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.

While I have enjoyed many novels considered “classics,” and many books in the capitol-L literature category, young adult dystopian literature is my go-to for pleasure reading. As I explain in my forthcoming book, Girls on Fire: Transformative Heroines in Young Adult Dystopian Literature, my obsession with YA dystopia became the subject matter for a class and for a book. And as I argue in both these settings, YA dystopia’s Girls on Fire provide a powerful lens for thinking about the future. But the stories of girls in the worlds of YA dystopia often share important similarities with their counterparts in dystopian Literature.

In Girls on Fire I analyze some of the similarities and differences, connections and inspirations, between and among young adult dystopian literature and dystopian Literature by women.* Several of these adult books feature teenage protagonists—usually just at the cusp of adulthood. In addition to the books I write about in Girls on Fire (like California by Eden Lepucki as well as In the Heart of the Valley of Love by Cynthia Kadohata), there are several interesting contemporary examples of adult dystopian stories that center not-quite-yet-adult protagonists like Memory of Water (2012; 2014 in the U.S.) by Finnish author, Emmi Itäranta and America Pacifica (2011) by Anna North.

Our vague cultural markers, like the age of eighteen, supposedly imbue a teenager with adult status though the reality of adulthood does not hinge on this marker. In the realm of dystopia, our protagonists have adult responsibilities and adult worries beginning in childhood, but they are often ignorant in the bigger picture of their society—the ways in which the past has shaped the present and the ways in which power and corruption have done the shaping. Becoming an adult—in both YA dystopia and adult Literature—means having the blinders removed and finally seeing reality for what it is, not what we have been brainwashed to believe.

This is the case in both Memory of Water and America Pacifica. In the former, the protagonist has been interning as Tea Master, an ancient profession reserved for men. Noria is almost through her training when her world shifts; her father dies, her mother moves away, and she is left to protect and discover secrets that change the course of her life as well as her community. In America Pacifica, Darcy lives in a world that revolves around her mother and their bare level of subsistence. When her mother disappears, she is left to uncover the secrets her mother has kept, secrets that not only reveal her mother’s hidden past, but also the potential for revolutionary change for the oppressed of Darcy's world.

Both girls, who are also women, put into motion the possibility of change in their oppressive societies. Both societies have reached the point where extreme corruption and greed have made life unsustainable; both Girls on Fire influence the tipping point in an attempt to restore balance. For Noria, the price is death, which comes about mostly through lack of communication and misunderstanding. But she leaves behind key information that shifts the roles of power and possibility by revealing the government’s generations of lies. For Darcy, the price is losing her mother and almost losing her life as she helps to topple the corrupt regime and then follows her principles and sets out on a lonely, dangerous journey to find people on the mainland.

In both cases, there is much more work left to be done. Though circumstances force these girls to grow up—to take responsibility not just for themselves, but for their community—their coming of age is similar to the coming of age for a society or culture. That shift toward hope for something better happens, but more development is needed. It takes time to mature into adulthood just as it takes time for a society to mature into a just, free, equal community. Girls on Fire survive their toxic, abusive, violent societies and spark progressive change. They provide inspiration and incentive for us to do the same.
 
*The main difference between young adult dystopian novels is the role of sex and romance. Typically, there is far more sex and far less romance. This is the case in America Pacifica where Darcy has very little experience outside of her life with her mother, but has still made out with a number of boys and agrees to have sex with a guard to get the information she needs. This is not, however, the case in Memory of Water where there is no sex and no romance besides the hint of love disguised as friendship.

My newest research venture is, by default, YA Dystopia. And "by default" I mean because I am completely obsessed with dystopia in general, but I am particularly addicted to YA dystopia with female protagonists. I call these my "crack books" because I quite literally cannot stop reading them. I can't stop reading without concerted effort and when I put down one and pick up another. Life isn't the same without being engaged in this other world for part of the time. And so of course that obsession extends itself into a kernel for teaching and research.

My real interest in dystopia came via Octavia Butler's novels and Star Trek fantasies (next Gen, of course!). My YA obsession began, predictably, with the Hunger Games. Before I was a third of the way through I ordered the next two books because I didn't want to have any interruption in my reading experience. I read straight through. And I had to find more. I worried I would never find another  reading experience like HG. While I read plenty of books that did not fall into this "narrow" category, some related and some not, I read books like the Birthmarked trilogy and the Chemical Garden trilogy and my less favorite works that focus more on boys: the Maze Runner Trilogy and the Ender's Game series. But there is so much more!

When I began to find monotony in the plot and characters/characteristics of the protagonists, I was floored when my friend forwarded me a link to a blog via Bitch Magazine. This was exactly what I had been looking for, hoping for, longing for--books that had protagonists who were girls of color. Visions of the future that consider how race, ethnicity, and identity are factors in the future. This discovery is what sparked my interest in looking at YA Dystopia as more than just an obsessive fan. There is way too much to explore (and that's exciting!).

In the spring of 2015 I will be teaching an online topics course called "Girls on Fire: Gender, Culture, and Justice in YA Dystopia." When I proposed this course one of my colleagues suggested I spell out what "YA" is. Half joking, I told him that anyone who doesn't know what YA is, I don't want them in this course! There are so many other  readers out there who are interested in this genre and read just as--or almost as--voraciously as I do. I know this class will be in demand.

This interdisciplinary course is cross-listed between American studies, English, and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies and will consider the topics in the title as well as race, community, power, sexuality, technology, the environment, politics, etc. I am excited about the projects that we will engage with to explore this rich body of work. I'll be teaching online and developing resources related to the genre, including a guide to the best books.

Inevitably I'll be working on a book project related to this work as well. In many ways it mirrors the body of work that I explored in my first book, Pictures of Girlhood: Modern Female Adolescence on Film. YA Dystopia has many of the same themes--coming of age, absent parents, violence, limited representations, etc.--but it also has the context of the future and the bigger picture of the fate of the world (or at least a little piece of that world). These "girls on fire" give us hope in the present for the future.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I am an obsessive Octavia Butler fan. I have read and re-read all of her books. And I plan to read them all again and again! The first book I read was Dawn and I was instantly hooked. Her work spoke to me in ways that I will continue to explore as long as I have her books to read and people to share them with. I take every opportunity to teach Octavia Butler's works in my classes, and my students quickly recognize my passion for Butler's work.

This is one reason why I was so excited to see the formation of the Octavia E. Butler Society, an organization I hope to get involved with in the near future. Among other things, the OEB Society maintains a page that includes, for instance, highlights from academic conferences, a blurb about the release of unpublished stories, and the speculation about making Bulter's works into films.

As others have noted, when I have read and re-read Butler's books I have wondered why no one has ever made these books into movies. And I know what the short answer is: because they feature black people--particularly black women--as the protagonists. So, as much as I want to see these films, I am also scared of what Hollywood would do to them. Octavia Butler's books are about black people; as an extension, they are books about all of us. For too long people of color have been expected to extrapolate a future based upon white narratives. If we are willing to engage with the spirit of speculative fiction, there is no reason why black people's experiences--real or imagined--can't shape a (better?) future for all of us.

(My secret fantasy is that I might someday write the Parables screenplay. Now it is not so secret, but will most likely still remain a fantasy!)

Another post on the OEB Society site "People of Color in the Future" speaks to my current research project/obsession. While I am a pretty average white girl, the lack of people of color in science fiction, speculative fiction, and dystopia fiction is disturbing for a variety of reasons. The richness offered to speculative fiction by narratives that overtly tackle the question of, and issues related to, race is promising--to life as well as art.

Anyone interested in books that imagine a future for people of color should definitely check out Victoria Law's blog for Bitch Magazine, "Girls of Color in YA Dystopia." I have been devouring this reading list and there are so many interesting aspects to talk about. And my students and I will do this next spring in my "Girls on Fire: Gender, Culture, and Justice in YA Dystopia" online class!