I wrote this piece months ago. I thought it was pretty good and submitted it to a few publications, where it was quickly rejected. I meant to share it in my blog, but never got around to it. Sadly, it is still relevant, maybe even more so. I have included a related poem below as well as a side note about a book I started reading a couple weeks ago.

Young people are often discounted and dismissed. Their youth and experience, we assume, cannot compare to the wisdom of adults, especially in times of crisis. This might be why—as more and more Americans compare the current COVID-19 crisis to end-of-the-world stories—we ignore what young adult dystopian novels have to teach us.

One of the reasons we dismiss YA dystopian literature might be that the overwhelming majority of young adult dystopian novels are written by women, and even more feature female protagonists. Women and girls—so often the victims of patriarchal violence, so often the glue that keep families and communities together in times of crisis—know about the hardships of dystopia. We live the impacts of our dystopic patriarchal world every day, especially if we are further marginalized by race, class, or sexual orientation. So why are our Girls on Fire stories dismissed when the real world is faced with real dystopic crisis?

Lurie Penny describes, in “This Is Not the Apocalypse You Were Looking For,” an article  for Wired, how we Americans like our end-of-the-world stories: “Our heroes—usually white, straight men with traditional nuclear families to protect—are cut off from the rest of the world; the daydream is of finally shaking off the chains of civilization and becoming the valiant protector and/or tribal warrior they were made to be.” These heroes dominate our cultural landscapes and imaginations.

A Facebook post, from a self-proclaimed retired high school librarian who had read her fair share of dystopian literature, encapsulates the very problem with patriarchal imagination and adults’ attitudes: “don’t worry… somewhere a seventeen-year-old girl is working on a cure for COVID-19, if only she can decide which boy she is in love with first.” Even those who are familiar with the stories of YA dystopia are quick to dismiss the Girl on Fire.

This kind of attitude is common among adults. This kind of attitude will be our undoing. It is true that many of these novels have romantic plotlines, but these books are also about self-discovery, survival, resilience, freedom, hope, community, and the power of love. Penny notes that the current COVID-19 crisis has brought out a different story. Those on the front lines “are not fighters. They are healers and carers.” But this insightful article does not cite any of the stories that are over-shadowed by these powerful cultural myths, rendering them further invisible.

We see this tendency to turn our attention to the texts that have been inspired by, and produced in, our patriarchal American culture in some of the dystopian venn diagrams that have been circulating on social media. Typically, the only book that appears on such lists that was written by a woman is Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, which makes the list as a token representation, at least in part, because of its popular television adaptation. It also makes the list because it is about the control and forced pregnancy of women’s bodies, which becomes more and more relevant every day. It is allowed to exist alongside the other texts that erase women from our visions of the future.

So, if we were able to step outside the boundaries that patriarchy has created for our imaginations, what might we learn from the end-of-the-world texts that center girls?

Community is important and we can only succeed if we work together.

The battles scars of trauma are real and lasting.

No matter how powerless we feel, there is always something we can do to make things better.

It is important to take care of other people, but it is also important to take care of ourselves.

No matter how dire circumstances may seem, there is always hope. We can always build something new.

These are only some of the lessons that YA dystopian literature can teach us, but we have to be willing to question some of our long-held beliefs about who we are as a country and who we want to be when the current COVID-19 crisis tapers off.

In order to better understand who we are and where we are going, we need to read new stories, and Girls on Fire stories are a great place to begin. Unlike adult dystopian stories, these stories have hopeful endings. We can teach these stories, and I’m hoping that the young people who read these stories, who take these stories to heart, will be the next generation of leaders who don’t get stuck in the tired old narratives that have shaped our contemporary patriarchal dystopia.

This Girl (Is on Fire)

A sense of humor

is important
in trying times--
 
toilet paper shortages
and social distancing
are fair game.
 
But when a retired
high school librarian
claiming vast knowledge of genre
posts:
“don’t worry
right now a 17-year-old
girl is working on a solution, but first
she has to decide
which boy she is in love with”
 
The joke’s on us.
 
Because belittling young adult
dystopian literature
is one thing
 
but trivializing girls
is the death of us all.
 
Side note: A student asked me if any of the YA dystopian novels I had read for my research took up subject matter that might compare to the pandemic. While plenty deal with similar scenarios, I could not think of any that really spoke to the current moment… until I picked up the book Recoil by Joanne MacGregor a couple of weeks ago. First published in 2016, this book is a little too close to home. So, if you like that kind of thing (like I do), check it out.

Usually a snow day means that I don't have to leave the house. When the snow piles up outside, I can catch up on work... or ignore work and read in bed all day. Since the YMCA never closes and rarely cancels class, I still have to shovel snow and find my few die hards for yoga or cardio mix or Group Groove. And then I can go home and enjoy a nap or some frozebee (frisbee but frozen) with my snow-loving dog.

But this winter something odd happened, something I never thought would happen--I became a snowboarder.

I don't mean that I have gone snowboarding this winter. I did that a few times when I was in my early to mid-twenties. After a night of too much drinking and not enough sleeping, my friends would drag me to the mountain and then ditch me or wait impatiently while I tried to get my act together. I never really developed the skills, even when I stopped constantly falling, and I can't really remember enjoying the activity. Not really. It was especially gruesome when "fresh powder" was the prize and the day began before the sunrise.

But now I am a snowboarder, and I too crave fresh powder. I finally understand the appeal, the need to get first tracks. I actually look forward to boarding, and I have found myself boarding in conditions I never thought I would venture out in: below freezing temperatures, winds of 20 to 30 miles per hours, falling snow, even rain. I no longer panic at the thought of exiting the chair lift (though I still fall sometimes), and I find myself smiling at the simple thought of boarding down the mountain. Sometimes I don't even want to take a break!

It helps that I have been re-learning on a small mountain. The mountains of Maine can hardly be called mountains compared to out West. But, Hermon Mountain is a small, local mountain. It has one chairlift and the same faces, obscured by goggles and wind-burn, appear again and again. It has night skiing, which I have come to love far more than day skiing. Again, to my surprise. Since my husband is volunteer ski patrol, my season pass means I can board whenever I want. And since I don't have to pay, I don't have to worry about getting the most for my money (which was always added pressure).

When I took up snowboarding this season I couldn't remember how long it had been since I had been on a snowboard--twelve to fifteen years! There was still a learning curve, though not the same painful curve of the first time learning how to balance, stand up, fall down, crash, get up, keep the heel edge, risk a toe turn, fall down, get up, and finally point the board down the hill. After many falls, after over-thinking, after icy conditions, the first snow day and real powder of the season gave me the confidence I needed.

But it also gave me more than just confidence. I finally understood the allure of the sport. I did not control my board; it simply took me down the mountain and I swear there were moments when I must have been flying. It sounds cliché, but it is true. Boarding in fresh powder is beyond any other experience and it cannot be explained, only lived. I finally pointed down the hill and went faster than I ever thought I would want to go. And it keeps getting better.

I even ventured off of my small local mountain, visiting Big Rock in Mars Hill and actually feeling the burn of sustained boarding down a run that takes longer than a minute to get back to the chair lift. As the pictures here attest, I somehow also agreed to snowshoe up Big Squaw mountain and snowboard down it. Fun in retrospect, this day (and others since) reminded me that confidence can be broken and must be relearned. It also taught me that my adorable fun dog is really, really annoying once the snowboards are strapped on and we are trying to get down the mountain. (That's another story there.)

Now, I look forward to snow days (and lament the end of snow days as the weather gets "nice"), which has also helped me to remember the importance of self-care. Those papers will still be there to be graded. My inbox will continue to fill. But this winter I have learned a new skill and found a new love. I have found a lost part of myself, and I have rekindled a love that is as permanent, challenging, and ever-changing as a mountain.

Charlyne Yi’s film Paper Heart pushes at the edges of popular ideas of romance and love as well as the boundaries of “girls’ film.” In its mix of scripted plot and documentary, this “mockumentary” style  film not only complicates ideas about girls’ film but also ideas of love and romance and the expectations that we have for girls in American culture.
Yi first gained mainstream recognition for her “stoner” role in Knocked Up which helped to gain some attention for her film, Paper Heart. In fact, many of the friends interviewed in Paper Heart are also comedians and several are in recent films and TV shows. And all of these friends are men. At one point, Yi and her director (fellow actor Jake Johnson playing Nick Jasenovic) comments that she wants to be one of the guys and she says that she is one of the guys. And as a quirky, goofy comedian, singer, songwriter, painter she fits right in. This film firmly establishes her talent amongst the popular young comedians who dominate film and
TV. Both Yi and the real Jasenovic won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for the dramatic category at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. 

Charlyne Yi plays a scripted version of herself as does Michael Cera while Jake Johnson plays a scripted version of director, Nick Jasonevic. In the midst of this scripted film, Yi also plays herself making a documentary where she interviews an assortment of people about their views on love. The DVD also provides a variety of deleted scenes and other special features that offer a closer look into the film, and into Yi’s comedy, and also reveal some insights into what went into making Paper Heart. Even with all of these pieces, Paper Heart defies categorization and definition. It ironically challenges the omnipresence of film crews in the lives of celebrities and reality TV stars and deliberately mixes fact and fiction. Yi’s talents are showcased, real ordinary people’s ideas are considered, celebrity is tapped, and the audience gets an entertaining and thought-provoking film. 

Aside from the film there are other aspects that must be considered when looking at Paper Heart as a girls’ film. As mentioned above, all of the other actors and comedians in this film are young men and Yi fits right in. She fits in with her sarcasm, wit, humor, and style and she is accepted amongst her peers. And as a peer she establishes a sub-narrative in this film about love as these young men see it. She questions the existence of love in the midst of men who assure her that love does exist; in fact, the only female friend who is consulted gives her take during a phone conversation with the director-actor. In some ways this depiction of love is a kind of role reversal from masculine and feminine stereotypes and in other ways this exploration of love allows Yi to exist almost completely outside of her gender and race.

If the subject of  the film was not “love,” then perhaps Yi might have been able to escape the familiar traps of gender. But in many ways she complicated, diverts, or undermines gendered expectations. For instance, when Yi does what can be expected in a film about a girl searching for love—like trying on a wedding dress—the brief moment that this scene occupies, and the total lack of interest or comfort that this ritual conveys, subverts the usual high-pitched ooing and awing that often accompanies such displays of heterosexual normality. Yi’s gender identity is made virtually invisible in this film and in her professional persona. She retains her status as one of the guys throughout the film as Nick fulfills the role of best friend and her pursuit of love happens almost reluctantly. Michael Cera’s character reveals heterosexuality and their courting (for lack of a better term) which includes very few stereotypical feminine/masculine roles, perhaps in part because of Michael Cera’s perceived innocence and awkwardness and Yi’s own awkwardness and sexlessness. The ever-present cameras help to increase the awkwardness and are a good excuse for a lack of physical expression, even if these elements are scripted.

In addition to invisibility concerning her gender identity, Yi’s racial/ethnic identity is also made invisible, even more so than her gender. Despite the fact that Yi is of mixed racial heritage and “looks Asian”, her ethnic/racial identity is never a topic of a joke or any conversation in the film. It is never mentioned and she is, for the most part, the only non-white comedian in the film or in her cadre of peers. This is, of course, refreshing to an extent. Yi is allowed to just “be herself” and she has control over the persona we are seeing. This alone accounts for the lack of stereotypes and casting limitations that are typical for girls and women (particularly girls and women of color) in film and especially in comedy. It is because of this lack of engagement with
racial or ethnic identities or issues that Yi is able to maintain her racial/ethnic invisibility and her uniqueness. She is just one of the (white) guys who happens to be a cute/nerdy girl.

Charlyne Yi might be talking to people about love, but because this is an abstract idea, she is able to mostly detach love from the body. In fact, initially the film that Yi intended to make was a documentary and she did not intend to be on camera.  Love is discussed for its physiological and neurological effects (physical qualities that are independent of physical appearance) as
she interviews scientists, but love is mostly discussed abstractly, mostly heterosexually, and mostly romantically. The brief departures are too far and few between—when she interviews a gay couple (men) and when biker’s tell her that their friendships are the truest kind of love, for instance. Yi’s spontaneous interviews with children also provide for a variety of
view points on the subject of love and reveal just how much children internalize cultural messages about love and romance.

Part of the beauty of this film is that amidst these conflicting cultural massages about love is a film that purposely confuses the line between real and not real. Because of this confusion there was also confusion over just how much of the film was “real,” particularly regarding the fictional romance between Cera and Yi that was purported as real in a variety of film reviews and promotions. At least some of the film’s success can be attributed to the role that Cera played by playing himself and that many fans and critics confused the film for reality. In a N.Y. Times article published just before the theatrical release of Paper
Heart, Dave Itskoff writes: “Ms. Yi’s choice of Mr. Cera for this role would seem deliberate, even daring, given that the two are widely reported to have been romantically involved in real life. But Ms. Yi declined to discuss her history with Mr. Cera. ‘Whether or not me and Michael are together or were ever together is irrelevant,’ she said. ‘We’re acting, and we’re also friends, so that doesn’t make it difficult.’” And, yet, even the press for Paper Heart seems to be contradictory as Yi has had to answer questions about her relationship with Cera and most of Yi’s post-film press has been about this relationship. Cera, on the other hand, has other films and his growing fame to talk about. Being linked with Yi only gives him more star power, especially since the tabloids report how he dumped her because of his mega-fame. 

And yet, I think Yi holds her own against these interrogations (and perhaps as a result doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of post-Paper Heart work). In an interview in August 2009, Yi remarks, “Someone sent me an article that I was really sad. It says that
I'm sad that we're touring together.” She dismisses this conjecture with the fact that Cera is working on another film, only one answer in her arsenal. The public interest, verging on obsession, with the status of Yi and Cera’s relationship not only speaks to our celebrity-obsessed culture but also to our obsession with romance and sexuality—at least the fictionalized versions.