The New Adult Genre: Adolescent Material Marketed for Adults
Amanda Towner While literature can be used solely for pleasure, research has found that it does a lot more than entertain readers. Whether they realize it or not, readers are learning, and in the fiction genre, this is evident through the use of protagonists.
Here we see characters overcome the battles for us, while we are surrounded by the comforts of real life. As readers we experience the possible outcomes a protagonist has, and can relate it to our own problems in life, should they be similar.
For those struggling with identity and problem solving, literature can be especially useful for this purpose. Recently, a new genre has emerged, catered specifically for eighteen to twenty-five year olds (Naughton 20). The genre was meant to fill the gap between Young Adult fiction and Adult fiction, where readers were too old to read Young Adult, but were not ready to delve into Adult fiction.
Characters in New Adult are post-high schoolers, experiencing adulthood for the first time (Naughton 22). While this genre is needed, it seems to be only an extension of Young Adult, and not its own entity.
When the genre was created by St. Martin’s Press in 2009, they were “seeking manuscripts featuring eighteen-and-older characters that read like YA but would be published and marketed for adults” (Brookover, Burns, & Jensen 42-43). In order to fully understand how the genre was supposed to “read like YA,” I read Beautiful
Disaster, a New Adult novel that has given the genre successful acclaim, landing a movie deal after selling 500,000 copies (Donahue “New Adult Fiction Is the Hot New
Category in Books”).
The relevance of her scenes, as well as the language, keeps readers in the
Young Adult mindset, rather than preparing them for the Adult Fiction genre. Which, as a result, does not give a believable account of the college life, since it is filtered in the Young Adult lens. An analysis of this book, as a base for the New Adult Genre and its purpose, will be used to discuss the problems associated with marketing a book for adults that is written as if for adolescents. In addition, excerpts from a short story will be used to show what the New Adult genre should aspire to do.
The way a piece of literature is written can either isolate the reader from the text, or invite them into this world. This aspect is important in dialogue between characters as well. According to Contemporary Realistic Fiction for Young Adults,
“Authors use authentic practices, such as phonetically written words and a mixture of letters and numerals to form words, to keep literature from being ‘dated’” (Claasz
52). This could include shortened versions of words, like “lol” to mean laugh-out- loud, or even the way dialogue is presented to give the air of youthfulness. While this is a quality of the Young Adult genre, it is still being used in New Adult, as seen in Beautiful Disaster. When a character is concerning her friend’s appearance,
McGuire writes, ‘Yuck, Abby! You look homeless!’ (McGuire 20). The word “yuck” does not seem appropriate or believable for an eighteen to twenty-two year old protagonist or reader, and instead makes the novel feel as if it is for a younger age group.
McGuire also relies heavily on explanation marks, often using several in concession like the one shown. As for a total, she used them one-hundred and twenty-nine times. This also makes her writing seem catered to a young adult audience, because instead of describing how a phrase was said expressively, she assumed the reader wouldn’t understand it otherwise, and under credited the reader.
In addition to the way characters are expressed, the overall sentence structure follows that for a Young Adult novel. According to The Structure of Power in Young Adult Problem Novels, ‘sentences and paragraphs are short; locutions are colloquial and language is flat, without nuance, and often emotionally numb.’ In addition, the vocabulary is small, and a selfish first person narration is continuously used, and alludes to a confessing tone. (Michel & Sturm 40). This sentence structure is meant to grip readers throughout an entire book. The language is easy to comprehend because of the vocabulary, and the short sentences allow for fast reading (Michel & Sturm 42). In Beautiful Disaster the dialogue is short, usually no more than a line, and her descriptions are direct: “a slow smile crept across his face before he spoke (McGuire 17). Which yet again follows practices used by the Young
Adult genre.
There has been much speculation as to why the New Adult genre emerged, where some argue it as a marketing ploy to keep the fan base for Young Adult even after they grow up. Considering the fact that New Adult was meant to read as Young
Adult, and still uses many of its practices to do so, this seems more profound. Even the name “New Adult” was used to attract Young Adult readers. An agent that works for Writers House said, “We had this huge boom in the YA market, and now we don’t want to lose those readers. For a teen who was a voracious YA reader [the new adult tag] offers a way to say, here these books are for you” (Deahl and Rosen 4). This kind of gimmick blurs the lines between intended audience and actual audience, because although the material is about life after high school, it will have appeal to teen readers because of the name of the genre and language used.
According to a biannual study from Bowker Market Research, 28 percent of all Young Adult sales are from readers aged between 30 and 44 (Graham, “Against
YA”). Ruth Graham discusses her concern for adults reading teen fiction in her article, “Against YA.” She writes, “But crucially, YA books present the teenage perspective in a fundamentally uncritical way. It’s not simply that YA readers are asked to immerse themselves in a character’s emotional life…but that they are asked to abandon the mature insights into that perspective that they (supposedly) have acquired as adults” (Graham, “Against YA”). If the New Adult genre is written like YA but meant for adults, it will still have the same problem: the material is not realistic to an adult. Rather than giving an accurate portrayal of college life, the New Adult genre seems usable only for pleasure and nostalgia (Naughton 20). This poses a problem for readers looking to specifically learn from the protagonists, and also those who do not realize that the material is inaccurate.
Although not all readers expect to learn from literature, most of them do, even if they are not reading for the purpose of learning. In a study conducted by a reference and intrusion librarian, she found that eighty-seven percent of respondents agreed that reading served as an escape, while 81 percent agreed that they learned a lot from reading (Moyer 71). The volunteers, who participated through surveys, and some through interviews, expressed the theme that “reading fiction was much easier and much more fun than more traditional types of learning”
(Moyer 73). Educating a reader indirectly can be extremely useful for touchy subjects that individuals do not want to seek the answer to on their own, like sex. The Henry
Kaiser Family Foundation found that out of students who had taken a sexuality education class, “forty-six percent needed to know how to talk with a partner about birth control and STDs…and forty percent needed to know how to use or where to obtain birth control” (McDermott 47). The John Tung Foundation found that most students chose to deal with problems on their own to avoid the embarrassment of asking for advice (Chien & Sheih 85) In this way, fiction can be used to condition readers to learn more about the issues that concern them without the worry of judgment from asking the questions themselves. The reader has a separation from the character, in that he or she can go through the problem with empathy, but can also stand back to analyze it as just a character’s problem.
This method is further explained in Contemporary Realistic Fiction for Young
Adults, where fiction is seen as a way to develop critical thinking. Claasz writes, “By identifying and connecting with protagonists, in CRF [contemporary realistic fiction]
YA [readers] can observe their own dilemmas, aiding in their own personal growth and development” (Claasz 52). Some readers seek particular books to deal with their personal problems as a result.
The “emotional healing effect” of seeing a character go through a situation similar to the reader has caused undergraduates to resort to it in times of need. The conclusion of this study even recommended it to college students, especially those that were experiencing stress (Chien & Sheih 88). In the study, the six major problems that were reported from the interviews of students included stress from: academics, career development and uncertainty, forming interpersonal relationships with classmates, communication problems with family and a family’s interference on personal plans, intimacy, and self-identification. In addition, it was found that freshman and sophomores worry about academics and making friends, while juniors and seniors are worried about careers and intimacy (Chien & Sheih 85,
86). It would seem then that the New Adult category, aimed for readers like the undergraduates in this study, would be especially useful.
But as stated previously, the New Adult genre is not realistic, because it aims for pleasure just as Young Adult does by following in its methods. The novels in New
Adult would not be accurate to an adult audience because the language and material presented is aimed for a younger audience, and this includes the plotline as well.
This is supported through Beautiful Disaster, where the plot is centered on two friends paring up together (McGuire 33). Although Abby’s desire to have a boyfriend is relatable, it is the only concern she has. She does not worry about issues outside of herself, which is an aspect of protagonists in Young Adult (Brookover, Burns, &
Jensen 41).
With this being said, the New Adult and Young Adult genres do not seem to be very different from one another, with their main difference being the setting and age of the protagonists. Margo Lipschultz, an editor as Harlequin’s HQN Books, believes that the New Adult genre is filling a gap in the romance category. She reflects her time in college looking for a romance novel that would be for her age group (Deahl and Rosen 5). This opinion of New Adult as an explicit extension of
Young Adult is made evident through publishers as well. The Vincent Boys, a series by Abbi Glines, was originally published under both Young Adult and Adult fiction, where the content was varied in both genres. The adult version was known as the
“The Full Vincent”: The Vincent Boys Extended and Uncut, because it had scenes that the publisher claimed were inappropriate for readers under seventeen. This change in content makes it seem as though the only difference between the two genres is the description of sex (Brookover, Burns, & Jensen 42, 43).
Books in this New Adult genre, although entertaining, do not use this genre to the advantage of its readers, by only using it as a means to add sexual content. For people who are looking to learn, experience or prepare for college life, or even relate to it, the novels will not be useful because of how it is written. Since the genre is constructed for Young Adult readers, it does not further an understanding of an adult world to the adults in its intended audience. Instead of marketing to previous
Young Adult readers, the genre should be its own entity, and not an extension of a genre meant for adolescents.
In the short story attached, scenes are constructed in a way to delve with the issues associated with a college freshman, as stated previously by A Study on
Emotional Healing Fiction for Undergraduate Students. The character, Kansas, deals with the stress of making friends in college, and stress from the material she learned in one of her courses. In addition, Kansas’ construction of identity is briefly shown, as well as one of the difficulties to being only semi-independent, where although most decisions can be made independently, parental pressure and influence still looms. The purpose of these excerpts is to provide a more accurate account of college life, from a college student’s perspective.
Excerpts from “Semi-Independent”
By: Amanda Towner “Kansas?”
She hated her name. It was too sharp for her face. And no one could say it quietly; it was too bold. Growing up she knew when people were talking about her.
And she didn’t always like it that way. Plus it reminded her of dirt, and the fourth
Star Wars movie she hated.
And she hated the way people looked at her when they found out. Confused as to why parents would name their child something so unusual. But in her defense, it wasn’t as bad as being named after an adjective, or the weather, like Rain. She picked up her backpack and walked towards the assistant.
“That’s a really interesting name. Are your parents from there?”
She was getting too old for this. She used to make a game out of it, like the one time she said her mother was enslaved in a whorehouse, and her pregnancy was her ticket out of there, here little “bleeding Kansas.” But the guy she talked to didn’t get the reference. And she really wasn’t in the mood today.
“No, they just really liked their music.”
“Oh.” She looked a little confused, and Kansas wondered if she knew she meant the band, and not some kind of music people in Kansas listened to. But the assistant just wrinkled her forehead. “Well, just follow me please.”
She followed her down the hall into a small room on the left, where the assistant took her temperature and her weight. But when her blood pressure was taken, the assistant pulled a corner of her lip in.
“Are you nervous? Your blood pressure is a little high.” But Kansas didn’t have to answer and she didn’t want to. The assistant led her to another room and instructed her to undress and put on a paper smock before leaving.
She almost cried when she put it on, like wearing it made her less of a person somehow, like she was an animal. It reminded her of the pads that dogs peed on; it was thin, and crinkled when she moved. She sat up on the examination table, tearing the paper a little from trying to scoot up.
The room smelled like menthol, with a hint of lemon. The scent was inescapable, desperately trying to make the room seem more humane. But at least it was trying. Everything else seemed dismal. An old diagram for self-breast examinations looked like it had been there since the early 80s. There were pamphlets about depression, and the flu, and even a replica of a woman’s reproductive organs. Her legs started to dangle.
She had been in there a long time, but that was okay with her. She tried to breathe as if her belly button were being pulled on a string towards her spine, something she learned in yoga class. But she never knew what the hell the instructor was talking about, and she started sucking in her stomach while trying to breathe at the same time, which didn’t work. She was concentrating so hard, that when the door opened she jumped and slammed her foot into the examination table below.
“A little jumpy?” The doctor walked to the sink and washed her hands before putting on her gloves.
Kansas hated being talked to as if she were a child. Her mother always told her having a baby-face was a good thing, but it was also the kind of face that could easily be talked over, authority stripped. Or at least she thought this, if only to give herself a reason for being cast aside all the time.
The doctor pulled up a stool and adjusted it to the right height. Then she opened a drawer below Kansas’ feet. “I need you to lie on your back, and put your feet in each one of these.” She pulled out two long metal arms, stirrups she called them, to hold her feet.
She lifted them into it, legs already shaking from exposing her body so openly to someone else.
“Now I need you to scoot down, so that your bottom is at the edge of the table.” She had already put her gloves on. “And I need you to relax.”
The doctor tapped on her knees, asking her to separate them from each other.
The whole time Kansas tried to stop her body from continuously shaking. Even her mouth was quivering.
She could hear a rustle of plastic, and without thinking she lifted her head to see over her stomach at the doctor. And at that moment she wished she wouldn’t have. What the hell was that thing? The plastic tool the doctor held was menacing.
Two claws means to separate without sympathies. Kansas could feel her stomach cramping from the anxiety.
“Okay. This is going to hurt more if you don’t relax. So try and be calm. I’m going to go ahead and start okay?” She took Kansas’ staggering breathing as an invitation to begin.
But in that moment Kansas screamed. She had never felt so much pain in her life before. Like she was being pulled apart and pinched at the same time, in ways that don’t even make sense. Was she trying to hurt her? She begged her to stop, to please take it out of her. The way it separated her burned, maybe even tore her on the side. But the doctor wouldn’t do it. It had to stay in for thirty more seconds, the explanation Kansas could not concentrate on hearing.
“Kansas. You can sit up now.” She put the swab of results into a bag. “Looks like you just have a yeast infection, but I’ll have to take a closer look. Go ahead and put your clothes on.” The door that shut behind her was almost peaceful. It was over.
When she came back in Kansas was already waiting. “It’s just an overgrowth of yeast. So I’m going to send off a prescription for an oral medicine to clear it up.”
She saw that Kansas’ eyes were red, and knew she must have been crying. “Were you worried it was something else?”
“I, I really wasn’t sure. I mean, I didn’t know if it was—“
“An STD?”
Kansas played with a piece of hair, rubbing it between her fingers. “Yea.”
“Are you practicing safe sex with condoms?”
“I would have, but I didn’t have one, and he didn’t either.” She felt embarrassed, like she was being reprimanded. “So I just wanted to make sure.”
The doctor sighed like so many other times before. “Not all STD’s show up with a pap smear. You would have to have a blood test sent off to the lab also.”
“Oh, I didn’t know. I, I just thought it was all the same.”
“Why don’t you schedule an appointment on your way out, just in case.” She got up and collected her chart. “If you ever have any questions, or want to get birth control, we can do that for you here too, alright? But promise me to always use a condom. We always have a bowl of them here, so come in whenever you like and take a few. They might have them in a few other places on campus too.”
Only a couple of years ago she didn’t even know what condoms were. Her parents never talked about sex, because they thought informing her would make her want to do it. They believed that pre-marital sex was a sin, something Kansas found out on her own when she was seven.
She had always been given a Collector’s Edition Barbie doll for Christmas each year, but she was never allowed to play with it.
“They look nicer in the boxes. Don’t you think so? Their hair will always be in shape, and they will never get ruined,” her mom had said.
“But I want to play with them.”
Her mother grabbed one from the shelf, New Years Eve Barbie, 1999. “But, darling, in here she will always be the same. And then you can give them to your children one day.” She gave the box to Kansas, who stared at the beautiful velvet dress, curled hair, and red lipstick.
“And you have your other ones me and daddy got you. You can play with those.”
Kansas looked down by her feet, where her favorite one was. Her hair was matted and stiff, and it had tiny bite marks from her dog. She didn’t have fancy clothes or jewelry.
“Kansas?” The doctor put a hand on her arm, and almost startled her. “You can go to the receptionist now.” “Oh.” She picked up her backpack and followed the doctor out the room.
“Thank you.”
Kansas really hoped that she could see how thankful she was. There was no one she could really talk to about this. I mean there were the roommates, but she still didn’t know them that well. They had only been in school a few weeks.
But when she got to the receptionist, her anxiety came back, tenfold.
“How much is it?” Kansas stared in disbelief.
“One-hundred and sixty three without insurance. Are you sure you don’t want to use it?”
Kansas looked down inside her wallet. Insurance was not applicable today.
They would know if she used it.
“But how are you going to pay for it yourself?” The woman leaned through the glass window that separated student from reality. “Maybe you should call a parent first.”
She pulled out a fifty and laid it on the counter, all she had left from her paycheck. “I can’t really call them.”
The woman studied her for a moment. Whether or not she reminded her of a friend she had when she was younger, or if it was just general pity, she felt bad for her.
A boy Kansas knew walked up behind her and she tensed up. What if he heard what her appointment had been for? Her forehead started pulsing in sweat.
“C-can I come back when I get my next paycheck? I get paid in two weeks,” said Kansas. The woman looked over Kansas’ shoulder. “Do you need to make an appointment? Take this here and fill it out.”
She handed the boy a clipboard and when he made his way to a seat, she leaned in and spoke almost inaudibly. “I am not supposed to do this, but come back when you get it. If not I will have to send it to your billing address.”
After she made her lab appointment, and found out how much that would cost next time, she was already twelve minutes late to her physics class.
But even though she was late, she couldn’t help but run a little slower that day. Her clothes felt different on her, like they didn’t belong to her anymore.
~
“Do you want to go get dinner?” Kansas hoped she wouldn’t have to eat alone.
Sitting there by yourself was like an open invitation for pity. She could tell some people wanted to ask her to join them when she sat alone, maybe because they remember what it was like to be a freshman. But the whole process of asking, having to get up, knowing people are watching you ask, wasn’t worth it. She had tried making eye contact with a classmate once before, but that didn’t lead to anything. So she would only go out to eat when her roommates did, inviting herself but hoping they would ask her sometime too. And this time they said they weren’t hungry, and left her to eat alone for the second time this week. “Why can’t she find someone else?” she had heard Hanna say one night. The two girls had been talking in their shared bathroom between their rooms, thinking
Kansas was asleep.
“I don’t know. I mean it was okay at first but I don’t want to have to eat with her all the time. I mean she’s nice, but just, too shy you know?” Lucile taped her hand on the wall of the bathroom. “She just can’t talk to people.”
Hanna glanced back in to the room and tried to speak a little quieter, but it didn’t matter. “I just really feel bad for her sometimes. It’s like I leave the room and every time I come back she’s always here.”
By then Kansas had heard more than enough. But she couldn’t leave, or move even. Any kind of rustling would let them know she heard. Every time they would ask her to join them, she wouldn’t be able to tell if it was because they felt guilty, or if they felt they had to. Either way it would be a fabricated attempt at friendship.
So she let them keep talking, desperately trying to cry as quiet as she could, silently enduring the words that no one should have to hear, and knowing that honestly, they were right.
~
No one else was crying.
They were all watching the same video, blank faces taking it all in. Some didn’t really care, openly showing the professor how bored they were by texting. It wasn’t so much the video that was making Kansas cry, but the people who sat there, never looking away, never disturbed. In her mind they were okay with it, probably because it wasn’t happening here.
On the screen a little boy was shown, only three years old. “This boy’s grandfather sold him for money, where he was forced to perform sexual acts on customers,” said the narrator.
It flashed to a young girl, apparently in Thailand. Eleven years old. “In
Bangkok, human trafficking is legal, and is used to generate revenue for the economy. Police are frequent customers.”
Long lines of men were shown waiting. “Men can disclose what kind of woman they desire, and young girls are often selected, like Maria.” She is shown dancing in a dark room with a customer, who is recording the material for a sex tape.
“Since it is legal, many Americans visit the area for this purpose, because they are able to go back without being penalized.”
How could they stand it? Kansas wanted to stand up and scream. Turn over her desk, throw her coffee at the front of the room. Anything to make them react.
She couldn’t sit through it anymore.
She ran out in to the hallway, letting the door slam behind her. But no matter how many times she paced back and forth, the image would always be there in her mind.
They had learned a lot in that class, things she hadn’t really noticed or thought about before. “Have any of you ever thought about the toys you had growing up?” her professor had asked one day.
Almost every woman in the room raised her hand for domestic toys, like easy bake ovens or baby dolls. But men had all different kinds of answers. They had G.I.
Joes, firefighter dress up outfits, a tool shed; toys that explored career possibilities.
For the first time in her life it made sense, why she never knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. She was a product of gender roles, where she never thought about what she wanted to be when she grew up. Never even questioned it, because she knew she wanted to be a mom, and there was never another option to make her think otherwise.
And Kansas had already started the cycle over with the girl she babysat in high school, giving her an easy bake oven for her fifth birthday.
“Oh my god,” she told her friend back home. “What have I done?”
Her newfound passion for feminism pissed off her parents, who were sick of hearing it. And when she brought it in to other class discussions, she could see people look at her differently. Feminism was a taboo, women labeled as man-haters.
Like many other times in her life, Kansas was once again misunderstood.
While she argued for equality, she ultimately decided to give up her own voice, in order to have a better chance of obtaining it from her classmates. Works Cited
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