Fictional dystopias don’t create fear as much as they validate it. And isn’t that what we want as young people and even later as adults? To be validated, whether in our fears, our pain, or our happiness? Young Adult books let us explore, without the threat of rejection, what we most wish to understand or even accept, ourselves.

In this episode, we explore a new era of female protagonists and the dystopian world in which they exist. Authors Veronica Roth and Mindy McGinnis create stories that challenge the conventional role of young female characters in YA literature and set forth to expose how heroines see the world.

To learn more about Veronica Roth’s, or Mindy McGinnis’ books, visit harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/veronica-roth

harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/mindy-mcginnis

Do you have a story about how a classic book changed your life? Tweet @readingpod or email us at [email protected]. Learn more at rememberreading.com. And, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

[1:23] Veronica’s love of quizzes, tests, and categories inspired her to create a world of factions in Divergent.

[3:32] Growing up in the ’80s, Mindy remembers the influence Divergent had on her life.

[6:41] Exposure therapy was the driving force behind Veronica’s creation of Divergent’s fear-based virtual realities, as she explains.

[10:59] Mindy shares the fear that is the basis of her book, Not A Drop to Drink.

[13:41] Veronica included an intentional romance in her book to push back against a particular romantic cliché. Mindy took a different approach.

[17:10] Mindy fires back at critics who find Young Adult books too dark.

[19:51] In Mindy’s A Long Stretch of Bad Days, the female protagonist is not afraid to make other people uncomfortable.

Shareables:

“Nobody’s done coming of age. That’s not a thing. That’s why adults end up wanting to read YA because there’s part of you that's always in high school.” — Mindy McGinnis, author of Not a Drop to Drink

“Even if you are growing up like perfectly kind of safe and contained, books are safe places to explore the darkness in the world.” — Mindy McGinnis, author of Not a Drop to Drink

“I do think it’s changing. It’s a lot different than it used to be as far as just letting the inner lives of young women be important and significant.” — Veronica Roth, author of Divergent

“The Female of the Species, in particular, is a book that is about rape culture and I definitely wrote it as a validation of women’s rage.” — Mindy McGinnis, Author

“When you hear that you've done something right, not that there’s one way to do it right, but that you connected with someone who has a personal experience of those harder things in life, it becomes really emotional. It’s really good.“ — Veronica Roth, author of Divergent