International YA Today: 25 New and Notable Titles

For the topic of international young adult literature there are not very many subject guides, and the ones that do exist are not recent. Hazel Rochman’s excellent guide, Against Borders, only provides suggestions for titles up until 1993; Carl Tomlinson’s related Children’s Books from Other Countries (which includes young adults under the umbrella of ‘children’) was published in 1998; and finally, Susan Stan’s more recent The World through Children’s Books (which also includes young adults under ‘children’) stops at 2000.

A lot has changed since 2000 in young adult literature. Manga, and graphic novels now dominate our shelves, and fantasy and humor have experienced resurgence. Not only this, but globally things have changed too.

Given changes since 2000, what does international YA look like today?

To try and answer this question (on a small scale), I have updated the site with a list of 25 new and recent titles from 2000-Present. Some are award winning, some are popular, and some are hidden gems, but I think they are all worth considering as new and notable international YA reads to add to our bookshelves.

Titles come from all regions (Africa, Asia, Australia/NZ, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East), most are category #3 and #4 selections only (titles originally published abroad in translation or in English), and the list also reflects emerging trends in international YA with selected graphic titles – like Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (below) – alongside a broader range of subjects, like fantasy and humor, than might normally be found on many international booklists.

Each annotated entry includes:

• author
• country of origin
• country/region of story setting
• domestic publisher
• plot summary
• recommended age ranges for readers
• * lastly, if relevant, there is also a note on format – i.e. all graphic novels in this list are marked with a ‘GN’

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Arrival, The (GN)

Tan, Shaun. (2007). New York: Arthur A. Levine Books. ISBN: 978-0439895293. 128 p. (12+). Country/Language of Original Publication: Australia; English. Setting: Australia/NZ (Australia)

Winner of numerous awards and accolades in Australian and internationally (including the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award and the New York Times Best Illustrated Book 2007), this picture book describes the story of immigration told through the eyes of immigrants. There are no words in  this work; instead amid the fantastical cityscapes that Tan creates through artfully rendered sepia tone drawings, there are unusual symbols that mirror the initial frustration and confusion upon immigration to a new place. The Arrival beautifully captures the loneliness, excitement, fear, and wonder of moving to a different place that is sure to resonate with any reader.

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Want to see more titles? Check out International YA Today: 25 New and Recent Titles….

…and for even more titles check out my Retrospective and Expanded International YA (organized by region and country) that goes beyond this list of 25 ‘International YA Today’ titles.

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Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa

Named after Africa’s first Nobel Laureate, the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa honors exceptional literature written by African citizens in the Pan-African diaspora. Awarded by the Lumina Foundation in Nigeria, the Wole Soyinka Award is given out every two years — and the most recent winner, Zahrah the Windseeker, is a YA novel of speculative fiction set in West Africa by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, an American writer originally from Nigeria.

An interesting thing about this award is the parameters of who it honors. It is a new award only begun three years ago in 2006, but in the planning stages before the award was announced, there was debate whether the award should be given only to African residents – or those in the Pan-African diaspora who have African citizenship. Eventually it was settled that it should be open to all those citizens in Africa and throughout the diaspora to better represent a range of African viewpoints and talents worldwide. This is an interesting precedent to consider when defining ‘international’ literature. Though a title like Zahrah the Windseeker, or the previous award winner (and also YA title) Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta, were originally published in the United States, the ‘audience’ that they speak to is much broader then simply a North American one.

In researching this topic I have come across a variety of opinions of what ‘international’ should mean: strictly those titles published abroad; titles published abroad + those written domestically by an ex-pat writer about their home country; or the broadest spectrum including all these titles + titles written by Canadian or American authors about a different country. Though I think it is important to try and capture as much literature from this first category as much as possible (especially as this type of international book tends to be in the smallest numbers on our shelves), seeing the scope of Wole Soyinka Award has made me reconsider the parameters of what ‘international’ is. Because in spite of being published domestically, these novels are not just written for a domestic audience – they are also written for an African one.

Wole Soyinka Award winners and shortlist:

• Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu (winner 2008 award)
• Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta (winner 2006 award)
• A La Poursuite D’aurore: (In Search of Dawn) by Georges I. Zreik (shortlist)
• Love Song for My Wasteland by Remi Raji (shortlist)

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Defining ‘international’ YA

In looking at international YA in the library, one of issues that I keep coming back to is how hard it is to categorize and define the ‘international’ in international young adult literature.

Does ‘international’ mean works published abroad? Works published domestically by ‘international’ authors? Works published about international topics?  Or does it refer to works that also might be called ‘multicultural’?

Generally speaking, here in Canada and in the US, I have noticed four broad types of books considered ‘international’ in various booklists, awards and library resources.* Categories 1 and 2 tend to be the most popular in US and Canadian libraries – and they are the books published domestically, in English. Categories 3 and 4, by contrast – those books published abroad (i.e. outside of Canada or the US) – tend to be more difficult to find in US or Canadian libraries, and they tend to be the type of books not normally labeled ‘international’ like manga, fantasy, humor or general YA literature.

But, to break it down further, here are the 4 categories of books labeled ‘international’ that I have found thus far in my research:

1. Books written and published in Canada/US for a domestic audience by ‘international’ authors originally from different countries writing about their home countries such as:

• Ting-xing Ye‘s autobiographical tale of life during the Cultural Revolution in China, My Name is Number Four, or her fictional work detailing the lives of young female migrant workers in China, Mountain Girl River Girl
• Emmanuel Jah’s autobiographical story of life as child soldier in Southern Sudan, War Child; or Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his similar story as a child soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone

2. Books written and published in Canada/US for a domestic audience about an international topic set abroad such as:

• Chanda’s Secrets and Chanda’s Wars – two fictional, though realistic, stories written by Canadian author, Allan Stratton, which focus on the issues of AIDS and mass violence in sub-Saharan Africa
• Journalist’s Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, Palestine, which details his interviews in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s or Guy Delisle’s graphic account of time spent in Burma, The Burma Chronicles
• Audience — written for the domestic Canadian/American audience
  

3. Books originally written/published abroad for an international audience and published in translation in the Canada/US such as:

• The recent winner of the ALA’s Batchelder Award for best YA book in translation, Morbibito: Guardian of the Spirit, a medieval-era fantasy  by Nahoko Uehashi and translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano
• Cornelia Funke’s multiple fantastical tomes from Germany including Inkheart, The Dragon Rider and The Thief Lord

4. Books originally written and published abroad in English for an international audience and then distributed in Canada/US such as:

• Melina Marchetta’s absorbing novel of YA suspense and family secrets, Jellicoe Road, from Australia – winner of the 2009 Printz Award for  excellence in YA literature or Shaun Tan‘s multiple YA picture books (like The Red Tree) also from Australia
• Louise Rennison’s multiple Confessions of Georgia Nicolson books from the UK, all related in a confessional diary style à la Adrian Mole

The difficulty with these categories and the multiplicity of definitions for ‘international’ can, I think, be attributed to issues of accessibility, cost and collections.

Books from categories 3 and 4 are much more difficult to find – note that even the books I have mentioned in the categories above are from Australia, Europe and Japan, even though YA titles are published worldwide and many countries/regions like India and East Africa often publish in English.

Cost is certainly also part of this equation. To translate an international book or find a domestic distributor/publisher for one demands time and funds and in order to ensure a profitable return on this investment, it often seems that only those that are the best of the best and/or the most popular globally – like Moribito or Cornelia Funke’s novels –  get translated into English. The issue with this being that these books represent only a fraction of what is published internationally.

Moribito, for example, was originally published in Japan in the mid-1990s, has 10 books in its series, and has spawned various manga and anime incarnations. When it was translated and published in English in 2008 by Arthur A. Levine Books (an imprint of Scholastic Inc.) Moribito was already a successful book with a dedicated audience.

There also seems to be significant conflation of the terms, ‘international’ and ‘multicultural’ in many collections – labeling that can create library collections that may seem  ‘international’ on the surface, but that may lack any books from categories 3 and 4.

The concern I have with the popularity of categories 1 and 2 in library catalogues is the question of representation. As you can see from most of the titles, especially in categories 1 and 2 (which are the most represented in libraries currently), there is a definite pedagogical and didactic bent to most ‘international’ works – many are about war, struggles with oppression, poverty, etc. The over-representation of these types of works in a collection that is supposed to be diverse can reinforce, not expand, a decidedly Western worldview – which is not the purpose of international YA as most would describe it.

In Against Borders: Promoting Books for a Multicultural World (1993), Hazel Rochman wrote that the “stories you read can transform you because they help you imagine beyond yourself. If you read only what mirrors your view of yourself, you get locked in…buried.” (pp. 11)  Rochman further added that “reading makes immigrants of us all – it takes us away from home, but, most important, it finds homes for us everywhere” (pp. 15).

My primary concern here is that some of the ways in which we discuss or define the  ‘international’ in young adult literature today is limiting this potential.

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*Books NOT Borders note: for the purpose of my research and this blog I am looking at the US and Canada as my ‘domestic’ market, and everything written or published outside Canada and the US as ‘international.’ While there are distinct differences between the two countries, generally speaking—in librarianship—there are significant similarities and overlap particularly in the use of ALA materials (especially YALSA) north of the border in Canada, and in the abundance of American literature in Canadian libraries.

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Inaugural post: International Young Adult Literature…or ‘International YA’

This blog is all about reading ‘beyond borders’ and is comprised of reviews and news about international young adult (YA) reading materials – ‘international’ being literature published internationally, in translation, or written domestically in Canada or the United States by authors writing about their home countries.

The goal of this blog is to expand the overall scope and awareness of YA literature and the boundaries we place on it, both in terms of geographic location and in terms of subject matter.

As such, this blog will cover award winning international works of YA fiction and non-fiction, but will also discuss lesser known or considered works of ‘international’ YA literature like manga, fantasy and sci-fi and humor.

The idea for this blog was started after I gave a presentation in my YA reading materials class in library school on the topic of ‘international YA.’ When gathering resources for this topic, I found – to my surprise – that there was not a surplus of secondary readings or resource on the topic; in fact there were few comprehensive resources on this topic at all, save for works like Hazel Rochman’s excellent Against Borders: Promoting Books for a Multicultural World (1993).

In my research I also discovered something additionally surprising: not only were there few ‘international YA’ resources, there were also only a few different types of novels or subjects considered within the term, ‘international YA.’

Generally, international YA literature is considered within a pedagogical context – what it can teach teens about other cultures, places and people. Consequently, most booklists, YA awards, and the few international YA resources that I encountered tended to favor fictional or non-fictional accounts that detailed ‘serious’ historical and contemporary topics like war, conflict, and human rights and included popular works like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, or Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.

Missing from most booklists, award lists and resources are international works of humor, fantasy and manga – even though these three genres form some of the most popular international YA areas.

The benefits of international YA are many. It can promote tolerance and acceptance; it can be used cross-curriculum; and it can give young adults a range of new and exciting reading choices. But we should not be too hasty to draw borders around what ‘international YA’ is or how it should be labeled.

Books not borders.

If our goal is to truly broaden young adults’ worldviews than we must not limit our own—and in the course of this blog I hope to do just that through the development of a new and updated resource list of reading and other materials that span genres and borders.

So check back often for new reading suggestions, thoughts on ‘international YA,’ and updates on international YA awards and news.

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