Thank you! I didn’t appreciate, “This author is good enough for teen girls but not my thing,” implying teenage girls have low standards. I wouldn’t complain about it or run to Twitter, but I didn’t think it was cool either. A shrug is the biggest response from me.

And after that tweetstorm, it is probably a very necessary grudge that has expanded to include Picoult and Weiner as well.

“Inclusion absolutely matters, in the classroom and outside the classroom, but yelling at a single woman with absolutely no sway in the publishing or academic worlds, is not the way to get it.” 

I think if someone made it their personal mission to stop me from getting business at my job and then bragged about doing so in public, I’d be pretty pissed off about it.

The problem with this is the power difference. Bestselling, millionaire authors with large fan bases are attacking an unknown college student and pretending the criticism actually hurts them in any real way. It doesn’t.

I agree that “It’s fine for teen girls” smacks distinctly of internalized misogyny. Whether or not that was an unfortunate word choice on her part isn’t for me to say. At best it was pointlessly gendered.

So... Dessen is offended by what one student wrote regarding her work and then gets multiple literary figures to chime in?

That would be fine if they didn’t then choose Ready Player One which is also YA, but focused on boys and 80s nostalgia.

“calling out a legit problem” and magnifying some sophomoric distaste for an author expressed by a random college student need not go hand in hand.

While I get what you and others are saying, it does seem to echo that overarching sentiment of ‘things important to teen girls arn’t important’. I don’t know Dressen’s work, but saying a book (in general) has to engage with ‘big issues’ is the kind of language that has been used to wave off women’s (and now YA) lit…

Well, luckily, that’s not my take! I don’t think Sarah Dessen books should be a Common Read, and neither does Sarah Dessen.

Jodi Piccoult everybody

It’s the context that’s a problem for me. In a general article about the Common Read program getting more funding, the story that Nelson chooses to tell is about how she literally joined the committee specifically to make sure they didn’t choose Dessen’s book, after throwing out how they’re “fine for teen girls”. You…

It’s not about them not “liking” her work, though. It’s about them blocking her work from being selected for a reading program solely because “it’s fine for teen girls,” but apparently not anybody else.

She literally says “They’re fine for teen girls.” Which is the part everyone who’s objecting to it is objecting to, because she’s telling on herself there. It’s fine if you don’t read it that way, but I do.

My favorite (/s) response to Dessen’s tweet was when someone replied “Fuck that fucking bitch.”, and Dessen replied to that with “I love you. [heart emoji]”.

“I doubt that there wasn’t a single novel beloved by teen girls on that list...”

I mean yes we do tend to mock shitty books for teen girls more than we mock shitty books for teen boys (Twilight vs Ready Player One - they’re both awful) but that doesn’t mean any if those books are good. Authors always look ridiculous when they respond to bad reviews and this is even more ridiculous.

I’m on Dessen’s side here, but I still think this is probably a great idea for all famous and semi-famous people.

I think it’s fair to feel hurt, but completely bizarre that a woman with a large public platform chose to respond to a quote from a student at a small college in South Dakota. How fragile is your ego?