Feminist Critique of Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun

The Michael L. Printz Award and Young Adult Literature

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 are given breadth through the application of 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 toward 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 a facilitator of healing in the reader's own life just as the plot moves the characters through their own healing processes. This paper argues that I'll Give You the Sun is deserving of the Printz Award and that, 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. Edwards 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 for conveying messages that could help shape, guide, and reinforce values that 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 award aims 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 standout talent that highlights real-life issues faced by young adults in today's world. Joining such titles as the 2007 winner American Born Chinese and the 2002 winner A 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 novel's most important theme: healing through the sharing of experience. This theme is significant for teens, who face many life-changing issues at a particularly vulnerable time 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 reason, Nelson's novel places itself front and center at the heart of a young generation's primary concerns. By dealing with these concerns through the characters of Noah and Jude in a serious yet realistic manner, Nelson demonstrates why she is most deserving of the Printz Award for this book.

Subverting Patriarchal Norms Through Marginalized Characters

First and foremost, from a feminist criticism perspective, the novel subverts traditional hegemonic gender norms by reversing expectations and elevating two marginalized types — the homosexual and the female — to central and commanding roles. Even the mother, who dies tragically in the novel, goes against type: in most popular culture it is expected that the male would be the one to "cheat," but in this novel, in a Kate Chopin fashion, it is the mother who takes a lover. The death of the parent 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 contending with puberty, sexuality, attraction, fitting in, standing out, finding one's place in the world, and petty jealousies — Jude jealously submits only her own application to the art school when her father tells her to submit her brother's as well — they must now also contend with the process of healing (Masquelier 48). Fortunately, once begun, this process encapsulates all the other difficulties the young protagonists face: 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 protagonists must essentially climb this mountain of grief on their own terms further refutes the status quo male as patriarchal protector and guide: 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 without shame. The healing salvo that ultimately brings the two siblings back together is also related to the feminist ideal, in which traditional sexual norms are invalidated and new norms are welcomed. Noah's father, the man made of "truck parts," does not judge his son harshly, and Noah, with his "new normal" family, sets sail like the biblical Noah in their own houseboat. The boat is not populated with animals, however; it is populated with the new ideals of feminist theory — the seeds to be planted in the new millennium, just as the biblical Noah renewed and regenerated life in the postdiluvian world. Noah (with his boyfriend), Jude (with her sexual empowerment), and their father (relinquishing the old patriarchal position to the next generation and its new sexually egalitarian dictums) together form a family in which equality between the sexes is facilitated and the female is exalted to a matriarchal position that eclipses the old patriarchal order.

The unexpected death of the matriarch destroys the already unraveling relationship between the twins. It comes at a point when the mother is already embarking on her own journey with the intention of severing her connection to her husband — the ultimate act of feminist assertion, a woman's prerogative taking precedence over traditional norms such as matrimonial obligations and vows. She is Edna of The Awakening, cutting loose from Old World values; yet, like Edna, she is not allowed to survive the breach. Thus she serves as the feminist prototype of the novel — writing a book on how Michelangelo was gay and thereby laying the foundation for her own son's sexual and artistic journey, standing for sexual liberation, acting as the high priestess of the house, communing with the spirit of their dead grandmother, being a breadwinner, and even issuing forth a new code of morality by her own example. She functions as a martyr for feminism — neither twin really accepts her affair as something positive, yet in her path is Jude to follow, quite literally, as Jude befriends her mother's lover and comes to understand and appreciate what the two had shared.

Art, Identity, and the Transcendence of Gender Norms

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

The issue of healing is nonetheless complex, as Nelson illustrates through the very structure of the book. Told not from a single narrative perspective but from two — a female and a male perspective — the novel underscores how differently individuals can cope with grief. As the bildungsroman tradition demands, each protagonist must travel an inward journey of self-definition, but Nelson's innovation is to run those journeys in parallel, at different ages, so that their convergence at the novel's end becomes structurally inevitable and emotionally earned. From a post-structuralist point of view, the dichotomy of the twins' opposite perspectives is made all the more ambiguous and uncertain by their meeting in the middle on the boat at the novel's close. Nelson's primary themes, however, remain firmly grounded in the feminist perspective, even as a post-structuralist critique could equally be made of the novel.

Conclusion: Healing, Feminism, and the New Millennium

Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun is a YA novel that explores the experience of grief, growing, and healing, and from a feminist critique it offers an example of how marginalized persons can supplant the status quo male in the new millennium. The novel also acts as an avenue of healing for the reader, who can experience his or her own catharsis through the development of the plot. Through the characters of Noah and Jude, Nelson provides a new perspective on what it means to be outside the norm yet still in control of one's life. The twins come to a new understanding of self-identity and their place in the world by taking two different paths through the course of their grief, illustrating how there is no single right way to cope with loss but rather a multitude of ways that are unique for each person.