Wan Xiaoping

Speaking Time and Room No.: 2006-9-22 14:00-15:30 Room I

Speaker: Xiaoping Wang (China)

Life Lessons from American Young Adult Novels

Speech by Xiaoping Wang, Associate Professor at Capital Normal University

Abstract:

In the past, most oriental scholars found it hard to accept American young adult (YA) novels. They held a suspecting attitude towards their morals, and thought what they advocated was all white middle class moral standards. The extreme worship of personal freedom that may lead to violence, the spoil of children and the neglect of the seniors, the endless pursuit of material wealth, the craving for the good look, and the rejecting of different ethnicities all run counter to traditional oriental virtues such as peace loving, respecting the old and caring for the young, being industrious and thrifty, pursuing inner beauty and co-existence with different ethnicities. These perceptions or prejudices have seriously affected the spread and popularity of American YA novels.

It was not until 1999 when the writer started to read American YA novels with her undergraduates and in-service teacher students that she discovered that the American YA novels are not so shallow or messy in ethics as having been attacked. Rather, the novels’ perspectives are not just restricted to white middle class, but multi-cultured and multi-classed. In fact, the American YA novels have provided us with many beneficial life lessons.

Life Lessons from American Young Adult Novels

I. Introduction

II. Reading American YA novels

The books I read with my students were recommended and donated by New York State Reading Association, an organization that dedicates itself to the promotion of young adult reading in the State of New York. And what I have been doing is to testify in my course whether this genre of literature, normally considered “the step-child of high school curriculum or selections for the reluctant kids to read” (Moore,1997; Christenbury,1995), really possess the value of motivating reading interest and enhancing critical thinking in comparison with the classics. Although living in different regions, my Chinese students of English education majors responded to these books very strongly and enthusiastically in ethics, even though the purpose of engaging in such a reading course was for linguistic development mainly such as reading authentic English, enlarging vocabulary and upgrading the speaking skills. As a one semester and 2 credit course, we assigned them to read 6 books under two respective themes: survival and young love. For survival, we read Robert N. Peck’s A Day No Pigs Would Die, S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders, Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, and Gary Paulson’s Hatchet. For young love, we read U. K. le Guin’s Very Far Away from Anywhere Else and Beverly Cleary’s Jean and Johnny. If the students had had extra energy to read beyond these two themes, they could choose any other book that interested them from our YAL reading center. So far many have chosen to read Avi’s Nothing But The Truth, Paul Zindel’s The Pigman, Lois Haory’s The Giver, Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and Then Again, Maybe I Won't, and Katherine Paterson’s Jacob Have I Loved.

Since time for presentation here is limited to 12 minutes, I would like to share some life lessons we have obtained from the six assigned books I read with my students, although it is crystal clear that the extra-books the students read on their own also passed on important life lessons.

III. Life lessons from survival books

As my students were all middle school teacher candidates for the city of Beijing, we organized an interesting discussion about father figure comparison in the four survival books. The assignment was to decide which father you’d rather have if given a choice. The students’ responses were almost unanimously identical: Haven Peck in A Day No Pigs Would Die.

Set on a Vermont farm in a Shaker community, the growing up experience of Robert surprised my students with his harsh living surroundings but his family homely warmth. The father’s simple but honest ways of guiding him into the real manhood----taking over the responsibility of supporting the family----poses a contrastive picture of a modern money-making father who only blames his son for not being as intelligent but can hardly spare a minute to show the child how things work. Because of this, many students wished they could have a father like Haven and considered that Robert’s family provided the ideal, healthy atmosphere for little Rob to grow up. Such a choice by these city-born students in the new century is understandable as they are living in a post-modern age where they are plunged into society (going to the kindergarten or school) much earlier than Rob and are kept busy with school work all the time that they seldom have the opportunities to learn life lessons from their parents directly and naturally. It was in such a case that they appreciated the ways Haven taught Rob the need to fence off one’s property and the importance of education. Instead of preaching from the textbooks, Haven Peck used the animals’ behaviors to show it is natural for all the living things to own a piece of land (Peck R, pp.18-19); and he recalled his own shame of being unable to vote because he could not spell his name in English to show Robe the importance of education (P.36). All these show that even though he could not read and write and because of that people may not take him for what he be, he remained heart rich. With the limited education from the Bible, from the Shaker Law, he was able to guide his child to envision the future of the family and the picture of whole Vermont (pp.38-39). Under the care of such a loving father, Rob took his school lessons seriously and realized the spiritual wealth they had in the family was more important than what the rich have got (P.37). He even thought that the answer to one history test item was wrong because it did not select the right person that he had read about for playing the key part in Vermont history (P.33). Eventually he learned the truth of survival that being a man is just doing what’s got to be done (P.139) just as the dog must learn how to fight a weasel (pp.108-111). In Rob’s growth, we see the importance of a loving family, the very element that may be missing from the deformed families of modern times. No wonder all the students in my course chose Rob’s family as their ideal home for growing up.

Although unsatisfied with the family modes in the other three survival books in that Ponyboy brothers were orphans (Hinton, P.3), Jerry Renault only had a sleepwalking father (Cormier, 48) and Brian’s parents were divorced (Paulsen P.2), my students were still fascinated by the life lesson messages conveyed by these books. From the The Outsiders, they learned that the right way for the immigrant children to work themselves up is not through violence but by “staying gold” and taking education (Hinton, pp.178-179). They also learned that the immigrant children may undergo much more pressure than the city-born kids when they try to become part of a city (P.3). As would-be teachers of Beijing, many students wrote in their journals that they have realized how important it is to treat their students equally, especially those from lower income families. In The Chocolate War, my students saw what a price Jerry must pay when he tried to defy the rules executed by the evil gangsters controlling the school manipulated by certain school leadership (Cormier, pp.179-185). Even though Jerry Renault was defeated in the duel organized by the gangsters (P.186), his bravery and effort impressed my students greatly. Some of them expressed admirations to this failing student hero and some of them felt there is a need to establish a system to monitor the school leadership’s functions so that their power will not be abused. Indeed, even in Mainland China today, there are cases that certain school leadership may organize sales for increasing the school budget or teachers’ bonus although such practices are not permitted by law. One student wrote in her journal, “In The Chocolate War, I saw how crushing that the adult world is to the coming generation of young adults. You have to be really tough to enter this world of hostility. You have to dare to disturb the universe regardless the consequences in order to straighten things out.” “Why can’t we make our world more friendly to our youngsters?” is the very question in many students’ minds when they completed this novel. Thus, the reading of this fictionalized American school started them thinking about the ethical issues in running a school.

Although Hatchet was the last book under the survival theme, it stirred up equally enthusiasm among these would-be teacher candidates. Even if it’s hard to imagine being abandoned in the wilderness after a plane crash, they could identify with Brian’s initiation that living in big cities, people easily lose their basic instincts for survival in nature. The two important life lesson messages they got from the lonely hero were: “You are the best thing you have!” (Paulsen, P.49) and “You must stay on top of things!” (P.51). These lines had inspired the hero to survive all the hardships in the Canadian North woods to stayed alive alone for 54 days on the L shaped lake (P.192.), and these lines would be equally inspiring to the readers who need to build up confidence when encountering similar natural disasters. Being the only link to a broken family, Brian had to be more independent than the children of the same age. After landing in the woods with the crashed plane, he had to acknowledge the fact that he was the only one that survived (P.12) and he had to find out ways to make a fire, to find food and save food, to counter the attacks from the animals or insects and to send out the SOS signals (Chap.4 through Chap. 17). All these would be extremely difficult to handle even for an adult, yet this high school child from a divorced family was able to make it by recalling all the lessons he had learned in school (P.60). In a way, the book was telling us that being resourceful was just as important as being brave and that the knowledge of science we learn from school can help us greatly in times of danger. This message is in accordance with the new advice that we teachers give to Chinese youngsters in face of danger. In the past, it was ???? “to fight bravely for moral defense”, but now it has been changed to ???? “to fight wisely for moral defense.”

IV. Subtle messages from young love books

Young love tends to be a forbidden subject in the eyes of traditional-minded Chinese parents who believe their children should concentrate all their energy on schoolwork and should not be disturbed by any expected events or incidents. In such a case, most Chinese children do not have any easy channel to discuss these matters with adults when they reach puberty age or develop curiosity about opposite sex. They may feel frustrated like Owen in Very Far Away From Anywhere Else who almost killed himself when his girl friend declared she won’t get into this bind with him (Le Guin, pp.56-58) or feel over-excited like Jean in Jean and Johnny when singled out by a boy at the party for the first time (Cleary, pp.58-72). By reading about Owen’s and Jean’s experiences with young love, Chinese students can get many subtle messages about how to face young love. That Owen can still attend his girl friend’s music show (Le Guin, P. 69) indicates that young people can overcome momentary emotional stirs for working towards greater goals in life (pp.74-85). Even though the parting is painful, they can sustain it if it’s for the better of future, if it’s the way to realize their dream (pp.86-87). Jean’s experience is also instructive in that it warns all the young that handsome appearance may disguise an uncaring, selfish soul and that marveling about somebody you don’t know well is simply a waste of time (Cleary, pp.469-475). All these messages if preached by parents or teachers may sound very tedious and boring, but when conveyed through the dramatic events and delightful dialogues in YA novels, the Chinese students can accept them more easily and sensibly.

V. Conclusion

As it’s been discussed above, American YA novels have revealed much truth about life and have contributed a lot to the spiritual construction of the young. As Chinese educators, we should respect this genre of literature and give them equal attention to what we do to the classics. Be it called initiation stories under the classification of the Chinese literary scholar (Rui, 2004) or young adult literature by many American scholars (Nilsen & Donelson 1993; Probst, 1984, 2004; Monseau & Salvner 1992; Bushman & Bushman 1993; Reed 1994; Kaywell,1993,1995) it has become an indispensable part of literature and as such it is able to bear critical scrutiny (Soter,1999) and to convey just as important life lessons as those by the classics. To sum up, most of American YA books that we have read record American young adult life realistically and vividly. They convey important life lesson messages to the youngsters so that they have the value of “educating the whole person”, a quality highly praised for the use of literature by Professor Lazar (1997) at Cambridge University. Used properly, they can stimulate students’ critical thinking (Langer, 1992) and personal enrichment. They help raise many ethical questions about the way the youngsters grow up, the way they work themselves up, the way we educate them, the way we manage schools, the way they come of age and the way they fit into this world in relation to the social structure and nature. In this sense, YA books can make literary readings a course of life exploration. They mirror the young adults’ perspectives of multi-classes in which we see their anxieties and their survival needs. They can function as a ladder towards reading classics (Herz & Gallo, 1996) because the young adults in these books refer to the classics frequently (E.g. Ponyboy referred to Great Expectations, Jack London’s books about wolf, and Gone with the Wind, Owen referred to Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale, Natalie referred to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights). Accordingly, we can say confidently that most of American YA books can be a rich source for our reading curriculum in terms of ethics, especially to the English majors who plan to become teachers.

Works cited:

Cleary, Beverly. 2000. Jean & Johnny. (Bilingual version) Beijing: World Affairs Press.

Cormier, Robert. 1986. The Chocolate War. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers.

Hinton, S. E. 1997. The Outsiders. New York: Penguin Group.

Le Guin, Ursula K. 1985. Very Far Away from Anywhere Else. New York: Bantam Book/ Atheneum Publishers.

Paulsen, Gary. 1987. Hatchet. New York: Penguin Group.

Peck, N. Robert. 1994. A Day No Pigs Would Die. New York: Random House,INC.

Bushman, John H. & Kay Parks Bushman.1993. Using Young Adult Literature in the English Classroom.New York: Macmillan.

Christenbury, Leila.1995. Letter to John Moore. Virginia Commonwealth University. Nov. 1.

Nilsen, Alleen Pace & Kenneth L.Donelson.1993. Literature for Today’s Young Adults. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins.

Herz, K. Sarah with Donald R. Gallo, 1996. From Hinton to Hamlet. New York: Greenwood.

Kaywell, Joan.1993,1995. Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the Classics. Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon.

Langer, Judith.1992. Critical Thinking and English Language Arts Instruction. Technical Report 6.5. Albany, NY: Center for the Learning and Teaching of Literature.

Lazar, Gillian.1997. Literature and Language Teaching. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press.

Monseau, Virginia R. & Gary M. Salvner. 1992. Reading Their World: The Young Adult Novel in the Classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Moore, N. John. 1997. Interpreting Young Adult Literature. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc.

Probst, E. Robert. 1984. Adolescent Literature: Response and Analysis. Columbus, Toronto, London, Sydney: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, A Bell & Howell Company.

2004. Response & Analysis: Teaching Literature in Secondary School. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Reed, Arthea J.S. 1994. Reaching Adolescents: The Young Adult Book and the School. New York: Macmillan.

Rui, Yuping. 2004. A Study of American Initiation Stories. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Press.

Soter, O. Anna.1999. Young Adult Literature & the New Literary Theories: Developing Critical Readers in Middle School. New York: Teachers’ College, Columbia University.