YA (Young Adult) novelist Tanya Byrne believes there is room for more books
about teenagers of colour in the modern world.
Cindy Pon, Malorie Blackman and
Sherman Alexie have all written YA
novels.
One of the first YA books I read, before I even knew what YA was, was Malorie
Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses. Books rarely make me cry, especially in
public (apart from the A
Monster Calls incident on the tube, which I don’t want to talk
about, okay?), but I cried my eyes out when I finished Noughts &
Crosses.
If you haven’t read the series, it’s about a hostile alternative society
where the people with dark skin are the ruling class and everyone else is the
underclass. I must have read dozens of similar books since then, books about
dystopian futures where love is a disease or where everyone is made to have
plastic surgery to be pretty, but none of them have affected me like Noughts
& Crosses.
It’s not just that the story is so powerful, but it’s the sheer simplicity of
it, of Blackman reversing the race roles and saying, See? The funny thing is,
being dual heritage, my position in Blackman’s universe is no different to my
position in this one. I'm still somewhere between the two — white enough to
benefit from some of the privileges that go along with that, such as my name,
yet not white enough to be seen as anything other than brown — but that’s
something I’ve been learning to live with since the first time someone asked me
where I was from.
I didn’t used to mind, when people asked, because I knew that they couldn’t
tell by looking at me. So that’s how I grew up, knowing I was different. Not
special, but different. My presence needed explaining when my white friends’
didn’t. I’m not trying to provoke any sympathy, it’s merely a statement of fact.
Nor am I trying to say that I’m the only one who’s been made to feel that way,
but the truth is: the people in books — and films and television shows — don’t
look like me. Not that Persephone in Noughts & Crosses looks like me,
either, but in a roomful of white girls, she’s different.
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Sophie McKenzie's favourite YA books
The children's author chooses five Young Adult books that appeal to teenagers.
It’s always hard to pick personal favourites and there are so many fantastic
YA books out there at the moment, so I’ve restricted my choices to books
published in the last few years and to titles that I believe have appeal to
actual teenagers rather than to their parents and teachers. All these novels
have strong stories with some kind of romantic element – my favourite kind of
reads – and each one is properly compelling in its own very distinctive way.
Not for the faint-hearted, Phil Earle’s own experience as a care worker help
make every page of this story, about teenager Daisy Houghton and her struggle to
overcome the raw deal life has dealt her, feel real and insightful. Saving Daisy
is gritty stuff, but written with a lightness of touch that makes it
heart-warming – as well as sometimes harrowing – to read.
This book is a class act. Funny and poignant by turns, it tells the story of
two teenagers with cancer and their experiences of being alive and being in
love. I think Augustus’s declaration of love – “I know that love is just a shout
into the void… and I am in love with you” is one of my favourite pieces of
writing of the past few years.
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