Extra Credit Assignment - Liren Xue

Apologies in advance if the emojis don't show up on Windows. Here is a key showing all of the ones I used.

In order, they represent 👩🏽‍🔬, 🤷🏽, 🙆🏻, and 👵

Title

The novel is titled 🙆🏻 🤷🏽‍Love and here is the picture I put together. It features emojis since the story is told largely through emojis, but the title includes the word "Love" in normal text since, by the end of the novel, the main characters transition from exclusively communicating in emoji to also using words.

Back Cover

🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ is a bold, modern love story presented using emojis. 🤷🏽‍ is a senior in at Lakeview High School on her way to an Ivy League school. She has grown up obeying her single mother’s every command and is going to be the valedictorian of her graduating class. According to her mom’s wishes, 🤷🏽‍ will become a doctor, end of discussion. She is shy and studious, but secretly brimming with unfulfilled passion. 🙆🏻‍ is boy unsure about what he will do after he graduates. He’s not even sure if he’ll graduate at all. His parents are both dead and he has no one else in his life other than his loving but increasingly senile grandmother. All he knows and loves is dancing. And, yet, after running headfirst into each other after one fateful fourth period, these two, wildly different as they are, fall madly in love.

What will happen in this modern day Romeo and Juliet? Can 🙆🏻‍ find a place for himself in 🤷🏽‍’s preplanned life? Can 🤷🏽‍ help get 🙆🏻‍ back on track and into college? Does he even need to go? What will happen when these two totally different worlds collide? Find out in this uniquely stylized novel.

“A masterful glance into a Generation Z relationship” – The Woo-hoo Yorker

“As an expert on teenage romances, I think this novel will change the face of the genre” – Juan Spleen

“Xue’s second novel is streets ahead of his first. The characters are deep and relatable, the style is unique, and the plot is perfectly twisted. A true masterpiece” – Tamora Pierce Hawthorne

Pitch

🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ offers a unique glimpse into Generation Z relationships. The story is presented as a series of screenshots of text messages. In a way, it is like a graphic novel. At the beginning, the main characters only communicate to each other using emojis. This will be relatable to adolescents today since it follows the trend of a decreasingly literary world. Teens will be able to understand the nuances implied by each emoji in a way that their parents won’t and the novel will give them something to call their own.

The high school love drama also provides a relatable, appealing context so readers will want to follow along with the story even if they don’t fully understand the emojis. 🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ is a much-needed book in today’s adolescent market because it provides its target audience a source of validation for the way they communicate. By providing a story told mostly in emojis, 🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ helps to normalize Generation Z’s style of communication and pushes back against the commonly-held adult belief that it is inherently inferior. The novel will empower adolescent readers by pushing back against the belief that adults are always right. However, the novel will also be didactic, since, as the relationship between 🤷🏽‍ and 🙆🏻‍ becomes more and more intimate, they begin to realize that they also need to use words to express emotions that emojis can’t truly capture. This will help guide teenagers through the transition into adulthood because the transition from emojis to actual text will mirror the aging process—as one gets older, he or she gets a clearer, more detailed version of the world, and generalizations stop being as useful.

The novel builds a tradition laid out by one of the earliest novels, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. Richardson’s novel is presented as a series of letters, and he uses the contents of each letter to tell a story that educates his audience on the rewards conferred upon a fifteen-year old girl for being pious and chaste. 🙆🏻 🤷🏽Love‍‍ offers a more modern interpretation of this idea since texting is a modern-day analogue to letter-writing, and the story will also include didactic messages. Essentially, it will emulate Richardson’s style of teaching through example. 

Main Character Blurbs

🤷🏽‍ – 🤷🏽‍ is a studious, reserved teen headed to college. She is ambitious, but has a hard time standing up for herself. She loves puppies and her favorite food is pineapples.

🙆🏻‍ – 🙆🏻‍ is a wild, restless soul. His life doesn’t have any direction at the moment, but in his heart he feels a burning passion for dancing.

👵 – 👵 is 🙆🏻‍’s guardian. She took him in after his parents’ deaths and loves him more than anything in the world. She is sweet and caring though occasionally overbearing.

👩🏽‍🔬‍ – 👩🏽‍🔬‍ is 🤷🏽‍’s mother. She is strict and busy all the time with her job as a chemist. She thinks she knows what’s best for 🤷🏽‍ and won’t take “no” for an answer.