As a high schooler, one is forced to read all sorts of
books; textbooks, classics, assigned reading, and papers/articles galore. It
gets tiring and you resent all these books, even if, like me, you adore
reading. So when you grow up and you see an assigned reading book that you
never had to read, a little light goes off in your brain: DO NOT READ. The book
was probably boring or preachy. There’s a reason it was on a syllabus and it
wasn’t because teachers thought kids would want to read it.
While having a small competition between myself and my
coworkers on who read the most books off of several different reading lists
(top banned books, top YA novels, etc.), I noticed that Speak by Laurie Halse
Anderson was on a couple lists. Now I’m a secretly competitive person (I lose a
lot, so I pretend that I don’t really care about competitions) and I was upset
that I missed out on marking this book off while everyone else got it because
it was assigned. It also sounded like an interesting book, so I decided to read it. A coworker lent me her copy and I dug in.
Imagine walking in to a high school cafeteria and having no
one to sit with. Not only do you have no one to sit with, but your best friends
hate you, and other high schoolers who don’t even know you hate you, all for
the wrong reasons. If only they knew the truth. Melinda is not about to tell
anyone the truth about that terrible night she was raped and no one is reaching
out to her anyway, so she stays clamed up. While other ninth graders are making
new friends, getting asked out, and figuring out the rest of their lives,
Melinda is trying to keep herself together by disconnecting from her old life.
She observes , hides, and keeps quiet. Her grades fall, her parents get mad at
her, and yet none of it fazes her. She has greater demons to deal with.
Speak is a darkly humorous, poignant piece that
addresses a horrific event through the eyes of the victim. Anderson creates a
character who is real, scarred, eccentric, confused, hurt, and haunted. Melinda is
not a melodramatic character. She deals with the rape as many people deal with
tragic events they don’t know how to address; she holes up inside herself.
The novel was well done. It was a very quick, compelling
read. The book is meant for the YA audience and does a great job of not
skirting around the issue. Speak has been challenged at high schools and
libraries across the nation for the reference to the rape. An associate
professor from Missouri State University called this book “soft porn” because
of the scene dealing with the rape. That statement is completely outrageous to
me. There is nothing pornographic about the way Anderson writes about the rape
and it is disgusting that anyone would think of the rape as “soft porn”. This
isn’t a lurid romance novel with details about everything that happened. And if
this man thinks that addressing the issue of rape and talking about assault
is “soft porn” he needs help. Denying children and teens books that talk about
subjects that are uncomfortable or unhappy is to deny them those emotions. We
are supposed to feel hurt, let down, depressed, enraged and you cannot shield a
person from tragedy. It is a part of life and at least fiction gives children a
way to see how others deal with these emotions and lets them know they are not
alone and it is natural to have emotions.
I’m a librarian, so my responsibility is to give the public
the freedom to explore, seek their interests, do work, and gain access to the
world of information and keep their pursuits private. Shutting down avenues for
people to explore denies the public freedom of information and I’m against
that. Do I think that certain materials don’t belong in the library? Sure. Porn
has no place in a public setting. But I don’t believe that novels and
information that some people disapprove of should be taken out to please those
few. If we suddenly start denying entrance of materials because of challenges
to them, where would the library be? Where would the public go to seek
information? Religious books and writings would be banned because one religion
disagrees with the other. All sorts of novels would be taken away, books about
sexuality or even anatomy because they show nudity, biographies about
controversial people, etc, etc. There is no end to the banning and challenging
once you open that door.
I just ranted for a while there. So deep breath! All in all Speak
was a great example of powerful young adult literature. I highly recommend it.
Now go practice your right to read! Happy Banned Books Week!
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