In the literary world, the categories of young adult fiction and romance are frequently looked down upon and misunderstood. These attitudes come from both critics and people who haven't even picked up one of these types of books. They are, incidentally, two of my favourite genres to read.
So where does this dismissal come from? Well, it's no coincidence the genres that are most looked down upon are often written by and for women and girls. In an essay titled 'The Hopeful Romantic' for Kill Your Darlings, Amy T. Matthews writes that when covering romance in her university class for genre fiction, she spends an entire lecture deconstructing what students thought a romance reader looked like. Their initial answer is 'middle-aged, overweight, has too many cats'.
Besides the obvious undertones of misogyny in these perceptions, the truth is all kinds of people read romance. The Australian Romance Readers Association 2017 survey shows that romance readers skew across all ages, with 41.76 per cent of respondents aged 21 to 45. Using Nielson bookscan data, Romance Writers of America estimate that men make up about 18 per cent of romance readers.
Young adult fiction is even more literally typecast, written primarily for teen audiences, despite a large adult readership. Some of the literati snobbery is rooted in how quick we are to dismiss teens' ability to read complexly. Despite the fact that teenagers engage with all types of literature in high school, there's a perception that YA is simplistic, to the point that one Slate article argued adults should be embarrassed to read YA.
But there are also gender dynamics at play here. A common complaint is the supposed feminisation of YA and how it alienates male readers, ignoring the fact that there are many great male YA writers. Not to mention that boys should be encouraged to read outside their own perspective like girls are.
And despite women's innovation in the category (think S. E. Hinton and J. K. Rowling), male authors like J. D. Salinger and John Green are often held up as 'saviours' of the genre, while books with female protagonists by women are given hot pink covers and criticised for being 'sentimental' or 'chick-lit'.
There's a long history in the Western canon of equating maleness with literary value. Even women's literary fiction can't escape the critical blowback of 'Goldfinching', whereby a previously critically acclaimed book that has become commercially popular with women is taken down a peg. In this