Twilight Versus Y.A. “Chippies”

“I hate Y.A. novels; they bore me. That’s a disappointing fact of my reading life, because never have I had such an intense relationship with books as when I was a young girl,” wrote Caitlin Flanagan in the Atlantic–launching a thousand Y.A. blog posts in the process.

Flanagan’s essay praises the Twilight series (the second-most popular book among college kids) for its careful treatment of sexuality and relationships. At the same time, she bashes other popular stories like Gossip Girl (“these chippies could make a crack whore look like Clara Barton”) and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (“female empowerment as it’s currently defined by the kind of jaded, 40-something divorcees who wash ashore at day spas with their grizzled girlfriends”).

This goes out to all the Y.A. readers and writers in the audience. What do you say to Flanagan? Is Y.A. too sexy? Finding Wonderland and Miss Rumphius begged to disagree. Over at Guys Lit Wire, we found this sarcastic reply: “YA fiction is full of porn. I’m sure this will be news to Sherman Alexie, John Green, Chris Crutcher and pretty much every other YA novelist on the planet.”

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