#young adult novel
By Sonia Patel
While YA novels are increasingly diverse, safe diversity—with accessible and likable protagonists and their convenient struggles—is usually seen as enough. These unoffending books tend to be championed and more popular. Unsettling diversity, on the other hand, is often frowned upon, discounted, or misconceived.
I’m a practicing child and adolescent psychiatrist and a young adult novelist. To me, dismissing YA that’s outside the realm of palatable diversity is like a psychiatrist refusing to treat certain teen patients because they have “too many problems.”
I’ve spent over fifteen years treating diverse teens who suffer tremendous adversity—abuse of all kinds, neglect, parental mental illness or drug use, etc. Medical research proves that youth exposed to these types of adverse experiences have an increased incidence of chronic medical and mental health problems, increased risky behaviors, and less future success. That’s why I’m dedicated to being in the trenches with them, helping them dodge life’s bullets. Hoping to steer them to higher ground.
An example is in order.
Kai (not his real name), a seventeen-year-old Filipino-Hawaiian-Japanese-Korean boy, is sitting across from me, staring out the window. It’s been six months of almost weekly individual talk therapy sessions. I bring up the heavy family issue. Kai presses his lips together. Suddenly he shoots up, a scowl covering his usual poker face. He takes three steps to the large window and slams his head, three times. A pause then three more slams.
I call his name. He glances over his shoulder, his eyes moist. In a gentle voice, I ask, “Will you sit down or should I call the police to keep you safe like last time?”
He punches his head three times. “It hurts so much in here,” he angry whispers, tears now streaming.
“Let’s talk about it,” I suggest.
He glares at me but then sits. “Fine,” he mutters.
That was Kai’s breakthrough moment. It was the first time he spoke about a feeling instead of showing it with alarming behavior. It was the moment we started translating his behavioral language (obsessions, compulsions that were often harmful to himself, bullying, social isolation, alcohol use, and truancy) into English words.
Still, healing took years. Negative coping strategies had been automatically reinforced, and eventually hardwired, in his brain. New, positive brain pathways took time and work to form.
I have personal experience with this. You see I grew up in a dysfunctional Gujarati Indian immigrant family with dark secrets. The opposite of the typical Bollywood family depiction. I started writing to cope. It was poetry and rap at first. It turned into my debut young adult novel Rani Patel In Full Effect.
i love YA fiction but it’s so funny to me that a bunch of sixteen year olds are walking around murdering people and sacrificing themselves for love and martyrdom and the Greater Good and i’m sitting here doing calculus like “yes this is relatable i too hold my enemy at sword point and would be easily able to knock out a man three feet taller than me” whereas in reality i can’t win an arm wrestling match and i leave the house once every three months