…and they’ll offend you and you and YOU! Well, if I’m doing my job right they will. There are books in the library that offend everyone because there are books FOR everyone. It’s like going down the rabbit hole — follow me around that circular logic, my friends. Wheee!
Just in time for Banned Books Week, a coworker sent me an email about this crazy-crazy happening that took place over the weekend. I didn’t hear about until now because my computer has died and it just sits there, taunting me, like a big, silver paperweight….holding my music hostage!! *sniffle* Anyway…
SPEAK up for SPEAK!!!
An associate professor of management at Missouri State University, Wesley Scroggins, has written a diatribe about how Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson is basically soft porn and should be removed from the school libraries in the district where he lives.
Yes, he’s talking about THAT Speak, which ten years on is still an extremely popular young adult novel. I’ve mentioned it in this blog before: briefly in a review and as a book that’s been made into a film – incidentally, the film stars Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame).
So, here is Ms. Anderson’s response.
…and please, oh please, play the video of her reading her poem “Listen”, which she created based on reader response to Speak.
Now, I took a sharp left turn when I could have been a teacher, so I’m going to go to an expert on this one.
Here is an extremely well-reasoned and literary rebuttal to Mr. Scroggins’ “willful misreading” (I like that, that says it so well) by Philip Nel, Professor of English and Director of Kansas State University’s Program in Children’s Literature.
This story has been all over the interwebs and Twitter has kinda exploded (Follow the thread #SpeakLoudly) and Ms. Anderson and Sarah Ockler, whose book Twenty Boy Summer is also being challenged have just done interviews with the paper that printed the initial opinion piece. (he’s also going after Slaughterhouse Five, but Kurt Vonnegut can’t fight back…) So anyway, keep an eye out for that article.
Here Ms. Ockler explains a bit more about the situation (who the challenge/opinion piece writer is, why this is a bigger deal than just the removal of one or two books from a school district’s library, and how you can get involved if you want to do something more). Apparently this is the same area where another school board recently removed Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian.
I just have to say…this reminds me so much of the craziness that happened with Sarah Dessen’s book, Just Listen. In Florida, an upset parent stood up in front of school board members and began reading portions of the date-rape scene, which by necessity is horrific.
Yet instead of saying that yes, that particular scene was unsavory but necessary and that there is more to the book than just that scene, the parent and the school board member running the meeting painted the whole book with the same brush, disregarded the fact that the book was important for so many reasons, and that perhaps, by describing that situation, other teenage girls might recognize that a situation they’d been subjected to was non-consensual…or they might recognize a situation getting bad and get themselves out of it before they are hurt.
*okay…deep breath* Go here for Ms. Dessen’s response at the time.
Earlier today I set up the Banned Books Display for the teens in my library. Every year someone will inevitably say, “…but no one really bans books anymore, right?” Um, no. …and people still hold book burnings, too (that Qu’ran incident is only the latest and greatest), though they’re mostly symbolic and feel-good events, “Throw another Harry Potter on the barbie!” Perfectly fine, yay First Amendment rights and all that…they can burn them as long as they bought them…no worries.
What I worry about is when somebody other than a child or teenager’s parents comes in and takes books away from those teens. The theme for this year’s Banned Books Week is particularly apt, “Think for yourself and let others do the same.”
Putting up big walls around teenagers will not keep them safe, for someday they must go out into that world. Refusing to let them see the reality of choices, even bad choices (for example, what can happen to you when you’re addicted to methamphetamines like the main character in Ellen Hopkin’s book Crank), leaves them vulnerable.
Hopkins, who you may or may not have heard was dis-invited from a book festival earlier this year, says it so well in her Manifesto: “Ignorance is no armor.” Please read the whole Manifesto.
So, I’ve gone on a bit, but please, share with me and those people who read this blog…have you read Speak, or Just Listen, or any one of the top hundred books banned this decade?
Please, #SpeakLoudly. The next book facing a challenge might be one you need to read.
Some folks around the blogosphere who are Speaking out for Speak:
YA author Jo Knowles
http://jbknowles.livejournal.com/390702.html
YA author Cecil Castellucci
http://castellucci.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/speaking-up-for-speak/
Always,
Missy
![NRL CSI 2[2]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7361/8720885955_6054589a0f_t.jpg "NRL CSI 2[2]")
I’ve read Speak. I thought it was quite moving and not at all pornographic. Some people like to make a lot of noise.
Thanks for commenting, Vicki. It’s an emotional story and a topic that gets folk riled up.
Always,
Missy
Thanks for posting about this. The support and encouragement from librarians and readers everywhere has been overwhelming. I don’t think it’s quite what Scroggins intended, but perhaps he underestimates the book-loving (and free choice-loving) population.
Sincerely,
Sarah Ockler
Author of Twenty Boy Summer
Thank you very much for your comment, Ms. Ockler.
Perhaps I didn’t say it in the best manner, but I do honestly believe in providing materials for everyone in my library. Keep writing and my teens will keep reading. Thanks again.
Always,
Missy
Great post. I didn’t know Just Listen had been banned, but now that you mention it, that really doesn’t surprise me. Ignorance knows no bounds, and it is truly a horrifying realization that there are actually people like that in the world. Thank you for having the courage to Speak Out! It’s great to see the book world banding together like this!
Thank you for commenting, Casey.
This is why we have policies about challenges to library materials, so that patrons’ concerns may be taken seriously. I may have been a little passionate in the post, but I do believe in that system. It has been good to see the book community (including the teen readers of Speak) come together.
Always,
Missy
I had a discussion last night with my mother who asserted indignantly that a certain political figure thought Americans were stupid. I think its true. They ARE stupid more often than we would realize. More often than is good for us.
Any time Americans fail to think critically about what they are told, they are being stupid. Willfully. Simply because it is easier than actually dusting off the old brain cells and forming a considered opinion of their own. That is why propaganda works.
I fear stupidity will win out in the Republic (MO) school district. I hope not, but I fear it. It would not be the first time.
To the people of Republic specifically, and America in general I ask:
Do you want to be blindly led about by someone who wants to do your thinking for you?
Why did God give us a brain if he didn’t want us to use it?
Thinking critically never hurt anyone, adult or child.
In the hands of a critical reader, Speak says volumes about women and their need to take a strong role in their own lives. Those who would want to keep us passive and subjugated will also want to keep us from books that can free us from that condition.
Books like Speak.
So don’t be stupid. Read the book–in its entirety–and THINK about it before you try to keep it from people who may need its important message.
Thank you for your comment, Robin.
I think you make a good point about needing to read the book in its entirety.
Rather than just flip through the book and cherry-pick certain passages to take out of context, read the whole thing and then, from that frame of reference, express your concern with a particular book.
Take, for example the books mentioned in this post, “Speak” and “Just Listen.” Both have at least one scene of sexual violence being done to the main character. Whether it happens on the page or in a flashback (the character’s memories), the descriptions are at times hard to read (or hear, if the passage is being read aloud at a school board meeting).
By reading the entire book, and putting those scenes in context, parents who are concerned about their teens reading a book with a rape scene also see that there is a message of healing, help, hope, and support for those characters in that story (and depending on the story, justice for the victim and punishment for the person who committed the crime). The sexual images and words aren’t gratuitous or meant to titillate the reader, but to make them aware of what a character is going through.
…but if that is still not enough to assuage parental concern, there are many more books in the library for their teenager. That’s the beauty of it. There is something for everyone.
Agreed! Critical thinking is greatly ignored in America today. It’s incredible to observe that the High School curriculum requires 4 years of English, Science, and Math, yet won’t even suffer 1 semester for Critical thinking. It ought to be manditory. By the time we get to college, we’ve already made a lot of illogical and ridiculous decisions.
As this relates to book banning, the necessity of choices in human existance is being undermineded. Character only develiopes when faced with the difficult choices. I could talk all day on this, but I think I’ll hang it up here.
Thanks for your comment, Gina. Sorry it took me a while to get back here and let it through.
I like how you put it…that character develops when faced with difficult choices. I think this is true in fiction (a character) and real life (the character of a person).
When a teen has an opportunity to live vicariously through the pages of a book, they have a chance to observe a character, think about what they might do if they found themselves in a similar situation, and then go on with their lives…taking whatever they will from that interaction. I think it’s facinating.
So it goes.
Thanks for reading the blog!
Always,
Missy
In my opinion you are mistaken. I can defend the position. Write to me in PM, we will communicate.