The publishing world was aghast in recent years at the rise of “sick-lit” (literature about dying and death) aimed at teenagers. As the vampire trend died down, the world began to see such titles Going Bovine, The Fault in Our Stars, Saving Daisy, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl pop up for sale. Ironically, we went from immortality to death over a period of months.
A lot of people have been in an uproar because some say that teens shouldn’t have a morbid fascination with death and self-harm, while others say that these books glorify death, suicide, and self-harm in ways that make kids want to act as their favorite characters do. While I am all for the responsibility of the author (I’ve talked about it before), I realize that there are a lot of uncomfortable topics that parents don’t want to discuss with their children. However, shielding them from truth and reality does nothing more than hinder their lives instead of preparing them for inevitable issues. People die. People commit suicide. They cut themselves. They deal with anorexia, bulimia, cancer, depression, anxiety, guilt, shame, and self-blame. When I was in high school, we had two students die. One passed away during the school year. The other passed away over the summer. One was a writer, a poet to be exact, and that was what he wanted to do with his life. I have copies of his writing still. It was a gift from his parents to all of his friends. Though I’m sad to say I never actually knew him in life, I knew him through his poetry. I knew he was like me in more ways than I could imagine because we were both writers, and his unexpected death struck a nerve in me that I still feel when I think back to the first days of school afterward. The hush, the tears, the fights that broke out because emotions were raw, the teachers trying to comfort us in ways that they didn’t really know how, and how much they hurt too. It leaves an imprint on you that you can’t shake. The second boy had been a friend of mine before, though we had drifted apart. I don’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but I remembered him to be a kind friend I could turn to when I needed to, and we often goofed off in study hall with our little group of friends and got yelled at by the teacher. His death affected me a bit more deeply. I think because I had memories with him, it made it harder to detach from. I had my best friend over for my sixteenth birthday that year, and my mother mentioned his death. I broke down on what should have been a fun day with my best friend, the pain cutting deeply as I thought about how he would never have another birthday himself. His promising life was cut too short. I couldn’t talk to people about it. It was hard to put those things into words. I wrote letters, poetry, journal entries, and essays. I wrote because that was what I could do. I understand that not everyone has an outlet. I understand that it’s easy as a teenager to want to keep things locked away because you don’t think anyone will understand, or that you’ll be judged, or maybe you’re afraid of your own thoughts about it. I know what the mind can do to you. I know depression and anxiety and wanting to self-harm. People can brand these books as sick-lit, either because they are about sick teens or because the subject matter is sick (or both), but I think it can be healing and uplifting literature. I wished I would have known about books such as these when I was teen so that maybe I could find a piece of myself in some of the characters, see the situation I endured in the plot, and maybe come away feeling a little better that I wasn’t alone in my pain and confusion. In the end, that’s what good writing does, no matter the content.
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Samantha Buttrick
Author of "The Beast of Yorkshire Place" and "The Wasteland" Archives
October 2015
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