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Worth Fighting 4
by Jarold Imes

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"Why I Write Teen Fiction" by Jarold Imes

 

I can remember self-publishing my first book as if it were yesterday. I was a nineteen year old student at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and my first book, Never Too Much (formerly A Walk In My Shoes) had just been released in print, after a successful stay as an e-book the year before. I had written about four young men who had to face challenging life issues: one was a teenage father, another had sexuality issues, the third was in jail and the fourth tried to commit suicide. These four young men not only had to face life altering challenges and maintain their friendship.

I was excited about the release of my first book. I had written for adults in hopes that they would read the book and discuss the issues with their teens. I had hoped that I would be embraced as a young African American male author who was writing about current teen issues. I didn’t take into consideration that I could be wrong.

To say that I was hated on would be a strong understatement… and maybe a harsh way to describe the publishing industry’s “reception” of me. I have always been a no-nonsense strong willed individual and that is a turn off to many adults twice and three times my age. I was heavily criticized for spelling and grammatical errors and the fact that the adults do not have a strong presence in the lives of the teens I write about. In 2001, readers were beginning to accept self-published authors and accept that we could be talented. But if you were self published and had one error in your books that was noticeable… then reviewers made sure that I had “many” errors and said whatever they could say to trash your book. Never mind that a publication by a major publishing house had errors in them too, but because I decided to try it on my own, many reviewers made sure that I stayed on my own too.

It’s funny when I think about it now because the teens who got a hold of my book told me they could relate to everything I wrote about in Never Too Much. Having been closer to the teen’s age than the adults I attempted to write for, they understood where I was coming from. They could relate to the fact that they did not spend as much time with their parents and their parents had spent with theirs. Finding something positive to do after school was and even six years later, still is a challenge for a lot of these teens.

The biggest issue that I had with my review readers is the same issue a lot of teens have with their parents. Some reviewers don’t read my books; they decided they don’t like this or they don’t like that or they don’t like me and they look for things wrong with my book instead of reading my book. Adults do the same thing with their children… they don’t ask them how their day was or try to take an active (don’t confuse this with a dictatorship) role with their children. They try to apply a year 1964 solution to a 2006/2007 year problem and then have the audacity to wonder why it doesn’t work. Adults typically look at teenagers as children who should be concerned with Barney and Friends as opposed to worrying about if they can go to school and NOT have to worry about getting shot. Adults don’t realize that we have twelve and thirteen year olds who can easily pass for sixteen, seventeen and eighteen and are very in touch with their sexuality and sex appeal. Adults don’t realize that the current teens are being brought into a very materialistic society that attempts to put everyone in a box: if you are gay, you go over here; if you live in the projects, you go over here; if you are academically gifted go over here. I’m sorry but I don’t nor have I ever fit into any kind of box. Like many of the current teens, I can go from one end to the spectrum to the next and still make it back to my safe spot in the middle. A lot of “adults” can’t do that. I’m not a single minded individual who believes in my way or the highway… now that I’m saved I attempt to try God’s way first or at least take direction from someone else.

Today’s teens may not have had to go through segregation… but they still face race issues. Today, our teens not have the “traditional” black vs. white but the black vs. Hispanic race issues are growing in our schools. In the western half of the country in particular, there is a dissent of black vs. Oriental too. Our teens who are multicultural sometimes don’t know where they fit in and more times than not they default to the black culture cause they feel we are most accepting of them.

Even though I will be twenty five soon, I have developed the maturity it takes to be an “adult” but I work with enough teenagers to understand the issues they face as a teen. I talk to the teens in the schools and in the communities to find out how much my teenage years are like there’s and how different they are starting to become.

I write to give teens a voice… an authentic voice to the cusp of my generation. I write to encourage the youth to stand tall and face whatever obstacle or opposition that stands in their way. But most importantly, I write to give love, hope and light to this generation… so they can carry the torch for the next.

Jarold Imes is the author of the Hold On Be Strong Teen Series as well as several titles for adults. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina with his family.

         Copyright 2006 - 2008 Abednego's Free, LLC & Jarold Imes