Category: Essay Musings

This morning I read Kelly Jensen’s most excellent BookRiot piece which included an interesting link to a publisher site describing “clean YA,” where “clean” is not meant to stand in opposition to unclean, but describes a kind of doughty, go-get-’em kind of hero or heroine who never says die.

Kelly’s piece goes on to debunk that idea and talk about the virtues of quitting, but I, predictably, got stuck on the word “clean.” As “Words have meaning,” as my dear friend and fellow English teacher Susan Goins used to constantly tell her junior high students, the company saying that clean “certainly isn’t meant to be the opposite of ‘dirty,’” seems inherently problematic. Use of the word clean implies that books, or reading, can be categorized into good/bad by some vagaries of categorization, that virtue can be tied to some reading choices, and shame applied to others… This is a familiar song, but a troubling one.

See, I grew up believing this – or at least with this idea of virtuous cleanliness floating through the ether, based on the scripture about “set your minds on these things” – which specified things true, pure, right, lovely, etc. Fiction didn’t come into that list. Fiction wasn’t openly allowable as reading at my house, and reading wasn’t truly encouraged unless it was a.) approved post-church-you-have-nothing-else-you-should-be-doing reading, or reading, b.) in association with homework or c.) reading awarded as a sneaky indulgence after many chores had been done, and there wasn’t anything someone could think up to discourage me, and I was hiding behind a couch or on the roof of the shed in the backyard. Yes, I smuggled reading time like some kids smuggle… whatever contraband. I was restricted from the things which I could check out from the library, because my parents were the deciders on what was appropriate. It was like being seated at the immense smorgasbord of the world, and being told I could have my choice of half of all the dishes without salt. Unfortunately, that went on well into high school, where I should have been trusted to fall back on what I had learned, on what my parents had taught. But, when you start making choices for someone, it’s hard sometimes to find a good reason to, you know, stop.

As an adult, I strove to write “positive” (UGH. That word! Ditto “wholesome” or “sweet.” No one sets out to write those opposites!) books because I felt vaguely that I had been raised to standards of …virtue(?) and should want to inspire this in others… A not-so-bad idea in itself, but those boundaries and that “virtue” are simply too variant for too many people. Life is, of itself, messy. Emotions are messy, dissent is messy, pushing back against institutional systems and ideologies is messy, messy, messy. Labeling something as “clean” seems to imply so much more than mere restraint in terms of profanity and vulgarity, more than a closed door on a sex scene. And yet, I still struggle with this, because I want to write books for the girl who wasn’t allowed to read all she wanted, I think it’s important to be seen as “safe” to more conservative parents. However, at the same time writing real stories with fully present, believable, and dimensional characters while applying those narrative brakes is tricky – and I don’t think I always succeed. Additionally, I believe that applying those brakes is not always a worthwhile exercise.

According to this list, “clean” is about language, about physical boundaries in sexuality, drinking or smoking or drugs, and finally, about “too much” violence. This leaves a lot of loopholes, and a lot of questions. If you were part of the GLBTQ community, can you still be considered virtuous and “clean,” or is your crossing of heterosexual or cis boundaries too far? Can your writing be “authentic” as the site suggests, following someone else’s notions of virtuous and “clean?” What if your character’s behavior doesn’t meet publication standards, never mind meeting the standards of, to use Jane Yolen’s words, “telling the true?”

(Note that I’m not suggesting I have an answer to this, by the way. This is something I think about quite a lot, and will continue to ponder…)

A few months ago I was “listening” in on a conversation on Twitter, where author Shannon Hale was talking about the “in-between” books for teens who skew younger in terms of interests and aren’t quite MG anymore. Most of my books fall into that territory, but I like that Shannon looked at them as something other than “clean.” She instead discussed them as “books for younger YA.” And, I liked that definition, because by that she meant kids who were a.) not ready for more than a vague crush (which was me well past the time other kids were already into the drama of hookups and breakups), b.) not really pushing back against adult intervention as much yet (which, tragically, was also me, well past I should have realized they weren’t infallible), and c.) raised in more sheltered, monitored environment, and possibly not yet as physically mature, either. You know, younger. The thing that naturally occurs before you are older.

I am an advocate of saying what you mean. Describing the natural phenomenon of “emotionally younger and somewhat less intuitive about the adult world” as “clean” carries with it a highly toxic, moralistic tone. Better words to use? Maybe “non-explicit.” Maybe “conservative.” But, certainly not “clean.”

Say it with me: Words. Have. Meaning.

May is National Mental Health Month! And I totally didn’t even remember that until I was halfway through writing this post and thought, “what does all this crap about guilt have to do with anything???” At the mo, since I’ve talked a bit before about the joy of it, today I want to talk about the toll that being raised in faith takes on a person. This is also my moment of giving you fair warning: today’s post is about religion in the broadest sense, and if that’s not your gig, here’s where you can find some adorbs pics of baby capybaras. I’ll see you around.

(So, April was relatively benign acrostics, and now May is religion AND shame. How did you luck out like this???)

It isn’t all bad, being raised in faith. In so many ways, for those who have sought shared identity in ritual and words and music — there can be, in faith, something life-giving, affirming, and precious. However, there also lurks in many practices a great many lies. Willing to disbelieve the lies I encountered, I consciously avoided the negatives for a lot of my life, but I know that’s not only deliberately disingenuous, willful blindness is not particularly helpful if I’m going live my own truths, much less write anything true about young adults being raised in/with/avoiding faith. It’s a tough and weird dichotomy, is this Judeo-Christian thing; basically Christianity is meant to be about love, but the hyperfocus tends to be the tension between “You should be a super good person” and “Basically you’re a terrible person.” The Christian world I grew up with seems to have concluded, “Right, you should be a good person, but we’re none of us great, and you particularly are crap and there’s really nothing you can do about it… but pretend.” Which is a complete fallacy and un-everything we’re supposed to be doing. But, here we are.

It is a hard unlearning, learning not to pretend. It’s a full-time job.

Sooo, Tech Boy and I had one of those long meandering conversations this morning (why do they always happen on Mondays? Or else Sunday nights? Methinks there’s something within me stalling about beginning a new week) wherein his degree in Philosophy trumps my “well, I think …” statements. It’s not as easy to argue with someone who can throw down a quote from Nietzsche at need, but someone has to be blindly optimistic in this world, right? Right.

Our discussion parsed the minor – but important – variances among regret, remorse, shame, and guilt.

First, you’ll note the absence of contrition – because that one seems fairly easy from both a philosophical and psychological point of view. Contrition is being sorry for wrongdoing — sorry enough to make restitution. A healthy response to the realization of wrongdoing, yes? So while we can continue to disregard that one, I wanted to mention it, because it exists within this same close linguistic and philosophical relationship. Regret also goes with it — people talk about having “no regrets,” but that’s actually a little worrisome, to me. Psychologists describe regret as having to do with wishing one hadn’t taken a particular action — for whatever reason. It might be just be because you got caught taking the action, it might be that the result of the action blew up in your face, or because the action made someone take additional action which was unexpected or upsetting. Remorse, however, is about the emotion, not the action. It involves self-reproof, and is what prompts us to be contrite. I guess people can have no regrets – but I find it unlikely, unless they are a master planner and have every move throughout their whole lives mapped.

Brené Brown once said, “Shame is highly correlated with addiction, depression, eating disorders, suicide, violence, and bullying.” With that in view, shame and guilt are by far the most corrosive of the negative emotions defined here. Though often used interchangeably with guilt, shame differs in that it seems to be self-referential entirely. Shame is all about the emo, and is confined solely to that arena: feelings. Guilt, by contrast, arises in response to responsibility for our actions or thoughts or feelings toward others. This being the case, people who are entirely self-absorbed are capable of feeling great amounts of shame… Guilt, however, requires empathy, which isn’t of interest to the self-absorbed. They tend to be crippled instead by shame at their imperfections, then idealize the lives of others, imagining them living a perfect existence. This in turn allows self-absorbed people to envy others, indulge in hating them, possibly behaving hatefully and spitefully toward them, all because of a perceived “better than” lifestyle which gives an uneven comparison between others and themselves. Interesting, the concept of “fat shaming” and that type of thing stems not from concern about the shamee who is carrying extra weight but from a perception of the shamer that the weight that person carries is somehow a personal affront… to them, as a less heavy person. Obviously, shame perceptions and attitudes impede personal growth. Neither guilt nor shame seems to give most people a particularly positive outcome… and yet, people feel – and attempt to wield as tools or weapons – these emotions every day. There has to be something more to it.

It’s hard for many of us to take personal responsibility for things. When we’re pointed to our faults, we get defensive. That’s a gift that a healthy application of guilt gives us. We see our crap, we get upset about it, we fix it. End of story. As far as I can see it, especially in a religious context, shame gives us …nothing. A lot of people are even confused by the concept, because it is so closely tied with the idea of “you did something wrong.” And yet, a lot of people in American Christian circles, anyway, seem to feel it’s part of the gig. Humanity, in the cold mathematics of logic, failed all the tests way back in Eden, and by rights, deserved to be voted off the island. This is a Big story, a humanity story. When it comes to a personal story, many faith practices expect individuals to experience the shame of these failures as an individual, not as part of the human collective. Then the shame becomes personal – unmoored from specific persons and events in history – and individuals are burdened with the belief that we have much for which to atone.

And then, the pretending begins in earnest. Because, seriously: who can pick that up?

More thoughts as I think them.