¶ … New Identity through Healing in Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun: A Feminist Critique I'll Give You the Sun is a Michael L. Printz Award-winning young adult novel by Jandy Nelson that examines the complexities of coming of age, dealing with grief and loss, burgeoning sexuality, and healing. It gives a dual-gender perspective -- that of fraternal twins Noah and Jude, and from a feminist critique it offers an example of how the oppressions of patriarchal society are overturned by the subversion of the male status quo and the valorization of the oppressed (in this case, the valorization of the homosexual Noah and the female Jude). Throughout the narrative, the growing pains, experience of loss, and the concomitant healing process is given breadth through application of the feminist critique, which provides the framework for how Jude overcomes her initial negative sexual experience at a young age to grow into a confident and capable young woman leading both herself and her family towards a healthier frame of mind. The same can be said of Noah, who subverts the traditional male norm by openly embracing a homosexual lifestyle in the face of social and familial pressures. By steering attention and power away from the patriarch, Nelson crafts a novel that explores themes of trauma, desolation, youthful exploration, and overcoming obstacles, and that acts as facilitator of healing in the reader's own life just as the plot moves the characters of the novel through their own healing processes. This paper will show why I'll Give You the Sun is deserving of the Michael L. Printz Award and how through the lens of feminist criticism, the novel elevates marginalized types (the homosexual and the female) to a more central and powerful position by means of a tragedy-healing paradigm, where loss creates both a challenge and an opportunity for self-identification, growth, and healing.

Michael "Mike" Printz was a high school librarian in Topeka, Kansas and a consultant with Econo-Clad Books. He held a position on the Best Books for Young Adults Committee as well as the Margaret A. Edward Award Committee and was a strong advocate of "finding the right book for the right student at the right time" ("Who Was Mike Printz"). For Mike, young adult literature held an important place in the lives of young readers: it was a powerful tool to get across powerful messages that could help shape, guide, steer and reinforce values that the young readers would carry with them for the rest of their lives. Mike's death in 1996 prompted the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) to recognize his contribution to the promotion of young adult literature by granting an annual award in his honor to "the best titles in young adult literature in a given calendar year" ("The Michael L. Printz Award Policies and Procedures"). Sponsored by Booklist of the American Library Association, the aim of the award is to draw attention to the best titles in the YA genre, to support the genre by promoting its writers, to give special attention to the social value of YA literature, to grow its readership, and to represent YALSA as a credible authority on YA books.

YALSA's selection of Nelson's novel is thus rooted in a tradition of focusing on stand-out talent that highlights real-life issues faced by young adults in today's world. Joining such titles as 2007's winner American Born Chinese and 2002's Step from Heaven, I'll Give you the Sun tackles the enduring questions of loss, suffering, identity and healing from the perspective of two adolescents seeking to make their way in the world. In this sense it is a bildungsroman, but its unique narrative style (alternating between the two twins' perspectives at different ages) gives the novel a fresh and original feel and an insightful look into how a feminist structure supports the overall direction of the novel's most important theme -- healing through the sharing of experience. This theme is a significant one that teens can appreciate as they face many life changing issues at a particularly vulnerable time in their lives when they are just beginning to understand themselves and how they want to project themselves in public. As Suzanne Mills Crawford shows, high school students most relate to themes that deal with contemporary issues -- and from the feminist perspective there is no more contemporary and pressing issue for millennials than the questioning of the male status quo, human sexuality, and women's empowerment. For this...

By dealing with these concerns through the characters of Noah and Jude in a serious yet realistic manner, Nelson shows why she is most deserving of the Printz Award for this book. So just what does this book show that would make it so important for young readers?
First and foremost, according to a feminist criticism perspective, the novel subverts the traditional hegemonic gender norms by reversing expectations and elevating two marginalized types in literature to central and commanding roles -- the homosexual and the female. Even the mother, who dies tragically in the novel, leaving a large hole in the lives of the main characters, goes against type (as in most popular culture arenas it is expected that the male would be the one to "cheat" but in this novel it is the mother who takes a lover, Kate Chopin fashion). The death of the parent, however, serves as a plot device that challenges the young protagonists to find the strength within themselves and within their circle of family and peers to overcome the pain of grief and loss that her death forces upon them. Already having to contend with issues like puberty, sexuality, attraction, fitting in, standing out, finding one's place in the world, and dealing with petty jealousies (Jude jealously submits only her own application to the art school when she is told by her father to submit her brother's as well), they now must contend with the process of healing (Masquelier 48). Fortunately, this process once begun encapsulates all the other difficulties that the young protagonists are facing: by dealing directly with their mother's untimely death they are compelled to deal with themselves and the world around them. Accepting that which they cannot change allows them to accept themselves, to take responsibility for their actions, to own up, to confess and to forgive. That the two young heroes of the novel must essentially climb this mountain of grief on their own terms allows for further refutation of the status quo male as patriarchal protector and guider: Jude does her growing in isolation and alongside her mentor (who happens to be her mother's "forbidden" lover) and Noah does it by embracing his homosexuality and not being ashamed of it.

Likewise through their immersion in the world of art, both Noah and Jude reach a plateau that is transcendental in a way, and one that also reorients the reader towards accepting a less status quo variation on life (Noah is not a sports jock and Jude is the fearless, independent female). Art (not sports or politics) helps the two to bridge the gap between their immediate environment and place in the world and where they want to be. As Jeannine Jeffries points out, it is Nelson's preoccupation with her own fascination for the art world and for the issues facing contemporary society that prompts her to make her protagonists artists who undermine the traditional hegemonic gender norms. By showing how they are not only not defeated by grief but how they are able to overcome grief, heal and grow into capable young adults, Nelson gives an example of how millennials need not fear being different from the traditional status quo of patriarchal society but can rather, from the perspective of the feminist ideal, reach their potential and value as human beings.

The issue of healing is nonetheless a complex one, as Nelson illustrates. Indeed, the very structure of the book hints at this complexity. Not told from a single narrative perspective -- but from two: a female and a male perspective -- the novel underscores how different coping with grief can be for everyone. For instance, Noah copes by seeking a new life amongst new friends. His dissatisfaction with Brian's inability to open up in public about his own sexuality causes him no end of grief in and of itself, but Noah transforms from the isolated, introverted version of himself at the beginning of the novel to the extroverted, socially-participating version of himself at the end of the novel (he engages in a number of extra-curricular activities, etc.). Indeed, at the beginning of the novel it is almost as though Noah is in need of a catapulting event that will launch him into his own journey, as he is at the beginning of the book skulking in caves and shouting to God, "What the fuck! " (Nelson 14) in exasperation at the difficulties he is facing in his own adolescence. Noah identifies…