more library stuff
Went to Lauren Myracle's talk. Not sure what I was expecting, but she was funny, articulate, and very sweet. She read a selection of e-mails she's received over the years, mostly from the would-be censors and shocked parents. She made some good points about why people feel compelled to censor, and how to respond to those who are at least up-front about their opinions. Then she read a little bit from one of her books (not any of the "shocking" stuff, but more to the main point of the text).
Her works have been censored primarily for language and references to teen sexuality. I would like to state, just so it's out there, that I use the word fuck a lot. Probably too much, since I know my vocabulary's better than that. And I've been using it since the eighth grade--would have used it earlier, but I was less frequently around people I felt comfortable doing so with. And we used worse than that when I was young and stupid, terms I choose not to put in my journal because they reflect a particular viewpoint regarding homosexuality that I find, frankly, abhorrent. It's not like I didn't understand the words, either; I made my cousins explain them to me. I knew.
As to teen sexuality--my best friend from childhood lost her virginity in seventh grade, and got pregnant in tenth. It happens. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm just saying that teens should be aware of this stuff. If an author can portray this reality to kids sympathetically, in a way they can understand without patronizing them, and they want to read her books, then that has to be a good thing.
Her works have been censored primarily for language and references to teen sexuality. I would like to state, just so it's out there, that I use the word fuck a lot. Probably too much, since I know my vocabulary's better than that. And I've been using it since the eighth grade--would have used it earlier, but I was less frequently around people I felt comfortable doing so with. And we used worse than that when I was young and stupid, terms I choose not to put in my journal because they reflect a particular viewpoint regarding homosexuality that I find, frankly, abhorrent. It's not like I didn't understand the words, either; I made my cousins explain them to me. I knew.
As to teen sexuality--my best friend from childhood lost her virginity in seventh grade, and got pregnant in tenth. It happens. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm just saying that teens should be aware of this stuff. If an author can portray this reality to kids sympathetically, in a way they can understand without patronizing them, and they want to read her books, then that has to be a good thing.