You Want To Know What’s "Repulsive?"

This is Repulsive.

The fact that the Hillsborough County School Board (the county I went to high school in, I might add) could make such a comment, the fact that TBO.COm could then use that word to describe the book, and the fact that all those parents making comments at the end of the article could then parrot it to describe a work they feel is uncomfortable.

You want to know what’s repulsive? This is repulsive. A few statistics from that page:

• Victimization rates for sexual assault are 12.9 per 1,000 women age 16-24
• Young women between the ages of 14 and 17 represent an estimated 38% of those victimized by date rape
• Studies indicate that dating violence affects at least 1 in 10 teen couples. It is one of the major sources of violence in teen life
• Over 50% of high school boys and 42% of high school girls believe that there are times when it is “acceptable for a male to hold a female down and physically force her to engage in intercourse.” (Okay, this last one is from a 19-year old study. I really hope things have changed.)

You want to know what’s repulsive? that considering all of the above, a public school board can still see fit to consider censoring from teenagers a powerful and nuanced book about a teenage woman dealing with the aftermath of an attempted rape.

Why? Because the description of said attempted rape is disturbing. Gee, you think?

Does the Hillsborough County School Board think that this is an issue that teens are not dealing with? Do they, as one commenter said, think that it’s a book that should only be read by a “student that has no behavioral problems, has good grades, and is a certain age permission to have the librarian check the book out to them.” [all sic]

Because students that don’t get good grades and do have behavior problems have never been date raped, or is not in danger of being so.

The woman who challenged the book actually said that she was going to let her daughter read it!

Sarah Dessen is one of the most talented young adult authors around. Her books deal with family issues, with death and abuse and yes, attempted rape. She says in the above-linked blog post:

I want to add something else to this debate, and that is that I have gotten SEVERAL emails from girls who had also been sexually assaulted, read this book and were compelled, partly because of it, to tell the people in their lives about what had happened to them. I’m not saying my book was the only reason, only that it played a part, even if it was a small one. And to think that maybe someone who needed this book couldn’t get their hands on it, because of one passage that someone plucks out of the book and reads aloud for shock value, not seeing how it fits with the rest of the story, and why it is important…it worries me.

I’m appalled by the way books are being challenged in high schools these days. A few months ago, Maureen Johnson’s book was being challenged on the grounds that it contained sexually explicit material (there was no sex in the book). Now, a book dealing with the disturbing aftermath of an all-too common and terrible teen experience is being challenged on the grounds that it… deals with the disturbing aftermath of an all too common and terrible teenage experience?

Look, I could go into a school board meeting and read excerpts from a lot of the books on a high school reading list that, in a paragraph or two, are going to sound super-repulsive. 1984, anyone? Books are supposed to engage our emotions. They are supposed to use powerful imagery that sometimes is disturbing to get their point across.

I don’t think I realized how lucky I was in high school. I don’t think I knew that when we read The Crucible, The Sun Also Rises, The Scarlet Letter, The Magus, and Brave New World, without dispute, that we were the lucky ones. We weren’t being told by some concerned parent who saw fit to read one passage of that novel to a school board that she should get to decide what our reading material contained.

Like many writers, I was a voracious reader as a child. I really wanted to read Clan of the Cave Bear when I was around 12 or 13. My mom had some concerns about it, due to the depictions of rape in the movie (it’s not quite as graphic in the book). She read it first, and then gave it to me and said if I wanted to talk to her about what happened in the book, that I should. And that was when I was in elementary school. In high school, I could read whatever I wanted. My mom gave me Go Ask Alice when I was fourteen. This is how it works. You get to decide for your own child. Not everyone else’s.

How many teenagers who have been sexually assaulted will shy away from the idea of going through a permission/screening process in order to determine if they are worthy of reading Dessen’s book? A book written for them. About a girl just like them.

And keeping your teenage children from information about a dangerous topic is not going to protect them from that danger. Knowledge is power. That’s why Just Listen is on the Florida Teen Reads list — because it speaks to teens about an important issue in a sensitive, non-exploitive, and powerful way.

If you wish to write the school board on this issue (and parents in Hillsborough County, I urge you to do so!) this is the contact information:

http://www.sdhc.k12.fl.us/board/Form_Board.asp

I have no children, but I wonder: do parents have to arm their kids with a letter to the school librarian saying, “Please give my child a skeleton key to all of your “restricted” shelves. I believe he or she should be allowed to read whatever he or she damn well pleases without your interference. Thank you.”

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Thank you to fellow YA author Leigh Brescia for alerting me to this issue!

Please note: all letters to the school board become public record.