21 February 2022
I grew up devouring young adult romance, loving writers like Meg Cabot and Sarah Dessen, but lost touch with romance novels as teachers encouraged me to read things they deemed more appropriate and "more challenging." (A sentiment echoed by other adults in my life.) By my early 20s, I'd fully bought into the idea that only "literary" works merited attention - a gatekeeper phrase that's difficult to define, and biased toward an unchanging historical library of Western-canon classics. Outside of those novels, I was recommended books that dealt with heavy subject matter, suggesting sadness over joy as a primary marker of value and heft.
