Many books that feature high school aged
characters do a clumsy job of properly conveying the day to day adolescent
experiences. Delving into the ways that these fictitious characters would feel
about their experiences is even further botched in these young adult novels.
However, Wintergirls somehow renders readers doubtless that
they have encountered a text which genuinely reflects the workings of the mind
of a seventeen year old girl.
Very early on in the text, it comes across that
Lia feels trapped between childhood and adulthood. “The snow drifts into our
zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities
and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not
failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on tests; we are crayons and lunch
boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one
breath everything feels better. Then it melts” (15). The falling of the first
snow brings waves of nostalgia and is a bitter reminder that childhood is over.
Lia’s yearning to return to such a time is made clear, but the realities of her
life as a teenager cannot be avoided. Simultaneously, adult worries loom and
she cannot figure out how to deal with any of it. This dichotomy between
innocence and experience is one that is repeated over and over again in
successful YA texts, and Anderson succeeds fully in achieving this in Wintergirls.
This can also be seen in YA material such as Rebel Without a Cause, The
Outsiders, and Catcher in the Rye. This space between childhood and
adulthood is one element that is the most commonly relatable to young adult
readers, but it becomes even more relevant in Anderson’s portrayal of Lia. The
title of the book is wintergirls, which is defined by Lia’s friend Cassie on page
196-96 as “caught between the worlds… a ghost with a beating heart. Soon you’ll
cross the border...” Lia is a wintergirl, her anorexia putting her close to
death while still surviving. I think that this place where Lia is, between the
worlds as Cassie put it, is a parallel that can be drawn to the sense of being
stuck between childhood and adulthood in YA literature.
Another way that Anderson fits her novel to the
YA genre is her use of a first-person narrative. Many YA novels are told from
the first person, some in diary form, or letters, or often just from a
perspective of being able to see inside the protagonist’s mind. This structural
choice makes the novel, again, more relatable to the target readers. The reader
can imagine that they are the protagonist, or that the protagonist is a real
person and their problems are real too.
Anderson’s writing is unique, though, in the
way that she tackles subjects that can be very hard to successfully portray. In
her novels, Anderson has addressed subjects like eating and emotional
disorders, rape, and depression. While YA literature is not always incredibly
upbeat and often does deal with issues of more tragic nature, not many deal
with the issues in the way that Anderson writes. Her use of individual perspective
makes the problem more realistic, and more shocking. Her writing was so
provocative, in fact, that critics worried that if someone with a history of
eating disorders or with an eating disorder were to read it, it would make the
problem worse. The structural choices and the elements she chooses to employ make
her both unique from the genre of YA literature, but still keep her in the
genre she succeeds so well in.
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