On YA Lit: Not in Front of the Children—eleanor&park, rainbow rowell
The lens of history is usually focused on works of past generations, but when a work is not only past contemporary and is now taboo, the reader might also formulate theories of some forbidden behaviors depicted; however, when the work was intended as a genre work in Young Adult fiction, the taint of taboo can escalate into public controversy.
Such was the case in Florida, when there was a state mandate to remove all Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs and materials from funded institutions. There were horrifying images of dumpsters full of books. Currently, independent bookstores will not accept any whiff of a DEI writer on their shelves. A casual question to the cyber library reveals that traditional publishing is now so risk adverse that the entire landscape of Young Adult fiction has changed.
With a 2013 copyright from St Martin’s Griffin, rainbow rowel’s eleanor & park is now an unsellable book, although the author has had notable awards (a NYT bestseller, and Goodreads Choice). The volume itself was found in the free pile of a thrift store, its high-quality paper only slightly waved from the abuses of climate. It is a sturdy hardcover meant for high circulation.
The work itself is set at the end of the twentieth century, with a frontispiece that says ‘august 1986’and a first sentence begins with a reference to a musical group, and then mentions two other bands from that era. Chapters alternate points of view between the two characters, park coming first and then eleanor; they are teenagers who meet on the school bus, and each chapter heading uses their names in lowercase.However, the school bus dialogue is authentic, and the first page ends with one character saying, “‘It so fucking does’ Steve shouted back. ‘Drunken Monkey style, man, it’s a real fucking thing. You can kill somebody with it...’ “(5).While anyone who has been around a teenager anytime in the last two generations can attest to the frequency of what media censors call “adult language” in the speech of high school students, there are those who do not want authentic representation in books intended for legal minors. That the author has us see the character, park, by his listening tastes –XTC, Skinny Puppy, Misfits—is intended, and does, resonant with people for whom music is also a form of art, with people who can still hear that music in memory.
While the use of authentic language does position the book delicately in our culture more than a decade after the copyright, it is a romance; a young adult romance:
Eleanor was right: she never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
Eleanor sitting next to him on the couch made Park feel like someone had opened a window in the middle of the room [...]
Elanor made him feel like something was happening. Even when they were just sitting on the couch (165)
That the two characters appear star-crossed makes for fun allusions as the they read high school classics, and that the one character comes from a mixed-blood heritage, while the other lives in impoverished abuse is a nice reworking of the theme.These are kids we have seen, might have even met in our educational experiences. It might have been, that at the time of the book’s Y2K, that the author was checking boxes ro deliberately appeal to the very DEI teens from whom the book has been declared taboo.
The characters do discuss identity, as the honor student Park says “Everything that makes Asian girls seem exotic makes Asian guys seem like girls” (272) However, the scenes of Eleanor’s impoverished abuse become prosaic within the world of the story: a doorless bathroom becomes a mother-daughter moment , with mom watching the door “It was so cold by the back door that the bath water started cooling off before the tub was even full “(261) and with that teen familiar mom-line “How lucky I am that you’re so smart about boys”. But Eleanor’s life at home also involves five children in one bedroom who learn to cry noiselessly, a bra held together with safety pins, and abuse at school as well:
Eleanor looked down at the toilet. Even though she knew what she was going to see there, it still felt like a wet slap in the face. Her new jeans and her cowboy shirt were in a dark pile in the bowl, and her shoes were crammed under the lip. Somebody had flushed the toilet, and there was water still spilling over the edge. Eleanor watched it run” (239)
While these depictions seem to be a conglomerate of teen agonies, there is also the author’s genre to consider—the intention of Young Adult writing is to find resonance, and a pile on of marginalization ought not to surprise any reader.
What is surprising is that the ordinary lives of children are no longer allowed as a topic of discussion to the children themselves. What is surprising is that the work of an award-winning author is seen as a danger to society from the shelf of a library or bookstore. Of course, the children for whom the curtain has been drawn are all too well aware of the various miseries of abuse, poverty, racial prejudice, and, as character Steve says “Fucking stepdads” (286). That such a book, that of the thickly felt world of young adults, is now forbidden fruit to the children of Florida –among other places—is an unsupportable theft of culture to future generations.
Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.
Jacquelyn “Jacsun” Shah, Cincinnati-born, has lived in New Jersey; London; and Mumbai, India. She currently resides in Houston, Texas. Education: AB–Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude; MA; MFA; PHD––English/creative writing. Publications: poetry chapbook (small fry) & full-length poetry book (What to Do with Red); memoir (Limited Engagement: A Way of Living); individual poems in journals. She wasGleam: Journal of Cadralor’s2023 Pushcart Prize nominee. An iconoclast, she often combines cultural critique and humor in her work.
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of Difficult writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese, focusing on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Amy Lowell, Williams, Ashbery, Rosanna Warren.
He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including 9 poetry collections. Ma Yongbo’s complete Chinese translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies.
The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology.
In August 2026, he received the American poetry award: New Generation Beat Poet Laureate (2026-lifetime) China, from The National Beat Poetry Foundation (NBPF) in the United States.
His work is widely published in international journals such as New American Writing，Livemag, Cafe Review, International Times, Vox Populi, Ink Sweat and Tears, Orbis, Cambridge Poetry, Polismagazino, Masticadoresusa，Masticadorescanada, masticadorestaiwan, Feed the Holy，Collaborature，European Poetry, Magique Publishing, Primelore, Verseum Literary, Area Felix，ONE, Sindh Courier，Lingo Lexicon，Worldinkers，Avantappalachia，Madswirl，Allyourpoems，Homouniversalisgr，100subtextsmagazine，Pandemoniumjournal，Cultural Reverence，Rochford Street Review，Synchchaos，Ezra，Autumn Sky Poetry Daily，Nuthatchmag，Posit，Yumpu，Our Poetry Archive，Subliminal.surgery，The Raft of Dreams Literary Magazine, Atunis，Insightmagazine，Lothlorien Poetry Journal，Acheron，Gorkogazette，A Too Powerful Word，Chiron Review，Gas，Chewers，Latinosenglishedition, Medusaskitchen，Beatnikcowboy，Dear O Deer!，The Wordsmith Literary E-Magazine , New Black Bart Poetry Society, Edge of Humanity，Liveencounters，Big Other, Live Nude Poems, Kabita Live, Silverbirchpress, The Aleph Review, Home Planet News, Madswirl, Poemalone, Unlikely Stories Six,Tap into Poetry,Circle of Salt, Semiosis, Zeroesgarden, Durgapur Review,Silver Birch Press, Almanarjournal, Jade Moon, Chinton, Green Trail Poetry Book by Noble Gas, etc.
Suicide Studies
I:Thinking of stones and the habit of drowning poets on Poets' Day
Qu Yuan embraced a stone, along with the fragrant herbs
and his idealized beauty, before plunging into the Miluo River.
Lu Zhaolin, one of the Four Literary Masters of the Early Tang Dynasty,
drowned himself in the Ying River.
Li Bai clutched a stone of moonlight and threw himself into the Yangtze River.
Wang Guowei sank into Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace,
leaving behind a suicide note: "At fifty, I owe only my death."
Zhu Xiang, passing by Caishi Gorge on a boat,
leaped into the Yangtze, following in Li Bai's footsteps.
Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with stones
and walked into the River Ouse in England.
Paul Celan threw himself from the Pont de Mirabeau into the Seine.
Hart Crane leaped into the Caribbean Sea while on a voyage back home.
John Berryman threw himself into the Mississippi River.
Analysis:
In ancient China, poets who drowned themselves
often did so out of loyalty to a fallen nation,
unbearable illness, or utter despair amidst a chaotic era.
In modern times, both Chinese and foreign poets
have mostly been driven to such ends by clinical depression,
generational trauma, emotional devastation, and the sheer exhaustion of survival.
Conclusion:
Whether or not they held a stone as they plunged into the water,
the human heart is far harder and heavier than any stone.
II: Poets Who Hanged Themselves
Sanmao (Chen Ping, 1943–1991), a Chinese prose poet,
hanged herself with silk stockings in a hospital restroom.
Her poems and essays are steeped in wandering and solitude,
with Olive Tree as her magnum opus. Truth be told,
I have not read much of her work and can hardly say I am fond of her,
yet I can sing Olive Tree, as could every peer of my generation.
Gu Cheng (1956–1993), a core representative of the Misty Poetry school,
murdered his wife on a island, before hanging himself from a tree.
Misty Poetry was all the rage during my university years;
I preferred Bei Dao’s icy austerity.
I acknowledge Gu Cheng’s innate poetic gift, yet one of his poems about colour—
whose title I have forgotten—once appeared in an official literary journal
and turned me utterly disillusioned, from that moment onward,
I ceased reading all official publications.
Fu Lei (1908–1966), translator and classical Chinese poet,
hanged himself alongside his wife at home.
He is widely regarded in literary circles as a scholar with a poet’s temperament.
I have long harboured scepticism toward poet-scholars;
I hold far greater esteem for scholar-poets.
Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925), Russia’s gifted pastoral lyric poet,
hanged himself with a leather belt in a St Petersburg hotel room in 1925.
He bit his finger and scrawled his farewell poem Farewell, My Friends in blood on a mirror.
I first encountered his work in my first year of university, and he reshaped my sensibility,
setting me upon a rugged, arduous yet righteous path.
Had it not been for him, I would have become the kind of red poet celebrated by the state.
Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941), preeminent female poet of Russia’s Silver Age,
was evacuated to a small town during the Second World War.
Repeatedly rejected for employment and estranged from her son,
she descended into despair and hanged herself, leaving the line:
“Forgive me, but to go on would be worse.”
Her verse brims with mortal suffering and longing for her homeland.
I wrote of her in the opening stanza of my poem Correspondences:
“She gave away her rings without a second thought—a full hundred of them!”
Compared with Tsvetaeva, I favour Anna Akhmatova’s regal poise and grace,
even when all she could set before foreign guests was a single lonely carrot on a plate,
even when her tartan skirt bore holes burnt through by cigarette embers.
