'Chick lit' writers: 'We know our world'
A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Support and appreciation should be given to our young female writers for voicing their own experiences in the literary genre now popularly called "teen lit" or "chick lit".
Despite frequently being belittled as less-than-serious literature, teen lit novels, mostly written by teen girls and "former teen girls", attract many readers and even become best sellers.
The settings of the books are the lives of teenagers (school life, cool boyfriends, basketball, etc.), that are mostly overlooked by the literary industry. This is also the reason that many literary critics look down on teen lit novels, saying: "Hey, isn't there anything beyond school life, boyfriends, basketball, etc."
"We know our world better," is the answer given by three teen lit writers, Esti Kinasih, 34, Dyan Nuranindya, 25, and Rosemary Kesauly, 20, in separate interviews with The Jakarta Post last week.
Esti's first novel, Fairish, which is about a female high school student who helps her boyfriend recover from his trauma, has been reprinted ten times and will soon be aired as a TV series.
Dyan's book, DeaLova, about a romantic experience among high school students, has been reprinted nine times and will be turned into a movie this year.
Actually, teen lit does not only talk about simple school life, boy friends and basketball.
In Fairish, Esti included her appreciation of poems and painting.
"But I tried hard not to appear as though I was teaching readers and teenagers on the issue," she said.
She said she planned to write a second novel with a theme around the emancipation of teen girls and boys with a mountain hike as a setting.
Rosemary, who won the 2005 teen lit writing competition held by major publisher Gramedia Pustaka Utama, discussed a girl's identity crisis in her book Ada Kana di Negeri Kiwi (Kana's in Kiwi Country).
Rosemary, Esti, Dian and many teen lit writers reject what they call "a single definition of beauty" formed by the products of capitalism through mass media, especially television.
According to them, beauty is not only white skin, straight hair and a slim body. The characters in their novels, mostly girls, show the writers's pluralistic views of beauty.
In the past, pop novels aimed for teen readers were written by male writers and they all featured males as heroes. Lupus by Hilman and Gita Cinta dari SMA (Love song from high school) by Eddy D Iskandar are classic examples of popular teen books written by male writers, featuring males as teen models.
Activist and media observer Adriana Venny praised the current phenomena of teen lit as a media for teen girls to express their own experiences.
"Expressing their own experiences is the most important aspect of the phenomena. In the past, the icons were always boys, but now it's girls," said Venny, who is also chief editor of Jurnal Perempuan (Women's Journal).