Now that I'm back in school and hanging out with my English major friends again, it's safe to say I've taken plenty of trips to Barnes and Noble and other bookstores recently. On my last trip to my local Barnes and Noble, however, a certain memory sticks out to me, even a few weeks later.
My friend and I were walking through the YA section, where we spend a lot of our time. There was a collection whose title is slipping from my memory, but it was a collection of short stories about teenagers with different disabilities. I yelled for my friend, grabbed the book, held it out to her, and yelled: "This is so important!"
The following Friday night, I went to my college's screening of "The Mis-education of Cameron Post," which was followed by a panel made up of queer people either involved with the world of writing or making movies. So much of the discussion was about how rare Emily Danforth's novel was in the sense that it attacked coming out from an angle rarely taken: the story didn't just end with Cameron coming out to herself and to the people in her life. She was a young woman who identified as LGBTQ+, for that matter. So much this community in the Young Adult world, the panel discussed, revolves around men coming out and finding love. Think David Levithan. Think of Adam Silvera. Think of "Simon VS The Homo-Sapiens Agenda." These are amazing authors and amazing books, yes, but they all focus on men coming out.
In her TED Talk, "The danger of a single story," author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about how impressionable people are to stories and what they stand for, especially at young ages. She gives examples from her life, and she says, "When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise."
This idea is so, so important, and it is why we need diverse stories. Young people especially need to be able to see themselves in what they read, to feel connected to the world. They need to see that they are not alone, that they are not crazy. By keeping stories stereotypical, we teach our youth that they must fit into a mold. To be normal, to be worth having stories written about them, they must fit into this box that society has created.
The truth is that the world as we know it is constantly changing. As a society, we are incredibly diverse already. It is the job of artists to take hold of these different lifestyles, different demographics, and craft them into stories that people can consume as they grow into who they are. In an age that is already so isolating because of the technology that runs everything, these young people and the ones that come after them need to feel connected to something, and it may as well be stories.