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Saturday, June 7, 2014

Tyranny through Shame for what we Read?



I had a different rant planned for my Sunday regular, but I recently read a certain article that just kind of annoyed me. So I started this rant and by the time I was done typing it up, it was Sunday morning.




Ze Frank's video about yucking one's yum is spot on for more than just a response to Ruth Graham's article telling adults that they should be ashamed of reading Young Adult (YA) fiction.




I am 27 years old and read Agatha Christie back in third grade. I also read Mary Higgins Clark back then, and while they were great to read, I have yet to reread any of them. I love Lillian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who series and pretty much anything by Christine Feehan, Sherrilyn Kenyon, or Tamora Pierce. Now, Tamora Pierce is considered YA. Sherrrilyn Kenyon has a series that is a shoot-off of some of her others and is considered YA. I was 11 when Harry Potter was released in the US where I live. I stuck with it to the end and while the first book or three is geared more towards the younger YA, books 5, 6, and 7 can really pull the feels from you, though 6 was rather slow...




Anyway, to me the gist of Graham's article was that we do not have a thing known as free will (which is something that is actually kind of big in Pierce's Tortall set books). As a child that was kind of known (at least for most kids) to be odd, it was very upsetting. As a child, one's parents tell you what you are allowed and discipline you. However, they also let you know that as an adult, you have control of your life. Perhaps it's society that says that however, seeing as I know some people still live by their parents' edicts.




The biggest thing they warn against is giving in to peer pressure. And isn't that what Graham is saying one should do? "Adults should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children." she claims in her article. It might be taken a little out of context when I ask if parents should be ashamed to read to their kids, as I believe she meant it for their own personal reading, but still it's a form of peer pressure.




I hated Twilight. I read them, found that while it had its moments, I couldn't understand all the changes Meyer made to what essentially made a vampire. I mean it's one thing if she did the actual research about them and found it, or if she, as several authors have done in the past, created her own version of a vampire, but it didn't feel like she had more information about them. It doesn't mean I told people they were stupid for enjoying it, but I did admit that I thought it was a waste of time. And yes I would have loved if Jaden would just destroy them or Simi would barbecue them. Perhaps one of the Carpathians could take them out.


Sadly none of that would happen. While I haven't been able to bring myself to read or watch Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, or even The Fault in Our Stars, I'm not going to say that people should be ashamed to have read them because of their genre. I was reading Harlequin novels in the fifth grade, and wasn't ashamed to admit it. I loved fantasy novels when I found them, and though my mother didn't want it in her house, yes, I played D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). I didn't do it because my friends did, nor because I was a rebel. For as long as I could remember I had been fascinated with mythology and fantasy, magic and folklore. So these were great for me. When I found The Circle of Magic series and Protector of the Small by Tamora Pierce, my mother got me Magic Steps for Christmas. I was ecstatic. That was better than even the suitcase of Harlequin novels that I had previously envied my older sister for getting. It was never really a competition though for which books we liked who would get what.

 
I mean I read the Couples series as well as the required high school reading (and absolutely hated the ending of Lord of the Flies, but thoroughly enjoyed Great Gatsby) and Isobel Bird's Circle of Three series. It became a joke that I had read our local library and those of the Inter-library loan program's entire stock of books! But I didn't hide what I read. I tried to read various westerns and science fiction and had a hard time with them, but I loved A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.
As we grow our likes and dislikes change. I have four siblings and my younger ones always had a hard time meeting the school requirements for reading. I don't think it was because they had a hard time reading the books they found either. It was because the subject matter didn't appeal to them. While I loved reading literally anything I could get my hands on, my other siblings and even most of my friends couldn't. In fact the only books I had to force myself to read or stopped reading because I couldn't get into them were The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Hunchback of Notre by Alexandre Dumas, and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo and it wasn't because I wasn't satisfied with their endings.


She even states, "But even the myriad defenders of YA fiction admit that the enjoyment of reading this stuff has to do with escapism, instant gratification, and nostalgia." I can't help but wonder if she's read anything by Mercedes Lackey, Tamora Pierce, Cate Tiernan or Lynne Ewing. Only one of which I have to search the fantasy section for. I know what I want when I find a new book to read or show to watch.


Should I not watch kids and teen movies or TV series because I'm an adult? Should I be ashamed that I enjoyed Frozen when I finally got around to watching it? Should I only listen to the music I grew up hearing? As I previously mentioned, people's tastes change as they age and experience new things.
Of course people use YA for escapism, anything that is read or watched that is fiction has always been an escape from what our lives are like. People read to have adventure, romance, and mystery in their lives that they know will have a fairly happy ending, at least most of the time.


Don't get me wrong, there are some things that probably should not have happened (Titanic the Musicals, for two), but does that really give someone the right to tell someone else that they must be a slave to whatever stereotype or peer pressure thing is being pushed upon them? Should we say that because someone is a brunette and has brown eyes, they should not exist or that those of Oriental decent should not live in a certain country? How about those of a certain color or size or orientation or faith? Because if so, hello, welcome back to some of the worst things in history: WWII, American Concentration Camps, and slavery. It may seem extreme, but that is exactly what it ends up leading to.

 
No, I don't have a degree from any college or university, yet, but even I can see that as long as we're willing to tell people what they should and shouldn't do when it's harmless and not illegal is in an obscure way a form of bullying. I'm not saying her opinion doesn't matter or that I think she's an idiot. She has some decent points in that "There’s room for pleasure, escapism, juicy plots, and satisfying endings on the shelves of the serious reader...But if they are substituting maudlin teen dramas for the complexity of great adult literature, then they are missing something."


My bookshelf isn't just filled with YA, there's paranormal romance, paranormal mystery, mystery, romance, and even some historical fictions on it as well as numerous pieces of nonfiction. My DVD collection and what I watch on Netflix and Hulu are even more varied. I may not be huge in the things that are mainstream, but I loved Transformers as a kid and superheroes though I never really "geeked out" to them. I can't make myself watch Star Wars or Star Trek unless somebody has already started it. I religiously watched So Weird, Xena, Diagnosis Murder, and Sailor Moon. I tried with Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Captain Planet, Digimon, and Dragonball Z. That was as a child. While my tastes have changed and some of them I now find childish, it doesn't stop me from enjoying the main storylines from them. Even The Magic Treehouse series by Mary Pope Osborne is interesting to me. I even kidnapped my brother's Alex Rider books written by Anthony Horowitz from time to time. I enjoyed them, but they happen to be YA as well. Those of us who were eleven when the Harry Potter books started and stuck with it to the end were in our twenties when the final book was released. Does that mean we should be ashamed?


It's not just the books that it seems to me we are supposed to be ashamed of. To me it feels as though Graham is saying that whatever you are labeled is the stereotype you should stick with and you should be ashamed of yourself if you break it. I might be reading too much into what she wrote, but as I said if we start to let others dictate to us with the simple things like what we personally should enjoy, then where are we going to draw the line in what we allow them to tell us.


I didn't fit into a stereotype, and luckily, I didn't care if I did. I was in band, loved basketball (and until I broke my ankle tried to play every chance I got!) was in various debate clubs, was a co-founder of our school's debate club(which after about five years was removed because the president of the time felt she couldn't handle the duties and didn't even try to find a replacement before telling the sponsoring teacher) in the recycling club and Planeteers, was a member of JILG (Jobs for Illinois Graduates) and much more. I had also been in FFA, French and Spanish Clubs/classes, and Chorus. I know it's not really a lot of clubs to spend any combination of time of my high school years in, but for me, I felt I shouldn't apply for jobs and then I couldn't get my license (which I still don't have!), and in general couldn't do much outside of them. I kind of gave up on sports after I couldn't get on my middle school volleyball team after my ankle healed, in part because I'm too lazy to force myself to do proper work-outs. I never had to before. I wasn't a straight A student or teacher's pet, but neither was I the class rebel or clown. Trust me, our class knew the majority of our classmates and with a class of over two hundred that's pretty good when you don't see the majority of them daily and you know the names of several other schoolmates (band and choir, only about sixty or seventy grade mates and about seventy-five total in both, and this is over the course of four years.) So I never really could be stereotyped. I wasn't gorgeous or rich or popular in the normal senses of the words, but sometimes I think I did it on purpose.

I could put make-up on properly if I tried, I just didn't care. If I had applied myself to my classes I could have been valedictorian, possibly, at least I'd have been high honor roll, but I didn't really have a place I felt comfortable doing schoolwork and I preferred reading to doing that work. I'd already become an expert at sitting right in front of the teachers and reading a random other novel, working on another classes work or writing something other than my notes. I managed to stay just under that radar of stereotype, yet most of my classmates likely remember who I was.


Not because I gave in to them saying I shouldn't read the books I wanted or calling me names to make me ashamed ( I hated my hair back then, this curly, knotty mass of brown, much like Hermione's and one of my friends even gave it a name, which we sometimes refer to it as.) that never really worked.  I chose the things I liked and stuck with them, at least until my tastes had changed.  I had already tried to conform once and found reading to be my escape and as I read, I learned conforming just wasn't right.  School talked to us about peer pressure and I learned about slavery and eventually I understood.

I didn't figure it out overnight though.  It took me a few years before I realized that I should just do as I wished, everyone else be damned.  So as I finished school I realized I had become rather proficient at hiding what I really felt.  No one, absolutely no one had ever realized about several of my darker feelings and days.  If I had done as Graham claims and been ashamed for reading things that were interesting to me, I never would have picked up Tamora Pierce's novels or Harry Potter.  I don't want to live in a world that tells me I should be ashamed because I have free will.  I sure as hell don't want any of my nieces, nephews, or future children (if I ever have any) to have to feel ashamed because of who they are, what they like, or what they do.

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