Williams, Lori Aurelia - When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune

[oyceter]

Shayla's twelve and living in a poorer section of Houston with her mother and her sister Tia. She wants to be a writer, but the poetry classes she wants to take at the community center get cancelled; she loves her sister, but Tia's been hanging around a boy lately and pissing off their mom; and she's found a new friend, Kambia, only Kambia tells strange stories and seems to be in a lot of trouble.

This sounds a lot like a problem novel and feels like one in places, though I'm still not sure if I would classify it as such. It addresses issues like teenage mothers and poverty and abuse, but I was surprised and pleased by how the Tia plot played out. Then again, the resolution of the Kambia plot was obvious from the very beginning, and I could use with fewer "very odd friends who tell stories" characters.

I think what ended up saving it from being a problem novel was how real Shayla felt, particularly her relationships with her mother, grandmother and sister.

Not a horribly exciting book, but not a bad one either, and I'm curious enough to check out the sequel.

On a side note: how do you guys define a YA problem novel? And how can authors balance including issues in their books without making the book into a problem novel? Because I do think it's important to address things like class and race and sexuality, but I hate anvils.

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I don't really read YA and didn't much when I was a young adult, either, but I would think of a problem novel as something that felt like an afterschool special and was more concerned with being preachy about whatever issue than in just telling a story that happened to contain/focus on said issue.

[estara.livejournal.com]

I don't analyse so well, but if you read the Tamora Pierce YA novels, you will get successfull class and sexuality addressing without being didactic.
I think she tried addressing race with Trickster's Queen and Trickster's Choice but it wasn't all that problematic and so not very successsful (it was more an addressing of species differences). Her novels are fantasy, however, so maybe that already softens the issues?

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

My favorite example of tackling race and class without anvils is Christopher Paul Curtis - "Bucking the Sarge" and "The Watsons Go To Birmingham, 1963." ("Bucking the Sarge" is YA, "Watsons" is a little younger.)

"Bucking the Sarge" - the main character is the teenage son of a slumlord/loan shark in Detroit. Class is a HUGE issue. His family has money, and it's a big dividing line between him and, for example, some of the classmates who rent apartments from his mother. But, no anvils. Why? Because it's funny. And yet, the Sarge's speech about racism and the double bind she found herself in - work within the system and always, ALWAYS be poor, always be behind, always have to try three times as hard as anybody else, or else say "screw the system" and get ahead any way you can - is immensely powerful and rings very true.

"Watsons" - it's the story of a Detroit family spending the summer with family in Birmingham, Alabama to spend time with family and get away from Bad Influences on the teenage brother. So you spend 3/4 of the book in "funny things happen to a family" mode, with all the Issues in the background.
And then you get the church bombing, which kills four little girls, and explodes the sense of security that the story has built up. And by this time, the people in the book feel like friends, or family, so I automatically feel a ton of sorrow and outrage on their behalf - but again, no anvils.

[gair.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think I read that one! I didn't like it so much, because IIRC it followed a very standard problem-novel structure (focalized through Less Fucked-Up Kid; the discovery of the cause of the More Fucked-Up Kid's problems is seen as [the start of] the solution to those problems), which I don't like.

OTOH, I love problem novels. I think they're a brilliant genre: like everything else, there are weak examples (which I also usually enjoy, in a trashy sort of a way) but a good YA problem novel is one of the greatest things in life. Where you say:

how can authors balance including issues in their books without making the book into a problem novel? Because I do think it's important to address things like class and race and sexuality, but I hate anvils.

I would say that 'anvils' are the symptom of an unthoughtful, formulaic problem novel, and that problem novels are all books which take an issue/ social problem (teenage pregnancy, eating disorder, gayness, non-monogamy, whatever) as their starting point. But I think I am probably the only person trying to reclaim the term, so feel free to ignore me...

Great problem novels of our time:

Deborah Hautzig, Second Star to the Right (anorexia)
Cynthia Voigt, When She Hollers (really interesting deconstruction of the abuse-novel genre, not sure if it's successful in the end)
Everything by Jacqueline Wilson ever (has she made it over there? She is the most popular author in the UK by about seven million miles. I have some reservations about her but mostly I just really love her so I tend to stuff the reservations into the back of my brane)
Jenny Pausacker, What Are Ya? (sexuality, including - and this is the good bit - heterosexuality)
Laurie Halse Anderson, Prom
... nothing else comes to mind, though. Will think more about this, though - thanks for prompting me to do so!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I don't think of "problem novel" as a negative term, but a neutral one. I define it as a book whose primary purpose and the main thing you get out of reading is the illumination of a social problem: teen pregnancy, drug addiction, cutting, racism, etc. If the social problem is present but it isn't the main focus of the book, or if (this is kind of a fine distinction) the social problem drives the plot or protagonist but the book doesn't read as if the social problem is the topic of the book as opposed to being about a particular person whose life is affected by it, it's probably not a problem novel. Honestly, I mostly go by "I know one when I read one!"

Cut by Patricia McKissack, for instance, is a very good novel with good characterization and other stuff going on... but it's still a problem novel about cutting. Nancy Werlin's Rules of Survival is an excellent novel with great writing and characterization, and I don't think it's diminished by saying that it's a problem novel about child abuse.

The Bermudez Triangle, on the other hand, is not a problem novel about being a lesbian or a person of color. Nor is Cures For Heartbreak a problem novel about having a dying parent or being the descendant of Holocaust survivors.

I think it's a matter of focus, which is somewhat in the eye of the beholder.