cath's issues both social and sexual. I've never fallen in love with a rancher before, or a blond, or anyone from Nebraska, but Rainbow Rowell is that good.

I've got Eleanor and Park, Rowell's 2013 book, next to read and I'm certain I won't be disappointed.   

Why Girls Should Know Sex Is Fun

Recently I attended a women's dinner where each guest was asked to talk about something that had shocked or surprised them in their lives. Most women talked about falling in love with their spouses, the death of their parents, or raising children. All except one woman, who burst out laughing when it was her turn, and said she was most surprised when she saw her first erect penis. "It was really impressive," she said.

 I was hoping for an evening of other shocking sexual firsts, but it wasn't to be. My co-dinners were all older than me by about thirty years, and they smoothly moved on to tamer topics.
 

I was ready for a good sex-talk (and what better than with women from a different generation?) because of the book I was writing and because of the excellent research book I'd been reading. The two had started to intertwine in my head the way good research material can subtly become part of your story. 

The book I've been working on is a YA novel called The Most Dangerous Thing. It's about a very introverted teenager named Sydney whose not so introverted sister wants to put on the play The Vagina Monologues at her school, including re-writing the cunt monologue. Sydney is horrified that her sister wants to talk about vaginas at school (or at all). She doesn't think about her body much, that is, until she starts to fall in in love with this guy, Paul. Sydney is unprepared for the sexual feeling she experiences and the book is about girls' relationship with their bodies and their sexuality. 

I had a few questions about teenage sexuality while writing this book. I wondered how girls felt about their vaginas, and if they wanted boyfriends for social or sexual reasons, or both. (My extremely unscientific research on this resulted in mixed results. Some friends I spoke to were motivated by sex, others by social desires.) Since I couldn't imagine asking the kind of questions I wanted to know about, I was thrilled to read Peggy Orenstein's new book, Girls and Sex: Navigating The New Landscape. 

Orenstein spoke with hundreds of girls across the US about their sexual experiences.

Many of the girls spoke about their sexual encounters with regret and few of them described their experiences as pleasurable. According to Orenstein's research, hook-up culture and the easy access and pervasiveness of porn has changed sexual expectation for both girls and boys. Girls are expected to look hot, but not too hot, to seek attention for their bodies but not too much attention, to walk a narrow line between slut and prude. Orenstein writes that most teen sexual activities favour boy's pleasure over girl's. Although teen intercourse rates have actually dropped, oral sex has become more common. Yet boys rarely reciprocate with oral sex on girls and boys are much more likely to rate their sexual experiences as pleasurable than girls. Some girls even rated their sexual satisfaction by their partner’s pleasure: if he was satisfied than she was satisfied.

 

Orenstein's book is the kind that makes people wring their hands-especially the middle section on the

Author Peggy Orenstein

Greek system of fraternities and sororities where boys throw the parties, invite the girls, serve the drinks and girls are expected to pay the boys back with their bodies. Almost half the girls interviewed for the book spoke of being coerced into having sex. However, it was the final chapters on sex-education that interested me, especially since I'll be teaching middle-school sex-ed this spring. 

I usually enjoy teaching this portion of the Health curriculum. My students pay rapt attention and have MANY questions. (It also leads to spirited chat in the staff room, especially when I bring in the birth control kit with the wooden penis.) I am always grateful that I teach in Ontario which has a sex-ed curriculum that gives students the kind of information they need to keep them safe and informed. We talk about abstinence and forming healthy relationships, but we also talk about birth control, STI's and the importance of condoms. Still, sex-ed can be a bit of a downer. I've even acknowledged to my students that I'll be covering what I call the "doom and gloom" of sex-ed, all the things that can go wrong: disease, pregnancy and unwanted sexual pressure.

Orenstein agrees that girls' sexual education often focuses on negative outcomes. We teach girls about menstruation and avoiding preganancy and focus entirely on the internal organs. In the past I have skipped over girls' external sexual organs, but why is this? We fully acknowledge that boys have sexual desires, why not girls too?

Orenstein has a new tactic for sexual education, and

Vulva puppet anyone?

it's the kind of thing that will make a lot of parents (and for sure abstinence-only adherents) freak out. She believes in teaching kids, specifically girls, that sex is supposed to be fun, that it's supposed to feel good. She believes that if we teach girls to advocate for their own pleasure by first knowing their own bodies, they'll be more in control of their sexuality and their sexual encounters. That's right, she's suggesting girls masturbate, and then choose sexual encounters that bring them pleasure. This is both revolutionary in terms of sex-education (especially compared to some US programs) and yet incredibly simple and straight forward.

Orenstein describes the Dutch model of sex-education, where parents talk to their children, not just sex-educators, but parents talk, not just about the "doom and gloom" scenarios, but about sex as a balance between joy and responsibility. I really like those two words: joy and responsibility. I can imagine starting my sex-ed lessons with those two words, and then going from there. 

For those of you seeking a little 90's nostalgia, and a sex positive message, I leave you with Salt and Peppa's 1992 hit, Let's Talk about Sex. 

And for those of you worked up about intimate justice, I insist you watch the video from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Put Yourself First recommended by Marjorie Ingall.

Why Can't We Talk About Israel?

A-WA

While driving to work last  week I heard something on CBC that make me really happy. I was listning to Q host Shad interview the musical trio A-WA, a group of sisters from Israel. A-WA blends the traditional Jewish Yemenite music of their heritage with hip-hop. Their music is enjoyed in Israel, and since they sing in Arabic, their music is well received in many Arab-speaking countries. Jubilation! This is the way the world should be- with music as ambassadors for peace and cross-border cooperation. While I listened to their take on the traditional song, Habib Galbi for a few minutes I was taken away from my other Israel-based concerns that had
bothered me that last few months. 

A-WA in their video Habib Galbi

Recently I was looking forward to hearing my friend Dorit Namaan speak as part of a series that Kingston Jewish Community Council (KJC) puts on. Dorit is a professor of Film and Media at Queen's University. She  speaks frequently on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and I am  interested in her current research about the neighbourhood of Katamon, which used to be neighbourhood for wealthy Palestinians, but was resettled by Israelis after 1948. Unfortunately, enough people in the community complained about the talk and the KJC cancelled the event. I was disappointed because I was looking forward to a spirited discussion with members of my community who may have different political views than Dorit, and with myself. The KJC apparently has a policy that says they cannot have events that may cause a rift in the community. To me, that means probably that no Israel-focused event should ever happen. This is really too bad. I love Israel and hope to return there one day with my children. However, it is not a place without faults and I would love a forum to discuss these.

My conflicting feelings about Israel were compounded this week when one my friends told me he was accused of anti-Semitism because of the material he was using in a high school English course. His students were looking at social justice issues through poetry, essays, stories and media. I know my friend is an amazing educator and I wish I could take his course. Unfortunately a few Jewish parents were offended by an article about the occupation of Palestinian land written by academic Ilan Pappé, and deemed the material anti-semitic, despite the fact that Pappé is an Israeli historian. The principal got involved, then the union and the situation became stressful for my friend. I was very upset about this. It drives me bonkers that people are so emotional about Israel, a country we don't even live in, that they can't look at material critically, or in context. It seems to be that the parents and the principal are denying students the very skills that my friend is trying to teach in the course: critical thinking. 



One good thing did come out of this episode. I was so annoyed I was finally able to write a short, strongly worded but polite email to the KJC about cancelling Dorit's event. I was also motivated to politely ask the JNF representative who kindly and helpfully sends me emails to take me off her list. (This didn't go well....) And, my friend who was accused of anti-Semitism directed me to the great organization IJV, Independent Jewish Voices, which I hadn't previously heard of. Even the title feels like a breath of fresh air. It was reassuring to know that I am not alone in my love of Israel, but also my discomfort with the ongoing occupation.
  


Since these two events I've been thinking about the request I received to talk at a synagogue in the greater Toronto area about my novel, The Book of Trees. In this story a teenage girl learns about the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian lands while studying at a yeshiva. I was pleased to be asked to speak, but also apprehensive. I asked the rabbi who invited me, if he had an especially open-minded congregation. He replied no, but that he was interested in sharing diverse view points. This sounds great but we haven't settled on a date for my talk and I wouldn't be surprised if the invitation falls through. Won't some congregation member take offense to even having me come? Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps I'll go and we'll have a great dialogue with diverse opinions and multiple viewpoints. Perhaps we'll agree to disagree. I would really like this. 


I'll leave you with two videos. For those in need of uplift, watch A-WA sing Habib Galbi in Arabic wearing hot pink hajibs against the background of the Israeli desert. For those of you feeling irritated and perhaps ready to send your own polite, but strong emails against the forces of intolerance, here's a video about Canadian opposition to  the JNF.