Some pieces of literature in various kinds of media are more obviously gendered than others. Chicken Soup for the Soul, and the adolescent alternative that I personally owned, Chicken Soup for the Girl’s Soul are some examples. But who can tell when a work of fiction is for boys or girls?
Some of the earliest novels–those deemed “classics”–tended to be written by rich white men for an audience of other rich white men. Today, we might think that we’ve grown enough to have stories written by anyone be enjoyed by everyone without raising questions about gender and sexuality. I learned in high school that this isn’t yet the case.
I attended a co-institutional high school that consisted of two autonomous schools, one for girls and one for boys. Every year we participated in “One School, One Book.” If you’re unfamiliar, its when the entire student body is assigned the same book to read over the summer and discuss it upon returning to school in the fall. One year the book was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. The girls loved the tragic love-story. Their interest and emotional connection to the book helped them to closely engage with the text. The boys, however, insisted that it was girls’ novel and those that enjoyed the book were “gay.”
I find it such a shame that teenagers can still be trapped by petty societal distinctions. Its fine if they didn’t enjoy the book because it was predictable or poorly written, but it was the teenage girl perspective that swayed their opinion. Most didn’t even read the book. I think it to be problematic that boys will reject a narrative that is even remotely feminine especially considering that the author isn’t even a woman. I wonder how the distinction is drawn between a masculine, feminine, and non-binary work of fiction.
