Why We Must Read Young Adult Books that Deal with Sexual Content

At its very best, I find reading to be a totally engrossing experience; the characters and events live inside me even when the book is closed and sitting on a shelf. Because of this relationship, I sometimes have to read the ending first to find out if the dog dies. I understand self-censorship because there are some books just too violent, too intense for me. There are many reasons people self-censor-the topic makes us feel uncomfortable; it goes against our personal beliefs; we don't believe such things could happen; or maybe the book touches on a personal experience that is still too tender, too emotional to revisit just yet. Other people will only read happy endings, sighting there is enough sadness in the world already. I can admit to saying that.

Teenagers have different comfort levels and different interests than we, their teachers and librarians. I do not understand why some students like to exclusively read the extremely sad stories of people with abusive lives or fatal diseases, or stories with seemingly no hope. Others want to read about blood and gore; others still, monsters or psychopaths. Some students want to read books that validate their experiences and that give them hope and comfort in their loneliness and school invisibility-because many of our teens do not find themselves in the pages of the curriculum we are contracted to use. Books helped me define myself; it is the same for many of our students.

When I choose not to read an adult title, I am mainly making that decision for myself. But if I do not read these young adult (YA) books, then I cannot recommend them to students, blocking one more path to these books' rightful readers. Recommendations from teachers and librarians are often the only way teens hear about such books. I am not saying I would recommend any title to any young person, but rather that, as an adult who works with young people, I need to be aware of these often-controversial books, because such books may be exactly what one of my students needs.

As young adult literature grows and stretches its boundaries, more topics are being written about. Sex is always a controversial topic in young adult literature, with rape being one of the edgiest topics. Trying to pretend rape does not exist is dangerously ignorant. Though a few YA books do discuss rape, there are many YA books that focus only on the aftermath of rape, showing how the victim struggles to reclaim her or his life. Four of the best YA books that deal with this topic are Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Target by Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson, Inexcusable by Chris Lynch, and Jailbait by Leslea Newman.

Most people have read or at least heard about Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson's story of Melinda Sordino's freshman year after she has been raped by an upper classman during an end-of-the-summer party. While Melinda is calling the police for help, others at the party think she is turning them in for drinking. Melinda races home, showers away all physical evidence, and never reports the rape. Then she shuts down. During the next year Melinda slowly recovers from the trauma of rape while being ostracized by the entire school population. This book chronicles Melinda's odyssey. She connects with a few very special people, the art teacher and a few students in her art class, before she gets to the point when she realizes, "The time has come to arm-wrestle some demons." The beauty of this book comes from her return to health. She not only survives, she regains her self and her voice. How many of our female students need to arm-wrestle some demons and think it is too impossible to try? Imagine how Melinda's courage might inspire them.

Target is about male rape, a topic rarely mentioned in the teenage world because so few males believe it can happen. But sixteen-year-old Grady West is walking home from a concert when a van stops beside him and the man driving asks directions, while a second man comes up behind him. Grady is beaten, immobilized, and dragged into the back of the van where he is raped anally and orally before being dumped partially clothed on the street (This is the opening chapter in the book, then time switches to a year later). Like Melinda, Grady spends the next year trying to recover. Sure that the account published in the newspaper gave just enough details that everyone at school knew he was the tall, strong, young male who was raped, and that everyone will assume it was a homosexual encounter that turned violent, Grady transfers to another school. He cannot eat, because he still has trouble swallowing. He doubts his sexuality and himself in ways he never did before the rape. As does Melinda in Speak, he finds a safe space in art class and connects with a few students who also have secrets. Teenage boys are reckless and careless in their behaviors and beliefs. They are completely confident that rape can not happen to men, and if it does, it says more about the victim than the rapist. That attitude parallels the attitudes women have fought nearly forever. Discussions generated from books like Target may save the males in our classes from their own macho bravado.