One Last Time with NPR: Women writers, Presitge and Stuff
I had completely gotten over my issues with the NPR 100 Best Young Adult Novels list and was ready to come blog about something else when I spotted this article on Salon: A Prestige Free Zone. So take a moment to read it and then come back and we’ll discuss.
The reason why this article stuck out to me is because it was the second article in just as many days that I have read discussing the prominence of female authors on the NPR list.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
So your goals for today (and always) is to remember this:
1) YA lit rocks
2) It is the quality of the book not the gender of the writer that matters
3) Can we please stop suggesting that women writers are somehow less than male writers?
4) Read!
Filed under: Uncategorized

About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 32 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
SLJ Blog Network
Newbery Jump 2025
Lane Smith Cover Reveal: Recess!
Morgana & Oz, Vol. 1 | Review
Goodbye for now
When Book Bans are a Form of Discrimination, What is the Path to Justice?
ADVERTISEMENT
I don't think the salon article's position is that it's “somehow a problem that the list or the ya authorship is predominantly female.” I read it as postulating that women are capable of writing great fiction, but they often go unrecognized unless it's a field where men aren't competing. The article isn't maligning women–it's pointing out how unfair this is, and considering underlying issues that cause this “ghetto” for female acclaim. YA is great, but it shouldn't be the only place that women get recognized.
And to a great extent, it is the only place women are *allowed* to dominate. Even though it's true when you say “…we live in a time when women can write confidently the stories that come to them and know that if it is a good story, they can get it published,” it's also true that society is still so inherently misogynist that women rarely receive the acclaim that men do.
I do think the Salon article is kind of muddy, and they could have made their point with more clarity. Perhaps I'm only interpreting it as taking a position I am familiar with and have seen before. But whether I'm right or not, I do think it's worth remembering that while women writers are just as capable as men, it's a fact that they win fewer prizes, which is generally the most visible measurement of “prestige.” It means people aren't voting by quality, they're voting by societal pressure to elevate the narratives of men above those of women, in this case, literally.
Out of curiosity I went and looked and in terms of the Printz Award winners, there seems to be a fairly good representation of both male and female writers. Granted, I did not do actual math. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_L._Printz_Award
Zest Books pointed out on Twitter that YA books tend to make a large amount of money and we can certainly see how much the market is exploding – so that also seems to speak to a certain amount of prestige. An excellent point. https://twitter.com/ZestBooks/status/236228022171230209