New Adult (NA) Literature Helps Readers Look Ahead to College, Careers, Relationships, and Active Engagement in Life after Adolescence by Dr. Sharon Kane

​We welcome Sharon Kane back to YA Wednesday today!  Dr. Kane is a professor in the School of Education at the State University of New York at Oswego.  She is the author of Literacy and Learning in the Content Areas: Enhancing Knowledge in the Disciplines (2019, Routledge) and Integrating Literature in the Disciplines (2020, Routledge). A new book, Teaching and Reading New Adult Literature in High School and College (2023, Routledge).  

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New Adult (NA) Literature Helps Readers Look Ahead to College, Careers, Relationships, and Active Engagement in Life after Adolescence by Dr. Sharon Kane

I’m always saddened when I hear parents, teachers, or students themselves talking about senioritis as if it were an inevitable condition in teens who have met most of their graduation requirements and are just biding time until they get out of high school. Senior year is a perfect time for librarians, teachers, and/or community volunteers to organize courses or book clubs where participants read New Adult literature, aimed at readers between the ages of seventeen and mid-twenties. As students count down the months and weeks before they begin their post-high school life, they can benefit from reading fiction and non-fiction relating to college academic life; early career exploration; new, changing, and deepening relationships; and civic responsibilities that are part of what some call adulting. At the same time, they can relish the pleasure of reading and the great conversations that happen when people come together over books.

One of the major stresses of senior year for many is the college application process, followed by the period of hoping for acceptance while fearing rejection. We can introduce our students to literary friends who have been through this scenario. Here are a few.

Rising senior Felix Love, in Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After (2020), is participating in an art program in hopes of winning a scholarship to Brown University. Besides that pressure, he’s dealing with continuing identity and relationship issues. He knows he is Black, queer, and trans. But unfolding events cause him to realize aspects of his identity are more nuanced than he realized. In Kelly Loy Gilbert’s When We Were Infinite (2021), five Asian American high school students, bound together by friendship and music, make a pact to go to the same college. What could go wrong? Well, for one thing, Beth is accepted at Juilliard, while Jason is not. Beth narrates the story of how the five friends grow, change, heal, stretch, and ponder identities as the year progresses. 

Liz Lightly, in Leah Johnson’s You Should See Me in a Crown (2021), has high ideals; she wants to study medicine and be in a college orchestra. But when the scholarship she was counting on doesn’t materialize, her only option seems to be to join the competition to be prom queen (yuck!), the winner of which will be awarded a $10,000 scholarship. Charming As a Verb (2022), by Ben Philippe, features Henry, who desperately wants to attend Columbia; he and his immigrant father have both worked so hard to make this goal a reality. But when his college interview doesn’t go well, worry takes over. His intense classmate Corinne becomes a huge part of Henry’s emotional, social, and ethical learning curves during his final semester of high school. 

New Adult literature can also address the needs and interests of college students. I designed and taught a course on NA literature that was restricted to incoming first-year students. We began with Fangirl (2013), by Rainbow Rowell, where students met Cath on her first day of college, then followed her through freshman year. Some readers identified with Cath; others found her annoying. The story helped us to talk about topics including anxiety; academic integrity; abuse of alcohol; roommate issues; changing relationships with parents as students become increasingly independent; college friendships and romances; and more. We went on to meet other literary college students, such as Marin in Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay (2019). Her story opens at the end of her first semester, when all other students have left for semester break but Marin is staying in the dorm. Readers quickly realize that Marin is in trouble, and they take in details that help them figure out why she left California for New York by herself; why she hasn’t contacted her former lover and best friend; and why she is now seemingly in a severe depression. This story provides opportunities for students to learn about mental illness and to discuss ways to handle situations when their own lives or those of their friends are in turmoil. 

There are numerous books featuring college students navigating various challenges. In Required Reading for the Disenfranchised Freshman (2022), by Kristen R. Lee (2022), Savannah, who had hoped to attend a nearby historically Black college, finds herself as a scholarship student at an Ivy League school, where she encounters microaggressions as well as overt racist behavior from the day she moves into her dorm room. Did she make a mistake, pursuing her mother’s dream instead of her own? This book could be paired with Every Body Looking (2021), by Candice Iloh, a novel in verse narrated by Ada, who does enroll in a historically Black college. She struggles in her Accounting class, which she neither understands nor cares about. She seems not to care about her new job, or her beginning relationship with a young man. So what does she care about? What will make her happy, and feel true to herself? Readers watch Ada as she watches another young woman dancing; she finally meets Kendra, and attends dance classes with her. Ah….

We know that college is not for everybody, so we need to make books available to our students who wish to defer college, perhaps to travel; or to find opportunities to learn new skills and grow through a job. In Teaching and Reading New Adult Literature in High School and College (Kane, 2023), I offer one text set filled with titles having to do with a gap year, and another with books about food-related careers (some involving college, some not). In I.W. Gregorio’s This Is My Brain in Love (2020), Jocelyn and aspiring journalist Will create a business plan and investigate marketing and advertising strategies to try to save Jocelyn’s family’s Chinese restaurant. As they learn to appreciate each other’s cultures and cuisine (Chinese and Nigerian), they fall in love. Arsenic and Adobo (2021), by Mia P. Manansala, delivers a food-related mystery. Lila is helping her Tita Rosie try to save her floundering restaurant. Her former boyfriend Derrick, a food critic, is trashing the restaurant with bad reviews—until he dies while eating at Tita Rosie’s place. Lila becomes the prime suspect, and must investigate the murder herself, since the police are too busy pinning the crime on her to find the real killer. The novel offers plenty of romance, along with vivid descriptions of food and drink. 

College doesn’t last forever. What comes after that? I recently read Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (2022), where we come to love characters who have successful careers in video game development. The story demonstrates creativity, collaboration, and changing relationships as Sadie, Sam and Marx mature through their post-college years. 

I devote one chapter of my book to NA literature dealing with changing relationships during the late teen years and the twenties. One text set offers books involving fake dating (which can usually lead to deeper reflection on what can make romantic relationships authentic, healthy, and mutually satisfying). Another features literature about how family dynamics change when New Adults leave home for college or new locations. One book that fits both lists is Alexandria Bellefleur’s Written in the Stars (2020). Elle, who has a job as a horoscope reader/writer and astrology-related app creator, is fake-dating Darcy, referred to by Elle’s mother as the actuary. It seems to Elle that her mother reduces everyone to their profession, and she imagines that her mother must think of her as Elle, the disappointment. The novel explores parental pressures and expectations while simultaneously showing two young women who learn to appreciate each other’s strengths and to love without judgment. 

There are many more examples of New Adult literature that can be matched with readers in their teens and twenties who are looking for pleasure reading and/or books that will help them stretch, navigate difficult situations, find purpose, explore identities, and find support as they and their circumstances evolve. You can find more book talks in my YAWednesday post of March 30, 2022, The Value of the Youth Lens when Reading YA. And great new NA books are being published all the time, such as Anna-Marie McLemore’s Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (2022). The Author’s Note explains, “I wanted to write Jay Gatsby as a transgender young man making an increasingly infamous name for himself in 1920s New York…. I wanted to write Daisy as a Latina lesbian debutante who passes as white and straight …. I wanted to write Nick Carraway as a Mexican American transgender boy who falls in love with the mysterious boy next door ….” (unpaged). 

New Adult literature is a category that will continue to grow. We readers, whether teachers, librarians, students, recent graduates, or others, can continue to grow too, as we revel in the great books inviting us into the world of the New Adult. 

References

Bellefleur, Alexandria. (2020). Written in the Stars. Avon.

Callender, Kacen. (2020). Felix Ever After. Balzer + Bray.

Gilbert, Kelly Loy. (2021). When We Were Infinite. Simon & Schuster.

Gregorio, I.W. (2021). This Is my Brain in Love. Little, Brown.

Iloh, Candice. (2021). Every Body Looking. Dutton Books.

Johnson, Leah. (2021). You Should See me in a Crown. Push.

Kane, Sharon. (2023). Teaching and Reading New Adult Literature in High School and College. Routledge.

LaCour, Nina. (2019). We Are Okay. Penguin Books.

Lee, Kristen R. (2022). Required Reading for the Disenfranchised Freshman. Crown Books.

Mansansala, Mia P. (2021). Arsenic and Adobo. Berkley.

McLemore, Anna-Marie. (2022). Self-made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix. Feiwel & Friends.

Philippe, Ben. (2022). Charming as a Verb. Balzer + Bray.

Rowell, Rainbow. (2013). Fangirl. Saint Martin’s Griffin.

Zevin, Gabrielle. (2022). Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Knopf.