Prepare for a short rant.
I often come across reviews for books that tear the book apart for being poorly written or too action-heavy or having bland, two-dimensional characters, and then end by saying that it's the kind of book that will appeal to boys.
And then I'm like "WTF!?!" So these reviewers either believe that only boys will appreciate something poorly written, or that boys are too dumb to read anything but crap.
Okay, I know that's probably not their intention, but it's incredibly insulting. That's like me reading a poorly plotted, badly written romance and then saying that it would only appeal to girls. Broad generalizations are hurtful and wrong and I really hoped we'd moved beyond them.
When I wrote Deathday, I thought I'd written a book that would mostly appeal to boys. Turns out a lot of girls really liked it too. And this gender biasing that we're all guilty of in some way and at some time, runs contrary to the spirit of the YA community. Books should be about inclusion, not the other way around.
Rant over. Go about your day.
Amen, brother.
ReplyDeleteHere, here! I get the same sometimes about Inconvenient--like it's "girly" or "would mainly appeal to girls." It's as if boy MC= boy book; girl MC= girl book. I find that with adult books, there's far less of this happening. It's just called, um, what's the word--oh yeah. In the adult world they just call them "books."
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