Discussions

There has always been a stigma regarding reading and writing certain genres. It’s something that I noticed even before I started blogging over eight years ago now. But as the years have gone on and I have started to read more widely, it’s something that I have noticed even more.  

Two of the main genre/readerships that have a lot of stigma around them is romance and young adult. I do want to make a quick note and say that young adult literature is not a genre, it’s a readership. But in the sense of this discussion, I’m grouping romance and YA together. With that out of the way. Romance and YA are two of the most popular but also the most stigmatised genre and readership that I know. And it just so happens that they are my two most favourite reading chooses. 

I started reading YA when I was 12 years old and at 23 it’s still one of my most read readerships. While it took me a while to start reading adult romances, most of the YA I read included a romance. I’ve been reading romance for nearly five years now. And over the last two maybe three years it’s become mainly what I read. And I don’t think it’s something that will ever change. I think I will be reading YA and romance for a very long time.

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Stigma and Young Adult Lit

While at high school I didn’t notice the stigma in regards to young adult novels. But as the years went on and I got older and continued to read and write YA, I noticed it more. And then I went to university – and that is when it hit me. 

If you don’t know I did a writing and editing degree straight out of high school. And let me tell you I loved it. I recommend my degree to anyone that I can because it was brilliant. However, it was through this degree that I was able to witness the stigma about YA first hand. I can’t tell you how many times I said I read YA/Write YA and class members would look down on me. At first, it was dishearting. It was all I had read up till that point. It’s what I lived and breathed. I read it, I wrote it and I blogged about it. And to have someone look at you like they are better than you was hard. But as the course went on and I got to talk about young adult more and what it is, things became a lot better. 

I don’t understand where the stigma comes from reading YA. But as I write this post I keep on thinking about it. I think it stems from the notion that teens ‘don’t know anything’ or that they only care about ‘being popular’ and the internet. But I find that I learn and understand things so much more when I read YA novels over adult books. They aren’t just these happy go lucky books that make the world seem like it’s dandy. But they are so much more than that. 

Young Adult novels are educational, political, inspirational while also teaching readers about human life and being fun and adventurous. They can take the reader on a journey that I don’t think you can get from anything else. Some of the books that have hit me the most have been young adult, and they are the ones that I always recommend to others. 

I’m also a bookseller and I cannot even begin to tell you the looks I get and the things that I hear in regards to reading YA. It has such a bad connotation that even people that don’t regularly read believe that it’s a waste of time and not for them. I sometimes even have parents come in looking for something for their child. And then I recommend them YA – and they ask for something ‘good.’ It feels like a neverending cycle sometimes. 

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Stigma and Romance Novels 

Even before I started reading romance novels, I knew the stigma that came along with it. That it was all about sex. That there is no substance. And for some time I believed them until I started to read romance. As I said I’ve been reading romance for the past five years or so and I have learnt a lot of things. 

There are so many sub genre’s in regards to romance and I think the general public and people that I call ‘gatekeepers’ of reading, only focus on certain ones. This comes down to certain novels and series becoming popular and mainstream. And those are the books that people focus on and attribute to all of the romance.

I don’t think I need to talk about this much, but 50 Shades of Grey has to be one of the most popular and mainstream romances in regards to the general population. It’s what people associate with romance and where their minds immediately go with you say you read romance. But that is only one part of romance. It’s one sub-genre and that is all. Don’t get me wrong there are sexy times in most romances, but they are not all like 50 Shades.

Another thing that has come to up over the past few weeks is the negative connotations in the way that relationships are presented. 365 Days has pushed this. I’ve been seeing a lot on social media about how the relationships were presented – and while it might be bad in the book and show it’s not how all the relationships are in romance.

Something else that I’ve seen highlighted over the last couple of weeks is the stigma in relation to MC and Mafia romances. Again I think this because of media and hype around movies like 365 Days. I’ve been reading a lot of MC romances over the last couple of months, and just because I enjoyed reading does not mean I like and support the things that happen in the novels in real life. It’s this barrier of reality and fiction. 

But romance is so much more than the stigmas that surround it. Like I said there are so many sub-genres of romance and that means there are so many ways that romance can go. I mostly read historical romance along with MC, College and Miltary romances. I do dapple a little in other genre’s, but that is what I mostly stick to. And it’s so much more than sex. They can explore things that are hard to read. From family and death to mental health and disability. They also just happen to have a romance at the centre of it all. 

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Overcoming these stigmas 

I think one of the most important things we as readers need to do in regards to stigmas and genre is to squash them. Readers are one of the main driving points of stigmas and mostly it’s from people that don’t read the genre or readership. You can not like a genre, you can not read. But please don’t hate on it or keep these stigmas going. It only flues the fire and creates more of a distance. 

We need to be able to move away from these stigmas because they are not only wrong, they stop a lot of people from reading the genre and readership. There could be many reasons why people don’t pick up certain genres or readership, please don’t give them another reason. 

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What do you think of stigmas and genres? How do you think we can knock down the wall and have people reading whatever they want? Do you have any stigmas about certain genre’s? Let’s Chat!