'Teen lit' takes the nation by storm

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Literature for people in their teens or "teen lit" has become a hit around the world. In this country, more than one hundred new authors have made a name for themselves through the style, raking in huge profits for publishers. This cover story shows why teen- lit appeals to its market.

The two girls' conversation was grating on the nerves of the other bus passengers.

"Do you know that right now Anti is dating that cute boy Doni? I can't believe she hooked up with him -- she's not pretty and she's kinda fat," the girl, in her teens, said to her school friend, laughing uproariously.

Then, they got going on fashion, dropping the names of favorite designers into the conversation, and cell phones: how they were going to upgrade their expensive fairly new phones to the latest model.

Now, all such conversations are squeezed into a series of novels meant for teenagers and nicknamed "teen lit".

The common themes of such literature are dating, girlfriends, boyfriends, getting fat and going on a diet, helping friends and parents. A teen-lit book looks more like a published diary than a novel.

The diary trend began when online journals, or blogs, began to flood the internet. Suddenly, diaries were no longer secret. The day-to-day life of one person became the reading matter of the next.

Thanks to this phenomenon, most teen-lit novels are written in diary format.

Nobody knows for sure when teenagers first started to look for teen lit in booksellers, but the publication in 2000 of The Princess Diaries was a major milestone for the genre.

The novel, written by English author Meg Cabot, was a hit around the world and has been translated into dozens of languages including French, Polish, Spanish, Danish Czech and Indonesian. Cabot has published sequels to the book and The Princess Diary has been made into a film series.

Inspired by the success of the book, many writers around the world, mostly teenagers, penned their own works, drawing from their lives.

This country, which until recently only had a small number of female writers, suddenly had hundreds of budding female authors.

Fifteen-year-old Nita told The Jakarta Post that she had a collection of teen-lit books, written both by foreigners and locals.

"I like reading them because it's light reading, you don't have to concentrate too hard, and the things inside the book really happen in our world," she said.

She said her favorite teen-lit book was The Princess Diaries because it was a funny story. In the book, a young girl named Mia Thermopolis suddenly finds out she is a princess from a faraway country. She then has to come to terms with her origins, though she does not look or behave a bit like a real princess.

"I have the video, CDs and the book series," Nita said.

Meanwhile, Nita's friend Dani said she preferred Indonesian teen-lit novels to foreign ones as the stories were more familiar.

"The teen lifestyles described in Indonesian teen lit is very similar to ours. We have the same school, same schoolmates, parents with strict regulations, how to deal with boys..." Dani said.

Her favorite books are Fairish, written by Esti Kinasih, and Me versus High Heels, written by Maria Ardelia. Fairish has been made into a TV series while Me versus High Heels has been made into a film.

Judging by the high number of teen-lit writers today, there will be enough new titles coming out to see today's teenagers through until adulthood.