What is YA lit?

A very good question, one I found myself asking after enrolloing in a class entitled "Adolescents in American Literature," only to discover that we would not be focusing on works featuring an adolescent as a main character as I had thought. We would in fact be reading YA--or young adult--literature. "What the hell is YA lit?" I asked myself, trying to recall if I had read the course description, remembering that I have never read a course description so I most certainly had not, and silently cursing my lack of preparedness in my all-important college education. As I sat there trying to decide whether I was going to drop the class and pick up another, I could not help but become interested as our professor began to speak about YA lit. Apparently it is its own genre. Who knew? I have spent ample time in bookstores and libraries in my day so I was aware that the teen books were shelved in their own area, seperated from Fiction, but I had no idea that YA literature was its own market, with its own somewhat hazy perameters, written specifically for 12-18 year olds. The more I heard about it, the more interested I became. I have always been an avid reader and I remember fondly my teenage years trying to find books that I liked but which were not sappy romances or soap operas in dust jackets. No one informed me about YA lit back then. We were too busy being drowned in Shakespeare and Jane Austen--no disrespect intended, I happen to enjoy the greats also--during the school year and largely ignored over the summer, except of course the one summer reading book chosen and demanded by the administration. It is to these days that I ascribe part of the blame for the lack of interest in reading that is characteristic of most of my friends. No one wants to read something that does not interest them, no matter what its literary merit. YA lit attempts to counter this unfortunate side effect of English classes by offering complex, literary novels geared towards teens. It is not merely your overdone "problem novel" or a moralizing story devised to keep teens out of trouble. These books address all different sorts of situations and struggles in a realistic and truthful way. Instead of pretending the darkness or confusion or ambiguity doesn't exist, these novels engage reality from the perspective of a teen. What makes YA lit different from other literature? According to resident expert Patty Campbell YA books "must have a teen protagonist speaking from an adolescent point of view, with all the limitations of understandings this implies." YA lit enages questions of identity--who am I?--so often the central action is internal, in the psyche of the teen. With anual awards now given specifically to YA literature written for teens, the quality of these novels is beginning to be recongized as authors take literary risks. Just in the past few weeks I have read enough to realize that YA lit is no joke, its quality writing. While I am no longer a young adult, technically speaking, I still appreciate good literature and a good story. And this is exactly what good YA literature offers us.