Politics and Teen Fiction

Watsonworks
James Watson
Fiction &
Politics in teen
fiction
American edition(Knopf)
Part 2 of a piece based on an article published in The

Best of Books for Keeps (Bodley Head, ed. Chris
Powling) on writing fiction for Young Adults. Part 1
(October 2010) focused on why a sense of history is
well worth encouraging in young readers; but
understanding only comes when it is linked with
politics.
Whoever believes that that history does not repeat itself is

absolutely right if he or she stick sticks to the pedantry of detail.
Hitler was unique; Franco was unique; the bombing of Guernica
was unique, and President Pinochet of Chile was unique.
Tyranny, however, is not unique; nor are poverty, racism,

sexism or exploitation. That much we can learn from history,
though the root causes of such phenomena are admittedly less
the task of the novelist to explain than that of philosophers,
historians, sociologists and political scientists.
In tandem
If history is to be effectively learnt and taught it needs to be
examined within political frameworks, very specifically the
exercise of power. My own take on this, bearing in mind that
stories only kick in when disequilibrium occurs (something
dramatic happens), is to focus on the abuse of power.
The Freedom Tree follows certain events during the Spanish Civil
War. Throughout the action, which climaxes during the bombing
by German war planes of the Basque market town of Guernica in
1936, the young actors both struggle to survive and search for
answers to the questions how and why horrors such as these
come about.
The reader sees history through the subjective experience of the

characters and along with them shares that experience and,
hopefully, asks the same questions why. In Talking in Whispers a
story following the seizure of power by the generals in Chile, the
event that sets the hares running for Andres is when his father,
a nationally popular folk singer, is arrested and imprisoned,
along with thousands of others, in the Santiago football stadium.
Response to crisis
Our interest is in how Andres and his new friends, the twins, Isa
and Beto, react to the predicament they finds himself in; and
here we are addressing wider questions – what can be done in
the teeth of oppression, especially what can be done by young
people caught in the eye of the storm?
I’m intrigued by the staying power that I believe young people

are capable of in crisis, a staying power driven by certain
fundamental values; in short a commitment to justice, what is
fair, what is a human right. In Whispers 16-year old Andres falls
into the hands of torturers. Partly through his courage, party
through fortuitous circumstance, the torturers fail to extract the
information they require from him about his father and his
father’s friends. Most importantly, they fail to destroy his spirit.
One of the interrogators, the Hog, flings off all control:
He seized Andres. He roared not as the hog, not as

the hyena but as the bull. He seized Andres as if
suddenly he were all prisoners, as if he represented
every wrong answer, every defiant spirit, every act
of simple courage, every refusal to betray a loved
one, every resistance to tyranny. He beat him. He
dragged him. And yet it was his own cries which
were loudest, his own wailing: his boundless
despair.
That is arguably the testament of humanity’s faith in the triumph

of good over evil. Yet it might be asked – for the young reader?
If it were a universally observed right that children were
protected from the realities of the adult world, privileged to
escape the hardships suffered by their parents, then caution
about putting too much ‘realism’ into stories for the young might
be justifiable.
Sympathetic sharing
Children, though, are and always have been among history’s
victims. Those of El Salvador, Eritrea, Brazil, Indonesia, Haiti or
the Congo know that well enough. Our own children have
generally been more fortunate: all the more reason for them, I
believe, to at least know the plight of their peers; to sympathise,
to empathise, eventually to understand the connection between
the happiness of some and the misery of others; to feel a sense
of solidarity – if that is not too emotively political a term – with
others.
It is that which makes The Freedom Tree, Talking in Whispers,

No Surrender, Ticket to Prague, Justice of the Dagger and Fair
Game: The Steps of Odessa political. They are about uniqueness
but they are concerned with universals: of justice and
commonality.
There is the danger of young people being swamped by the

seemingly universal obsession with celebrity while education has
constantly been at risk of being defined as job preparation, an
instrumental activity, a galaxy of mission objectives, targets and
league tables, bounded by the ever-presence of financial
justification and regulation: does it pay; is it value for money?
No hiding place
The context in which we live, write and read is dominated by
paradoxes – the British are a rich nation, but ‘we’ are prepared
to throw people out of work, deny young people the promise of a
free education; and every day we hear how ‘our boys’, as the
Sun has always likes to describe British armed forces, are doing
such a noble job in Afghanistan, while simultaneously we are
hearing (thanks to Wikileaks) about coalition troops handing
over suspects to the notorious Iraqi torture teams, most notably
the Wolf Brigade.
Read further and we encounter official and British military

instructions on approaches to interrogation which, with no
exercise of imagination, amount to guidelines for torture. As for
Britain’s part in Rendition, the full facts will come out sooner or
later.
What are young people to make of all this? Surely not to write
politically at such times is, on the part of the storyteller,
something of a dereliction of duty? I think it is more important
now than even in the past, because we have experienced a
generation of near silence on the part of young people, crippled
as they are by obsessions with measurement, diminishing work
prospects and future landscapes overshadowed by debt.
‘Liberal’ claptrap?
In a companion piece to my article in The Best of Books for
Keeps, Jan Needle takes the view that too many English novels
for young readers are political; this I take it to mean in the
sense that they reflect socio-cultural situations which are the
product of centuries of political ‘management’ (or class
cultivation). True, and he is also right in suggesting that ‘liberals’
are preaching to would-be liberals in secure ‘liberal’ contexts.
That’s cosy, not convincingly real and scarcely to be
commended.
I would guess, however, that Jan would not baulk at stories

exploring the nature of justice, not only in our own, but other
societies and also in other times. This I confess, though I hope it
will not be held against me: my heroes and heroines
(sorry for the stereotypical language, but would ‘protagonists’ be
any better?) are generally articulate, thoughtful, serious and
curious about where they find themselves in the world.
Words, dammit
That, I hope, does not make the stories unduly earnest, preachy
or didactic, but it does acknowledge and affirm the critical role of
language, its power of words to clarify, mystify, inspire, deceive,
mislead, prompt hope and aspiration, nurture prejudice, hatred
and bigotry; words that constitute the channel through which
meaning is explored.
Much of the language of narrative finds expression in action,
events, dramatic situations, conflicts, decision-making, but all
the while it is what we say and how we say it, and what we don’t
say, which does the defining. Too often, if not always, those who
wield power in society are also the key operators of language,
defining situation and meaning, selecting and deselecting
according to vested interest.
Thus in George Orwell’s 1984, the meaning of ‘freedom’ is

narrowed down to denote being free of fleas. That’s politics. In
the stories I’ve been talking about, the purpose has in part been
to recognise how the defining power of language is a terrain of
constant conflict; and this reflects my own lifetime’s interest in
the baleful tyranny of censorship in all its manifestations.
‘Other’ is ‘Us’
These days there is no such place as ‘elsewhere’, no such
persons as ‘other’ (though many would persuade us that there
are). We may, as the Con-Dem Cuts Coalition would have us
believe, all in it together – but only in theory: in practice we
have a hare and tortoise situation, and only in fairy stories does
the tortoise reach the winning tape first.
Writers are in no position to redress the balance but they have

the possibility of articulating in narrative values that address
such problems as systemic inequality, the nurture of prejudice,
the arguments that ‘There Is No Alternative’.
In Talking in Whispers Andres witnesses the burning of his

father’s and his own books. The flames lick indiscriminately at
philosophical tomes and children’s books alike. Today’s writer is
faced with the challenge of producing stories riveting enough to
hold attention in face of mass media competition and the allure
of Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and the kind of role-modelling
exemplified by TV programmes such as The Apprentice.
Among the difficulties facing writers today is not the risk of

having their books condemned and burnt, for that would be an
acknowledgment of their purpose and value; rather, in the
maelstrom of current message systems, all competing for
attention, the writer’s voice risks being ignored, if it is heard at
all.
HAVE YOUR SAY…
Watsonworks@hotmail.co.uk

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Watsonworks

Part 2 of a piece based on an article published in The

Whoever believes that that history does not repeat itself is

Tyranny, however, is not unique; nor are poverty, racism,

The reader sees history through the subjective experience of the

I’m intrigued by the staying power that I believe young people

One of the interrogators, the Hog, flings off all control:

He seized Andres. He roared not as the hog, not as

That is arguably the testament of humanity’s faith in the triumph

It is that which makes The Freedom Tree, Talking in Whispers,

There is the danger of young people being swamped by the

Read further and we encounter official and British military

I would guess, however, that Jan would not baulk at stories

Thus in George Orwell’s 1984, the meaning of ‘freedom’ is

Writers are in no position to redress the balance but they have

In Talking in Whispers Andres witnesses the burning of his

Among the difficulties facing writers today is not the risk of

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