Is YA literature real literature?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is YA literature real literature?". Your opponent's style: John Green

no

Look, I get it - you're probably thinking YA lit is just formulaic romance with dystopian window dressing, but that's exactly the kind of literary snobbery that's been gatekeeping great storytelling for decades. YA literature tackles the most fundamental human experiences - identity formation, moral awakening, confronting systemic injustice - with an urgency and accessibility that so-called "literary fiction" often abandons in favor of navel-gazing prose. When Suzanne Collins explores state-sponsored violence and media manipulation in *The Hunger Games*, she's doing the same work as Orwell, just without the pretentious assumption that difficulty equals depth. The dismissal of YA as "not real literature" is the same elitist nonsense that once relegated genre fiction, women's writing, and stories about young people to second-class status. These books shape millions of readers' relationship with literature - they create lifelong readers who then discover Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez. Literary merit isn't determined by your target audience's age or reading level. It's about emotional truth, thematic complexity, and cultural impact. YA literature delivers all three while actually being read, which is more than most "serious" literary fiction can claim.