Teenage bedrooms by Jo Witek and Juliette Mas, published by La Martinière jeunesse: an immersion into the intimacy of today’s youth through around twenty portraits.
The full interview with Jo Witek (15 minutes)
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This time, don’t bother knocking, the doors of these Teenage bedrooms open wide for us, thanks to Jo Witek. A children’s author, her new book is not a novel, nor really a documentary, it is a kind of transgenerational UFO, to be read by adolescents as well as adults.
For this project, Jo Witek is accompanied by a photographer, Juliette Mas. Both of them worked for 4 years in contact with teenagers, with an unprecedented current events backdrop since they started during the lockdown, in March 2020. The first meetings having been by “video”, the idea quickly came to make podcasts with the voices of teenagers to accompany this book.
They are from Gers, Hérault or the Parisian suburbs. They range from Zoé who wants to do theater to Émilie in her gothic bubble, from Nour who would like more unexpected in her life to Liam a repentant geek. There is also Mathis, his garden, his bubble and the planet… Conversations are perhaps even more intense: those with Souleymane, Mamadou, Fahad, Nawaz, Oumar, the courageous ones who crossed the Mediterranean. Their testimonies put the record straight, it must be said.
Young people have a lot to give to our society. We absolutely have to listen to them and that is the heart of the project. Can we still get along? That was my fear at the beginning: can we communicate with this very special generation – one of the first post-digital, post-COVID generations – and in a difficult geopolitical atmosphere? Do we have the same references? In the end, the result proves that yes, in any case, with these 20 young people. We have arrived together at a possible future, in these teenagers’ bedrooms, a future to share with readers.
This is a book that stands out for the authenticity, depth, generosity of these young people and their trust. Jo Witek and Juliette Mas were able to receive all of this, between emotions and smiles, and it is quite extraordinary!
An exhibition linked to Teenager’s rooms will open its doors from November 27 to December 2, in Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, as part of the Salon du Livre et de la Presse Jeunesse. Another exhibition will be held in May 2025 with the Paris City Hall.
Jo Witek has written around fifty books and has received numerous literary awards, including a special mention from the Vendredi Prize in 2019 for First stop before the future and the Babelio youth prize in 2021 for I’m 14 and this is not good newstwo novels published by Actes Sud.
The full interview with Jo Witek (15 minutes) can be found at the top of this page.
