Aronson points out that nonfiction is a genre within Y.A., and that there is a certain amount of mixed-race writing reflected in the category. There are also reported books about immigrant teenagers, for example. Those books tend to come before the novelized versions. But, he says, "The cycles are bound to go faster now, because we’re in a faster world."

It's also possible that some things have gotten worse before they've gotten better, in adult as well as Y.A. markets. As Myers said, "Back in the '70s I could name offhand ten black male writers writing adult fiction. But you can’t do it today. We’re in the recession, books are a discretionary item. Apparently so is diversity. Poor people don’t order books. You need the marketplace to change. It’s very, very difficult." Myers cites three markets for books: bookstores, which follow economic demographics; the library market, which follows geographic demographics, and the educational market, in which teachers make choices. "You don’t find black books in bookstores," he said. "Go outside of New York and there’s just nothing there." In terms of geography, he gave the example of Texas, a huge market, but "people in Texas are very, very conservative, so you’re not going to get too much black or Latino stuff in Texas, and you’re rarely going to get any kind of gay or lesbian literature." The education market, however, is where the change is occurring: "There are more and more African-American teachers, and they’re asking for books," he said. With two main markets not addressing the problem, however, there's a further conundrum, which is that writers who might want to write non-white books simply can't make enough money to sustain their careers. Publishing houses often have "one or two" writers of a particular ethnic (non-white) background, says Booth. Myers adds, "If I write a book that sells 10,000 copies, I think of someone like my friend Jack Gantos, his may sell 30,000 copies. His perceived market is much broader. It’s a demographic thing, which may pressure me out of the market. Many of the writers I came in with weren’t making enough money."

In last week's Y.A. for Grownups, we talked about what "Young Adult" means. In writing today's piece, a sentence from that previous post kept coming to mind. Exploring what Y.A. means for the Young Adult Library Services Association, author and former YALSA president Michael Cart wrote the following:

YALSA finds another of the chief values of young adult literature in its capacity to offer readers an opportunity to see themselves reflected in its pages. Young adulthood is, intrinsically, a period of tension. On the one hand young adults have an all-consuming need to belong. But on the other, they are also inherently solipsistic, regarding themselves as being unique, which – for them — is not cause for celebration but, rather, for despair. For to be unique is to be unlike one’s peers, to be “other,” in fact. And to be “other” is to not belong but, instead, to be outcast. Thus, to see oneself in the pages of a young adult book is to receive the reassurance that one is not alone after all, not other, not alien but, instead, a viable part of a larger community of beings who share a common humanity.

As Aronson said, "in Y.A., you’re trying to speak directly to the reader, for the reader to feel that jolt, that impact, that’s me." Myers shared the story of an 8-year-old girl who came up to him praising his picture book about a dog that plays the blues. "I said, 'You like the blues?'" he told us. "She said no. I said, 'You like dogs?' She said no. I said, 'What did you like?' She said, it looks like me.' If you have a black kid on the cover, black kids will pick it up faster."