A New Debate-Focused YA Novel Complements A HONY Sensation

It was a coincidence just too rich to ignore.

Jen Doll’s new young adult novel, That’s Debatable, follows two high school debaters navigating the sometimes awesome, sometimes treacherous world of debate. Humans of New York, the popular photoblog run by Brandon Stanton, had recently featured the hugely popular story of the Brooklyn Debate League (BDL), run by a teacher who had just poured his life savings into his passion.

Emails were sent. Connections were made. And on Wednesday, what might seem an unlikely pop culture nexus centered on debate will take place at Greenlight Bookstore, where Doll will be in conversation with the founding members of the Brooklyn Debate League, including Jonathan Conyers, the focus of the HONY feature, and K.M. “DiCo” DiColandrea, the aforementioned teacher, who got Conyers involved in debate.

“We talk about how to change the world, and they’re actually doing it through these human relationships,” says Doll. “The relationships you can form through debate can help save people. I wanted them to be involved in the event so that people could be more aware of these things that are happening right around us.”

Doll’s book deals with things that BDL students encounter daily. The protagonist, Millie, is a national-caliber debater who nonetheless encounters sexism. The author notes that this hasn’t changed appreciably since her own high school debate time two decades ago, when a teacher advised her never to show her knees.

“The statistics on women and girls who stay in debate after a year is less than boys who will stay in debate,” Doll says. “Girls are constantly being harassed over the same crap, like, ‘your voice is too shrill,’ ‘you’re being bitchy’—you know, the same stuff that we hear as women, like you can’t say what you think or you’re called a Karen.”

The Brooklyn Debate League, which raised $1.3 million through a GoFundMe after the HONY feature, has tried to create safe places for those students traditionally underrepresented in debate, including girls, students of color, LGBTQIA+ students and others. Participation in debate remains overwhelmingly white and male. BDL hopes to change that, something Doll’s Millie would definitely applaud.

“BDL was coming up with ways to subsidize and give resources to people who don’t have these resources. And by putting them in these spaces, and by giving them their voice, you can’t deny them,” says Conyers, who now coaches in the program with his former teacher.

“I can’t tell you the number of kids that come to their first tournament and say, ‘I can’t walk into that room.’ And it’s not just because of the stage fright but because they say, ‘I’ve never spoken in front of a room of white kids before.’ I have had kids say that to me,” says DiColandrea. He notes that, as a white coach, he can’t understand exactly what his kids are going through, but he does try to create an atmosphere that helps them navigate the experience. “We’re building a culture and building a community where kids just really feel empowered to take on challenges that can be really personally intimidating,” he says.

One way he can relate to kids is sharing his own experience of transitioning. “I try to model what it is like to be vulnerable,” DiColandrea says. “I have the opportunity as a trans person on every single first day of school to have an incredibly personal and vulnerable conversation with kids because they need to know what to call me. Right? When I taught Jonathan, I was Miss Dico. I’m not ‘Miss’ anymore.”

In her book, Doll has her protagonist even practice hugs for competitions to “get it right” and not alienate traditionally minded judges by pulling away too soon or appearing not to enjoy the hug. “I just thought about how I felt as a girl debater, and how sometimes men would hug you for too long when they gave you the trophy,” she explains.

She’s eager to discuss these issues with the BDL members at Wednesday’s event and hear their thoughts on other things she explores in the book, such as the intellectual approach to debate (is it OK to argue for something you personally think is wrong?).

The BDL members are eager to get into the new school year and continue building on things they’ve already taught their young debaters. Brendan Gorman, a BDL coach who teaches at Xaverian High School in Brooklyn, says that while kids do care a lot about the outcome of a debate—everyone wants to win—they gain so much more than victories. “It empowers them,” he says. “We’re starting to focus so much more on than on who gets the trophies and who won the round. Sometimes we almost forget to get to that.”

Wednesday’s event will include an overview of the BDL program from Gorman and a mock debate with some BDL students as well as reflections from Doll, Conyers and DiColandrea on their debate years. There will be time at the end for questions, too. Doll can’t wait.

“I’d love to ask some questions of the students,” she says. “They’re the ones I really want to hear from.”