Ten Feminist Young Adult Novels for You
Young Adult novels can be a cesspool of stereotype and trope. We, however, love YA novels. It is a genre geared toward people in the throes of puberty, sexual awakenings, bodily discomfort, unruly desires, and internalizing social norms. In other words, it is ripe ground for feminist work, and for recognizing and giving voice to the very real dramas that deep personal change reap. With guest blogger Michael Waters, we (Alex and Greta) have collected our favorite feminist Young Adult novels below. We think these prove that the best of YA is for everyone despite being about young adults––that these stories reach across genre and are overwhelmingly worthwhile.
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Beauty Queens by Libba Bray alongside a cactus, some postcards, and a cup of tea.
Alex Picks:
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (2011)
My mother bought me Beauty Queens in middle school when, upon seeing the cover (a cropped image of a pageant queen in a bikini), I immediately chastised her for getting my reading interests so wrong. It took me a year and an endorsement from a friend before I actually read Bray’s brilliant book. In fact, the cover hints at the work of the plot: unraveling the notion that pageant work is a pastime for unintelligent and uncomplicated young women––young women without deviant desires, young women intent on appealing to the male gaze and cutting one another down in the process. Instead, Beauty Queens starts with a downed plane full of pageant stars on a remote island, and brings in corporate scheming, sexy pirates, the messiness of teen girlhood, and the joy of feminist sisterhood. Beauty Queens features unruly, cunning, horny, and queer girls that face off with the micro and macro manifestations of patriarchy. The book is a total blast laced with tender moments of feminist kinship. I’ve literally just convinced myself to read it again for the umpteenth time :)
GRETA SAYS: I co-sign this book one hundred percent. It was extremely influential to me as a young person. A true testament to how prevalent stereotypes are, I can say with complete certainty that Beauty Queens was the first time I was introduced to the concept that beauty and self-worth are not competitive traits.
Michael Picks:
Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett (2019)
To be momentarily reductive: Full Disclosure is the kind of comprehensive sex-ed class that most people never get in high school. Through the eyes of Simone, who enrolls in a new school after her former classmates discover that she’s HIV positive, we get a refreshingly blunt examination of sex, STDs, the nuances of queer sexuality, masturbation, and life with a whole lot of pent-up lust. Narratively, the novel rests on a threat of blackmail: after Simone transfers schools, she starts up a relationship with her friend from drama class, Miles—until she receives an anonymous note warning her to stay away from Miles, or else her whole school will find out about her HIV status. What follows is a book so thoughtful and big-hearted that it deserves to be on the shelves of schools everywhere.
Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson displayed on a table.
Greta Picks:
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson (2014)
Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun is easily one of my favorite YA reads I have ever encountered (Alex will probably add a line later about how I forced her to read it, too). What can be so beautiful about YA books, at their best, is their capacity to take a uniquely emotionally rich portion of a person’s life, and allow that intensity to radiate. Nelson does that here through the stories of twins Jude and Noah. Close as children and at odds as teens, the twins explore grief in ways at turns destructive, intimate, and oppositional. I’ll Give You the Sun is all about oppositions (the name is taken from a game the twins play where they split up the world between them), and how creating binaries is ultimately a destructive practice. Jude and Noah compete for attention, love, and a place in a prestigious art school, learning along the way that self-definition through opposition is a losing game. This book is an ode to the constant search for meaning and care.
What I love about I’ll Give You the Sun is how it avoids falling into so many of the tropes we are used to seeing in YA books, even as it delivers one of the most satisfying romances ever. It keeps the dramatic and gossipy and intense satisfaction of most YA books while doing away with stereotyping and reductionist storylines. Gay romance, the intensity of youth, a quest for connection––what else could you want?
ALEX’S ANECDOTE: I once asked Greta, in a bookstore, what YA novel I must read next. She promptly conspiratorially whispered to a mutual friend, walked away from me without a word, and returned with I’ll Give You the Sun in hand. I hope to be able to repeat this gesture to another friend who hasn’t read the book someday.
Alex Picks:
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (2017)
(content warning: anti-Black violence, police brutality)
The Hate U Give is a book that every person living in the United States should read. It tells the story of Starr Carter, a Black teenager caught between the worlds of the Black community in her neighborhood, Garden Heights, and the predominantly white space of her private high school. This tension surfaces in Starr’s life when she witnesses the police shooting of her childhood love and close friend, Khalil, first hand. As Starr negotiates the grief and trauma of this incident, she finds her voice and eventually gracefully negotiates all the communities she is a part of. Regardless, the plotline honors Khalil’s life and follows Starr’s journey through discomfort, pain, loss, rage, activism, and healing. Starr doesn’t accept what she has experienced, and as a result, she fights for a better world. Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give is an exceptionally moving story and Starr Carter is a powerful Black feminist role model. Because of the anti-Black police violence in the plot, I would suggest treading with caution for those who might feel the topic more acutely or feel personally triggered by it.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas displayed on a kindle with a tiny flower.
Emergency Contact by Mary HK Choi on a picnic blanket.
Michael Picks:
Emergency Contact by Mary HK Choi (2018)
(content warning: panic attacks, discussion of sexual assault)
It is hard to articulate just how effortlessly funny Mary H.K. Choi is. Her debut novel, Emergency Contact, wrestles with college first-year Penny’s complicated relationships with a) her––as she puts it––“MILF” mom, and b) Sam, an older boy with whom she’s started trading her deepest secrets—all by text—ever since she helped him through a panic attack. Peppered throughout the narrative is whip-smart commentary on everything from confronting adulthood (“It's piles and piles of emotional homework forever if you ever want to qualify as a grown-up”) to the miracles of sheet cake. Yet the emotional center of Emergency Contact is a feminist look at trauma: the ways in which it warps time and space and destabilizes your relationship with yourself. What makes Penny’s relationship with Sam so special is that they are each trying to manage their past traumas—and for all of their chemistry, they know that what matters most is not their relationship with each other but their relationship to themselves.
Greta Picks:
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (2019)
Full disclosure, I got in an argument with my friend just before writing this review about whether On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous counts as a YA novel. Here were my metrics: it is appropriate for teen readers, it has teen protagonists, and it focuses on the interior lives of the teen subjects. Yeah, my friend said, but it doesn’t really follow the usual narrative style. She’s right––this book breaks the narrative boundaries and tropes of usual YA books, and I would say it’s a YA book among other things.
I knew this book needed to be included on this list because Vuong takes being a teen dead-seriously, treating the experience of growing up with obvious care. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter to the narrator’s, Little Dog, mother. Little Dog’s mother never really learned to read or write, and has traumatic memories from the Vietnam war. The book is a mix between journal and letter, as Little Dog writes to his mom about growing up in a letter she would be unable to read. It is a testament to the experience of growing up a first-generation immigrant in the United States, of the hardship and necessity of communication, and of first love. As I wrote recently in the Provocateur, our newsletter (because I’m obsessed with this book), “What is so striking […] is the way joy permeates even the horror and pain and abuse that Little Dog and the people around him endure.”
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong on an open road.
Alex Picks:
Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy (2017)
Welcome to Ramona (with the blue hair)’s messy journey recovering from a break-up, questioning her sexual orientation, exploring opportunities for her future, and navigating difficult family relationships in a small, poverty-stricken Mississippi town that is still reeling from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Throughout Ramona Blue, Ramona’s world opens up and her previously-held beliefs are shaken. This starts when her family boy friend Freddie returns to her hometown. As Ramona is juggling multiple jobs, supporting her sister through a pregnancy, and healing from her break-up with her summer girlfriend, she realizes that she has romantic feelings for Freddie. Ramona previously identifies fervently as a lesbian and is thus challenged by her own complicated feelings and desires.
The best thing about Ramona Blue is that Ramona makes mistakes. Her flaws make her relatable and illustrate everyone’s personal capacity for growth. Further, featuring a queer, poor, young woman in the lead, Ramona Blue tells a frequently underrepresented story of bi/pan/queer/fluid folks exploring relationships and desires. Julie Murphy offers a sweet romance and touching portrait of queer teenagehood in Ramona Blue.
Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy held up in a library.
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily XR Pan next to a dog, image credit @nanowrimo
Michael Picks:
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily XR Pan (2018)
(content warning: suicide)
In the throes of grief, Leigh decides to take a trip to Taiwan. Her mother has just committed suicide, and Leigh—who realizes she knows almost nothing about her mom’s past—embarks on an impromptu visit to her mom’s childhood home. Her reason is fifty percent eagerness to connect with a side of her family she knows almost nothing about and fifty percent that a bird she has come to understand as a reincarnation of her mom urges her to do it. Through moments like this, magic permeates the pages of The Astonishing Color of After. Its exploration of mental illness, migration, and grief is all the more acute because of the ways in which Emily X.R. Pan makes real the lingering presence of Leigh’s mom in her life. The beauty of the novel is its attention to these relationships—how the secrets her mom kept shaped Leigh's Taiwanese identity, her connection to food and language, and her understanding of her place in the world.
Greta Picks:
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)
Alex included Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home in her blog post 5 Feminist Graphic Novels to Begin Your Obsession (excellent choice, Alex), and I am reprising it here because I would be mortified to let Uterish publish this post without Fun Home in it. Fun Home is an autobiographical memoir graphic novel–– “a family tragicomic”––that follows Bechdel’s young life living in the funeral home her family ran through her college years. The throughline is her relationship with her father; a methodical, precise, closed-off man who dies early. As Bechdel grieves his death, she is left with more questions than answers as she learns more about who her father was, which reframes her entire childhood understanding of her family dynamic. She pits her own sexuality against his as she struggles to understand who she is, who her father is, and what to do now. Fun Home is my perfect feminist YA novel because it rejects the tropes of classic YA literature; covers “adult topics” like grief, queer sexuality, and family with care; and accurately captures the real angst of growing up, of forming an identity on your own.
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel displayed on a bed.
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie displayed on a patterned background, image credit @thereadingwomen
Alex Picks:
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2003)
(content warning: physical, psychological, and verbal abuse)
Purple Hibiscus is a painful read as much as it is a beautifully written novel. Nigerian feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, known for her adult fiction, delivers the story of Kambili Achike, a fifteen year old living with her mother and brother in her abusive Catholic father’s home in Nigeria. Kambili and her brother, Jaja, come together to survive their father’s religious extremism and violence. A space of solace for both of them is their Aunt Ifeoma’s house. Purple Hibiscus follows Kambili’s path of maturity as she confronts her trauma while experiencing a sexual awakening, a sense of healing, and a confident independence. I read Purple Hibiscus for a class in eighth grade and it immediately prompted me to reflect on the conditions which allowed the violence that Kambili and her brother suffered, namely the colonial imposition of Catholicism and toxic masculinity (though I didn’t have such precise words at the time). Kambili’s journey from merely surviving to healing and thriving was poignant and has stuck with me.
“‘Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes.”