I’m in the middle of reading Daisy Whitney’s When You Were Here, which comes out in June of 2013 from Little, Brown. I hate talking about books this far in advance, but there’s something about Whitney’s story that’s captured my attention wholeheartedly. Every time I set the book down, I keep thinking about; I want to put everything aside to keep reading it. The thing is, I also don’t want the story to end.
The book, which follows just-graduated Danny Kellerman as he travels from his home in Southern California to the apartment his now-deceased mother owned in Tokyo in order to understand what made his mom so happy and contented in her last moments of life, takes on grief and lost love in equal measures. As Danny mourns losing his mom, he simultaneously questions and grieves the loss of the relationship he had with Holland, his dream girl. The girl with whom he’d lost his virginity, with whom he’d shared secrets, with whom he’d been crushing on since elementary school. Whitney infuses Danny’s voice with ache and longing. Even as he’s being shown around Tokyo by Kana, a supremely likable, quirky, and good-for-him kind of girl, Danny’s heart is heavy.
We know boys don’t feel emotions. Or at least, that’s what every article about YA lit would have you believe. And while there are some legitimate comments about how there could definitely be more boys in more stories -- note this isn’t at the expense of girls but rather in addition to them -- after working with boys for a number of years in libraries, I know that it’s not true. Boys are emotional, just like girls. It’s called being human.
For me as a reader and for me as someone who works with and totally digs working with teen boys, I pay attention to when a boy character is done really well. Especially if his story tangles with romance. And ESPECIALLY if his story is written by a female. That’s not to say I think the gender of the writer impacts the gender of the main character they choose to write, but rather, I love when I find really great examples of this.
What makes Whitney’s male main character searing as a reader is how little he shares his emotions with the readers. We don’t hear about how much he misses his mother. We don’t get the chance to listen to him talk about what happened between Holland and himself to cause their breaking. And we don’t hear how Danny takes to Kana. Rather, we’re forced to read between the lines. We’re forced to interpret the way Danny behaves and the way he thinks to discern what he’s feeling. At his graduation ceremony -- the one event Danny’s mother wanted to attend before dying -- he looks out at the audience from his spot on the podium, and as he prepares to deliver his valedictorian speech, he doesn’t see his mother. In that instant, Danny realizes how painful the loss is. He doesn’t tell us this, though. Instead, he tells everyone to fuck themselves, and he leaves. Danny’s pain over losing Holland bubbles up when another girl takes him to bed and takes control. He plays the passive participant, his mind reeling about all the times he was with Holland and how perfect those moments were.
It’s in those spaces where the longing and the heartbreak intensify. Where Danny tells us how much he hurts and how much he wants to piece his life back together. We learn how wildly romantic he is without ever seeing him be romantic. We experience his grief head on without ever seeing Danny cry or without him telling us how hard not having mom at his graduation is. Danny acts out of recklessness at times, but as readers we know it’s not because he is reckless. We know it’s because that’s his means of dealing with the feelings inside. It’s because he doesn’t have a healthier way of working through his burdens. He’s not going to talk it out and he’s not going to cry about it -- and it’s not because that’s what we’d expect of a female character, but it’s because that’s simply not who Danny is. His being male doesn’t change things. It’s the undercurrent and the unspoken that amplify his feelings and fortify his character.
The same could be said of Travis in Trish Doller’s Something Like Normal. When he returns home on leave from the Marines, he walks into a home where his parents are fighting, where his once-girlfriend is now hooking up with his brother, and where he’s accused of ruining the life of Harper, a girl he went to middle school with thanks to a rumor he spread. Oh, and added to that is the fact Travis is trying to wrap his head around the death of good friend and fellow Marine Charlie. He can’t escape the nightmares and it’s only getting worse as he delves into full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder. Through the course of the story, we see Travis try to make amends where he can -- even if it literally means that he’s sleeping with ex-girlfriend Paige again, just in hopes of feeling something. Except he doesn’t feel anything except frustration at himself, at the situation, and at the fact he knows he’s not giving himself everything he deserves and is entitled to. He turns his attention to seeking Harper’s forgiveness and that, it turns out, was precisely the thing to do.
Travis doesn’t let us inside too much, though. We get just enough to know he’s desperate for someone to ground him back at home, especially with the nightmares that aren’t allowing him to relax. Harper stays by his side, sometimes despite her better judgement, and it’s through her when Travis learns he can deal with his emotions in a healthy way. When invited to a memorial ceremony for Charlie -- something that Travis dreads, knowing it means he’ll have to come face to face with death, with the grief over losing his friend, with the fact he’s got a serious mental disorder now, at such a young age -- Harper is there, urging him to go. Urging him to put to bed some of those things haunting him. And she’s there with him, despite how he hasn’t necessarily treated her in the best possible way. Because his anger and his sadness? They come out in hurtful ways.
But when the ceremony ends, and Travis needs someone to understand him, he gives himself fully to Harper in a way that is incredibly sensual and tender and most importantly, vulnerable. This vulnerability lives just under the surface of the entire book. Travis remains guarded and brushes off the things that could force him to confront feeling and emotion throughout the story for many reasons. It’s part because of what he’s dealing with, it’s part because of what’s been expected of him as a Marine, and it’s part because that’s how Travis has been. So when he and Harper can be intimate, the boundaries and walls break down around him. And they have their moment because through their relationship up to this point, Travis has been chipping away at these inner demons. He realizes in order to move forward and work through the things he needs to work through, he has to let down the guard. He needs to make the connections with others like Harper in order to be wholly himself.
That fear of being vulnerable, of making a deep and lasting connection with another person, doesn’t make Travis a guy. It’s not part and parcel of being a male main character. Rather, it’s just who Travis is. It’s the sum of his experiences and Doller does a tremendous job of never having Travis tell the audience this is his weakness nor that this is what’s really going on below the surface. Instead, we’re left to ferret it out from the way he acts and thinks.
I want to write a lengthy bit about how thoroughly romantic and grief-stricken Camden Pike is in Emily Hainsworth’s Through To You and how fraught with worry and anxiety Nick is when he wants to break up with girlfriend Sasha in CK Kelly Martin’s I Know It’s Over and about how both books thoughtfully and carefully brings these emotions to the surface of the book without ever having the characters tells us how much they’re feeling things. Both beg readers to pay attention to their actions and their thought processes in order to tease out those emotional truths that thrive right below the surface.
What makes all of these books so strong for me is that these male characters are emotionally flooded beings and yet, they never once tell us this. Instead, we’re forced to watch their behaviors, interpret their thinking and actions, and dig into what it is that’s weighing them down. Because even amid pain and grief and loss and anxiety, these characters find a way to love and be loved.
Many teen boys? As much as they want to be tough and at times brutal, at their core they are human beings struggling to understand and interpret what it means to feel and experience.
They’re trying to find a way to understand how to love and how to be loved. Sometimes they can say it well, and sometimes, they have to tell a room full of high school graduates to go fuck themselves.
Kelly Jensen is a librarian and a blogger at stackedbooks.org. When she's not reading or writing or writing about reading, she's probably eating black licorice.