Earlier this month, Bitch Magazine, a leading feminist publication that also has a substantial on-line readership, published a "best of list": From the Library: 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader. Almost immediately a controversy erupted on the magazine's blog regarding the suitability of certain books with subject matter that might be troubling to young readers who had experienced rape. The author of the list then removed three titles, and I could not possibly write a better account of what happened next than the one that appeared on Colleen Mondor's Blog, Chasing Ray.
I want to thank my friend Dr. Sarah Park and the children's book author and critic Dr. Zetta Elliott for drawing my attention to this debate. As a professor of adolescent literature, I have been influenced by their articles and blog posts that advocate introducing young readers to a wide variety of texts that present multiple viewpoints and complex ideas. Most importantly, those of us who work in the fields of children's literature, information science, and English Studies are united in our concern regarding the impact of censorship. Admittedly, the author of the list and the editors at Bitch Media did not remove any books from an actual bookshelf or snatch the titles out a teenager's arms. However, the tendency to shelter teenagers from supposedly "sensitive" material not only underestimates the resilience of readers, but ignores the importance of having young people (and, let's face it, adults) interact with cultural artifacts that may challenge them, provoke them, or surprise them.
At the beginning of every semester, I encourage my children's and adolescent literature students to develop a "reading persona" -- a stance that melds critical sensitivity with an acknowledgement that becoming informed about a field often requires reading texts that one might not automatically choose for one's own bookshelf. Frequently, students will admit to feeling uncomfortable with dystopic novels such as Feed or The Hunger Games, or they may claim that their personal beliefs were challenged by reading a text such as Ariel Schrag's Potential. However, these same students also admit that they are better for having read these texts, as their repertoire of YA literature has expanded and given them more points of comparison for the next set of books that they encounter.
Last November, I assigned Ishmael Beah's gripping non-fiction text A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, a book that asks readers to consider whether they believe in "childhood innocence," whether they think that trained teenage and child soldiers can be rehabilitated, and whether they believe that the author himself can live a "normal" life after undergoing staggering personal tragedy. As someone who has experienced post traumatic stress syndrome, I can attest that the book had been challenging for me -- even though it had been years since the events that occasioned my PTSS, it was still unsettling to know that painful memories had come rushing quickly back, just through the reading of Beah's experiences. However, I was determined to read A Long Way Gone, as colleagues had recommended it as a moving and fascinatingly constructed narrative, and while many of my students also explained that the text had triggered sad or frightening memories for them, they found that they were more than capable of recognizing that the text held rich and important ideas that they were glad to have encountered.
Admittedly, my students are over the age of eighteen -- technically they are adults -- and it might be claimed that younger readers are less capable of developing the critical and emotional distance necessary to make it through a challenging text. However, regardless of their maturity level or sophistication as readers, teenagers are their own best self-censors; if they feel threatened or are made uncomfortable by a text, they will simply put it down and move on to another, less fraught reading choice. It seems a shame, then, to make that decision for them, as the editors at Bitch Media did this month. What we bring to a text certainly encompasses our past experiences, but we also bring self-knowledge, and I am unwilling to believe that self-knowledge is the sole province of adults.
