Welcome to Complicated! Katie and I thrilled to have you join us. Together we’ll throw out ideas, musings, thoughts and opinions about issues that are important to you, as teens, and we’ll use the lens of our favorite (and maybe not-so-favorite) YA characters.
Jen’s Story
Who am I to chat about these kinds of topics with you? Well, for one, I write YA novels, so I work hard to get into the heads of teens and youth. Evangeline’s Heaven, my YA fantasy about Lucifer’s daughter was my debut novel in 2022, and I have Amaranth, a YA dystopian novel coming out in May 2024. I’m also hard at work on a whole bunch of other story ideas as well. Secondly, I was a high school English teacher for almost 20 years. I’m not in the classroom anymore—the lure of writing books full time was too strong—but I loved my time with my students. Teens are, generally speaking, an idealistic group of people who either really, really love something or really, really hate something. 🙂 I love their passion energy and determination. Thirdly, I’m a book coach. I help writers—including YA authors—write their novels. I know how stories work. I know when and how and why characters do what they do, and I help writers make sure they do it in a way that you fall in love with them. Finally, I’m also a mom to two teen daughters. Living with two of them is the best hands-on experience about teens that you can get. 🙂
Okay, but why work with teens at all? Why write YA novels? Because you—teens—fascinate me. Your reasons, your motivations, your emotions, your experiences. They’re all different because you’re all different, but still, it’s important to find common ground. Books are one fundamental place to start. Here, for example, is how I got to thinking about Lyra, my protagonist in Amaranth, a story about a 17-year-old girl whose parents have tried to shield her from tyrannical government agents, but who is desperate to break free from her suffocating existence. My inspiration came from one of my students.
Ibrahim was new to Canada the year I taught him Grade 12 English. He and his family had just fled Libya, where a simmering civil war had exploded. We were discussing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and, as a way to get them to relate to Hamlet’s outrage at his mother Gertrude, I had asked the students about a fight they’d had with their own mother or mother figure. More often than not, the stories were about messy rooms, borrowing the car, or curfews.
Not Ibrahim’s story. In a tone still brimming with indignation, he recounted the injustice heaped upon him by his mom. Desperate to fight Libyan dictator Gaddafi, Ibrahim begged his mom to let him join the rebels.
“She wouldn’t let me!” he cried.
I looked at him, open-mouthed. “You know why, right? Because she didn’t want to, oh, I don’t know… die?”
But Ibrahim felt he hadn’t done his part. He hadn’t fought against the injustice he saw; he hadn’t helped to create the country he wanted for his own future.
There’s a line, obviously, where adults have to keep their kids safe—teens don’t always know what’s best.
But where is that line? And when do teens know what’s best for them?
And though most of my students didn’t struggle with such extraordinary circumstances as Ibrahim’s, many could still feel their parents’ stranglehold—from everything about which courses to take in their senior year or what university they could attend, to what they were allowed to wear out of the house. They felt they had no control over their own lives.
But what if the parents have good reasons to make the decisions they do—like Ibrahim’s mom? Where does that leave the teen?
I witness that struggle—your struggle—to become more independent every day and I feel for you.
But I also see what many teens can’t—that they may not yet be ready for the independence they crave.
That contradiction fascinates me, and so, Lyra was “born”. I wanted to add my voice to the conversation, but in a way that may also appeal to teens. Here is a girl who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders. For Lyra, it may be almost literal—she may be the only answer to a worldwide pandemic—but for my readers, it may be metaphorical. Which, by no means, makes the emotions any less real.
That’s why YA novels matter. No matter the big-picture saving-the-world plots, or the small, hold-your-heart-close storylines, teens often feel the same things. YA books remind you, then, that you’re not alone.