Making the Darkness Visible
[Cross-posted from my blog -- and a day late. Sorry about that!] I was at a friend’s surprise party last night when I myself received a huge surprise: a friend emailed me with the news that my book Rage was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal , in an article called “ Darkness Too Visible .” At first, I was ecstatic–I mean, hello, the WSJ mentioned my book! I was giddy with validation. When I read the article, I got my second surprise: the article blasts darker-themed contemporary fiction for teens. Rage was used as an example to illustrate how “tame” issue-oriented books from the 1970s–including Go Ask Alice , Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic , and I Am the Cheese . Worse, after mentioning that the protagonist in Rage struggles with self-injury and quoting two lines from the book, the article goes on to say that books like Rage are likely to help “normalize” issues such as self-injury–and “may even spread their plausibility and likelihood to young people who might ot...