YA Literature Is Under Attack
Thoughts On The Controversial Book That Has Taken The Book Community By Storm
We all know what this is about.
Sibylline by Melissa de la Cruz.
If the author’s name is familiar, you may recognize her plethora of YA novels as well as her work with Disney, for the Descendants Movies.
I often saw her books in libraries as I perused the shelves as a teen and early into adulthood.
I want to preface this by saying that this is not a hit piece on the author. I have seen quite a few people attacking the character of the author due to this book.
As someone who truly believes we sometimes need to separate the artist from the art, I want to separate everything I am saying here about the book from the author.
Many of you may disagree with this stance. A lot of people have questioned how someone could write this kind of content and put it in a YA book. Many have been saying that this content should not even be in an adult book. I have seen far worse take place in adult books, so I’m not in agreement with that necessarily.
No, it’s not content I want to consume. But if this book had been marketed as Adult or New Adult, we wouldn’t really be here having this discussion.
I have seen the full scene of what occurs in Sibylline and I believe it has no place in YA literature.
But it has come to my attention that a lot of people don’t know what the industry standard for YA is. After telling a friend/coworker about this drama since she isn’t on that particular side of the book community, she told me she believed YA was 14-18. Although, she agreed that this content had no place in literature.
Other coworkers of ours heard us talking about it and were also very disgusted, despite not being readers themselves.
YA, as per the publishing industry, is considered to be for 12-18 year olds. This is very confusing, as young adult is a term often used for 18-25 year olds, sometimes even older. But I am only here to talk about the publishing industry today.
As a writer, I have written many scenes that have not ended up in the final, edited manuscript. I am not going to fault Melissa de la Cruz for writing her book the way she wanted. I am looking at her editors. Her publishing house. The professionals that didn’t say, “Hey, I understand where you’re coming from in this scene, but it doesn’t really fit the age range.”
Maybe I’m being a little too soft on the situation. But I’m tired of readers and fellow writers going after authors in witch-hunts. I think we’ve had so many of those recently that I want to draw a line in the sand.
As a writer myself, I have often in the process of drafting, forgotten the age of the characters and the age I’m writing for. I’ve written scenes that are possibly too steamy to put in YA. (Not spicy, mind you. I don’t really write those.)
I’m in my mid-20s and I write things that feel natural. But that doesn’t make me a bad person and it doesn’t mean I’m sexualizing characters who are younger than me. It just means I forget I’m not writing characters my age.
And I think this could be the case here.
Now, something else that really irks me is the clean fiction movement. It’s not that I’m against cleaning up some of the dark and grotesque fiction that has infiltrated the publishing space.
But they really settle on these concepts that just aren’t true.
I’m going to get into further detail of the book here, so if sexual themes make you uncomfortable, scroll past where I’m talking about this.
START OF TOPIC
Sibylline features a threesome, from the point of view of a boy who’s dying and cannot consent to such actions. The purpose is that the other two characters caught up in this love-triangle believe that the power of “pure love” will bring him back to life.
I’ve seen the whole scene thanks to TikTok. I think it is very graphic and described so physically that it doesn’t belong in YA.
But a lot of people are saying that the scene takes place with a corpse. That he couldn’t consent.
While it is true he couldn’t consent, it doesn’t appear he objected when, halfway through, he was back to life and actively participated in the scene.
So, two things can be very true in this case.
The clean fiction movement on social media has gotten some of the facts wrong about what occurs in this book, based on the second, third, and fourth hand information they’ve been given. A lot of people who are talking haven’t read the book or seen the scene.
The clean fiction movement is correct in that this kind of graphic sexual content does NOT belong in the books we are handing to 12-18 year olds.
The other thing people are arguing is that this book states that it is aiming for 14+ year old readers. I don’t think a 14 year old should be consuming this content, either. I wouldn’t even give this kind of content to a 16 year old.
Again, graphic sex should not be in YA literature. Upper YA having some very mild, alluded to scenes doesn’t bother me.
Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo did that.
Fearless by Lauren Roberts handled it tactfully. (The characters are also 18.)
I have seen it handled well in YA. And I don’t think we should just shut down any conversation about sex with teens because that is where we dive into toxic purity culture and the false notions that it leaves many people, mainly young women.
END OF TOPIC
The publisher should have known better. The editors should have known better. Good Morning America should have done better than to make it a GMA book club pick.
It should have been recategorized as adult or new adult. It should not have been marketed to mainly fourteen year olds.
I’ve seen a lot of takes that YA should be bumped up to 18+ and we should have a Teen category. I think this would help alleviate some of the confusion that has seemed to be happening lately in the book community.
But until these industry standards change, YA is standardly known for being 12-18. And that means we need to handle certain topics regarding sex with care.
Not every young mind is ready or capable of dealing with the conversation. I know I wasn’t ready at twelve years old. I wouldn’t have fully been ready at fourteen years old.
It’s very important that we are careful with young readers, who’s minds are in a very vulnerable place.
Another argument is that this is an attempt from publishers to groom the younger generation, to believe that this kind of thing is okay. I partially believe that to be true. We’ve seen an invasion of sexual topics infiltrating books for teens.
A library I used to go to, but don’t go to now, has a book about porn for teens.
Let that sink in for a second.
This is a far cry from the books I grew up reading as a young adult. We need to bring back good literature.
That’s not to say that Melissa de la Cruz is a bad writer or that all of her work is bad. I don’t believe that. I can’t hold an opinion on her writing skills as I have not consumed any of her work, besides this scene that has been spread online through TikTok and Instagram.
But I do think that our teens and young adults deserve better literature. They deserve stories that empower them in the things they’re dealing with.
It’s time to make fiction better than ever, in a time where literacy rates are down. We have to do better for the future generations.
I teach middle schoolers and high schoolers. Most of my students right now tell me that they are tired of the sex in YA novels. They wish they could find some good clean books where they don't have to navigate all the steam and spice. I know that agents and publishers think that they need to include this stuff because that's what sells. I think it may be more the case that students love fantasy and sci-fi and even romcom, so they are buying the books despite the spice. They're just "dealing with it" but wish it weren't there.
People have definitely gone over-the-top on the spiciness for ya books. glad to see someone bringing this up without attacking the author.