Last night, my husband and I waited for our nine-year-old, music-loving, piano-playing, song-writing daughter to go to sleep before watching the movie Once, which the MPAA in its reactionary wisdom slapped with an R rating. Normally we try, as much as possible, to make up our own minds about these things. We realized a few years ago with Bend it Like Beckham , which is rated PG-13 (apparently for sports bras, a kiss, and the word “lesbian”) that we wouldn’t let them decide what was and wasn’t appropriate for our kid, at least when it came to PG v. PG-13. I’d lazily assumed that an R meant at the least some serious sex or violence. Well, this beautiful film, made on a budget of a hundred-thousand Euros, is rated R purely for language. A few Irish-style f**ks fer f**k’s sake. Most American ears can’t even hear them. Among the movies currently in theaters which the MPAA thinks more appropriate for my kid (and yours) are:
 
The Kite Runner, which involves the rape of a child.

I Am Legend, a sweet, post-apocalyptic tale about the last man on earth trying to avoid being eaten by “virus-crazed ex-humans.”

Juno, which is wonderful and probably rated right at PG-13. But Once, where no one has sex, or hits anyone is worse?

Lars and the Real Girl. Starring a sex mannequin.

This is too easy . . .

Novelist and memoirist Diana Abu-Jaber visited the college where I teach yesterday where she told us the story of her recent experience with a high school in Texas. The parents of three students objected to the teaching of her novel, Crescent, which has been praised for, among other things, presenting Iraqi-American characters "as real people."

This wasn't what bothered the parents, though. Rather, it was the presence of four paragraphs of sexual content.

The principal at the school ordered the teachers to stop teaching the book. The teachers protested and were offered a compromise: black out the four offending paragraphs and you can still teach the book. The teachers asked Abu-Jaber's permission to do so, arguing that while they were loathe to succumb to such pressure, they felt that there was so much else to be gained from this book, they hoped she would understand and assent to the practice.

As she considered the bargain, Abu-Jaber consulted with writers and "publishing people." The writers were adamant in their insistence that she say no. The publishing people, and even her own husband urged her to accept the compromise.

In the end, she came up with a compromise of her own. She would not give her permission, but she would not stand in the way if the teachers themselves wanted to do the blacking out. And if they did choose to black out the paragraphs and continue teaching Crescent, she would post the excised text on her web site.

Here's the story, straight from Diana Abu-Jaber's website:

Awful as censorship is, I’d always thought there was a reassuring familiarity about banned books—Huck Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lolita—classics powerful enough to frighten people into wanting to silence them.

After all, isn’t that’s what censorship is all about—fear—of controversy, sexuality, difference, of questioning the status quo?

Then I received a sensitive, beautifully-written email from Texas. It was from a high school teacher, informing me that my novel, Crescent, had been banned from her school due to the objections of the parents of three students over the sexual content of four paragraphs in the book.

Her principal was behind the ban, but after teachers protested he offered a compromise. This is an excerpt from the teacher’s letter:

“If we obtain your permission to black out the four offending paragraphs … we are allowed to include the book in our curriculum….I am willing to ask you to do the unthinkable – will you allow us to mark through these four paragraphs in the interest of introducing a discussion of a culture so frequently demonized and belittled in our part of the country? Will you help me bring into a politically conservative community a sympathetic view of Iraq and Iraqi people?”

And so, after much thought and much asking-for-advice, I thought I’d share the response I gave the teacher:

October 2, 2007

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and insightful email. I've spent several days considering your question.

Ultimately, I find that I can't condone your principal's offer to censor my novel in order to make it more acceptable. That said, you do have my permission, to do what you think is right for your students.

In a strange way, I suppose, I think this discussion is an encouraging thing. I find it fascinating that, in our culture of war, macabre violence, and shocking cinema, a literary novel could still carry enough of an impact as to make someone want to silence it.

My husband pointed out that censors are always with us, determining the limits of morality and conventions, in every source of art and information, from books to film to music. He argues, along with you, that it’s better to allow students to read some of a book—indeed most of a book—rather than none at all.

Even though I see the excellent sense of this argument, I couldn’t find a way to feel right about crossing out text. I became a writer in large part because I felt like I couldn’t otherwise make my voice heard. To agree to blackening out such passages feels like colluding in my own silencing.

I once had a debate with a student from Saudi Arabia. I’d complained to him that the problem with America was that nothing was sacred. He’d laughed at me and said, on the contrary, that the great thing about America was that nothing was sacred.

I worry, though, that the American problem is that the wrong things are sacred.

I won’t belabor pointing out the obvious irony of blacking out scenes of love-making in a book that’s concerned with the depiction and the violence of unjust wars and dictatorship. We all already know this—in America, love gets bleeped, the violence stays. The two main characters in Crescent are in love, the few sexual passages in the book are far from graphic. Indeed, the scenes in which they cook and eat together are nearly just as suggestive as the contested passages.

But a friend, upon hearing about this debate, postulated that the real reason the students’ parents are upset is because the book gives a human face to Arab Muslim people.

That might be the part of this that unnerves me the most – and like so many forms of subtle discrimination and racism, we’ll never really know if that’s the case or not. The people who want the book banned may not even be entirely conscious of it themselves.

So I thank you for giving me the chance to think out loud a little about such an important issue. If you decide to proceed with blacking out hte passages, I'll be happy to post the offending text on my website, so those students who might be curious, can decide for themselves if they'd like to see what the fuss is about.

Please feel free to share my response with your principal, the parents, and even with your students. It’s a wonderful object lesson in the free and open exchange of ideas vs. book banning, especially during this, Banned Books Week.

With great respect for wonderful teachers, like yourself,

Diana Abu-Jaber

How much do I love this girl for letting the New York Times take this picture for an article about the perfect, "amazing girls" of Newton, Mass? The admissions committees at the colleges where she's applied ought to let her in just for this. And hats off to her mother for getting out of the way.



I have a feeling the mother in this picture wasn't so relaxed fifteen minutes before the photographer arrived.

The article was so depressing, for so many reasons. Chief among them the knowledge that were I applying today, I'd never get into my alma mater. Not even on the wait list.

I'm not J.K. Rowling, and this isn't The Balmoral, but I've just finished my work-in-progress, Stalking Taylor Deen, in room 2225 of the San Jose Holiday Inn and I'm leaving some (temporary) J.K.-inspired graffiti to commemorate the occasion.

When a tabloid claimed she was seeing a diet doctor, she sued and won a settlement and is donating it to an eating disorder charity.

Listen to this smart, funny radio piece by a teenager from Maine. It's about "The Talk" and how even "great" parents like hers are failing to talk to their teens about sex.

"You won't find men's genitalia in quality literature."

Nor will you find it in the Newbery Award winning novel, The Higher Power of Lucky. And yet, a New York Times article on the "controversy" over the word scrotum in that book ends with that pithy, but wrong (in several ways) quote from a librarian in Colorado . This librarian also compares Susan Patron to Howard Stern for her use of the word.

The article also contains this curious statement, apparently from the reporter, as it is unattributed:

Authors of children’s books sometimes sneak in a single touchy word or paragraph, leaving librarians to choose whether to ban an entire book over one offending phrase.

Personally, I've never heard the vagina referred to as the Hoo-Haa. Maybe it's a regional thing?

A theater manager in Atlantic Beach, Florida decided, after a motorist complained to a local television station that her niece SAW THE WORD VAGINA on the theater's marquee, that Eve Ensler's play needed to be euphemized. And so they re-named it "The Hoo-Haa Monologues."

Yeah, well. It turns out the organizers of this production are law students and their right to perform the play is contingent on their not changing a thing and so those H's O's and A's came down.

I read this in today's New York Times, and my curious eight-year-old wanted to know what I was laughing about. And so I first had to tell her about the original name, at which she scrunched up her face and said, "Ew." She thought Hoo-Haa was pretty funny.

I decided now wasn't the time to tell her the cute story of how, when she was three and we had friends over, she came bounding out of her room, naked, asking "Who wants to see my 'gina?" (And I probably won't leave this part of this blog entry up for long.)

Now I too have a torso.
In  stores May 17th.

That's the title of the class I'm teaching at Saint Mary's this January. I have a mix of undergrad and graduate students with whom I'll be reading a selection of classic and contemporary YA. On our list: Catcher in the Rye, King Dork (with a special appearance by Frank Portman), Forever, Good Girls (special appearance by Laura Ruby), Doing It, The Chocolate War, The Insiders, Rats Saw God, Speak, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (with special appearance by Ann Brashares).

In addition to writing exercises, students will plan their own YA novels and produce 25 pages by the end of the four weeks.

It's going to be a fun month.

Today is the official publication date of my friend Laura Ruby's new novel, Good Girls.

Accolades abound:

"Fasten your seatbelts! Good Girls never lets up. Harrowing, honest, poignant, and wickedly funny, Laura Ruby's so-good novel comes out swinging, challenging the stereotypes of what it means to be "good" while exploring what it means to be true."

This Just In: Sexy Music Leads to Teen Sex (Maybe. Kinda. It depends on how you define "sexy" and "teen" and "leads to.")

You might have seen the headline on CNN yesterday, "Sexy Music Triggers Teen Sex." The study bears the imprimatur of the supposedly objective Rand Corporation, and appears in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics. There must be something to it, then, right? (Will pediatricians ad rap music to the household safety talk they give to new parents? The one where they ask about firearms and carseats?)

Over at Pediatrics, people with more smarts than I are pointing out the methodological flaws in the study. I slogged through the article in its entirety and laughed out loud when I came to this part:

Our results suggest that the relationship between exposure and behavior may (emphasis mine) be causal in nature, because we controlled for teens' previous sexual experience, as well as factors like parental monitoring, religiosity, and deviance; however, our correlational data do not allow us to make causal inferences with certainty. . . . It is important to point out, however, that at the time of the third survey, about half of our sample had become legal adults (18–20 years); initiation of intercourse in this group would not be considered early according to US norms and might be considered healthy.

We also observed an association between time spent listening to music in general and changes in sexual behavior. The more time teens spent listening to music, the more likely they were to advance in their noncoital sexual behavior and to initiate intercourse. . . It may be that listening to popular music, regardless of its content, results in heightened physiologic arousal that, through a process of excitation transfer incites sexual behavior among teens.

[O]ur findings suggest a need for intervention. Reducing the amount of degrading sexual content in popular music, or reducing young people's exposure to music with this type of content, could delay initiation of intercourse and related activities. This, in turn, may reduce sexual risk behavior and sexual regret.

You might have seen the headline on CNN yesterday, "Sexy Music Triggers Teen Sex." The study bears the imprimatur of the supposedly objective Rand Corporation, and appears in the peer-reviewed journal Pediatrics. There must be something to it, then, right? (Will pediatricians ad rap music to the household safety talk they give to new parents? The one where they ask about firearms and carseats?)

Over at Pediatrics, people with more smarts than I are pointing out the methodological flaws in the study. I slogged through the article in its entirety and laughed out loud when I came to this part:

Our results suggest that the relationship between exposure and behavior may (emphasis mine) be causal in nature, because we controlled for teens' previous sexual experience, as well as factors like parental monitoring, religiosity, and deviance; however, our correlational data do not allow us to make causal inferences with certainty. . . . It is important to point out, however, that at the time of the third survey, about half of our sample had become legal adults (18–20 years); initiation of intercourse in this group would not be considered early according to US norms and might be considered healthy.

We also observed an association between time spent listening to music in general and changes in sexual behavior. The more time teens spent listening to music, the more likely they were to advance in their noncoital sexual behavior and to initiate intercourse. . . It may be that listening to popular music, regardless of its content, results in heightened physiologic arousal that, through a process of excitation transfer incites sexual behavior among teens.

[O]ur findings suggest a need for intervention. Reducing the amount of degrading sexual content in popular music, or reducing young people's exposure to music with this type of content, could delay initiation of intercourse and related activities. This, in turn, may reduce sexual risk behavior and sexual regret.

Meet Otis, star of Nickelodeon's forthcoming movie Barnyard, voiced by actor Kevin James. Apparently, no one on the film thought the fact that cows are by definition female was a fact that should get in the way of their concept. (Barnyard animals like to party when humans aren't looking.) Okay, Webster's on-line offers "a domestic bovine animal regardless of sex or age" as a secondary definition. But Otis here has an udder and udders are mammaries--province of the females of the species. Milk spouts. In the trailer I saw, his father has an udder too. I don't want to get all semiotic here but that big udder on a male-named and voiced creature makes me think penis. Big, four-spouted penis.

Scary.

Update: Roger Ebert on the transgendered cow.

Polly Shulman opens her review of a new YA novel in last Sunday's New York Times with this assertion about YA fiction:

Moralizing may have gone out of fashion in adult fiction a century ago, but it remains a staple of children's literature. The annual awards lists are full of inspiring stories in which a brave and sensitive young person triumphs over modern evils like political oppression, sexism and racism. Though these novels can be beautifully and even subtly written, they rarely leave readers in doubt about their intended message.

[T]he tidy resolution, a staple of . . .the 21st-century serious young adult novel . . . lacks conviction, as if Glass doesn't quite believe in the redemption her genre requires.

I'm back from my two-week stint at Hedgebrook.

Funny, the day I traveled back home, Thomas Friedman published a column about how the Internet has turned us all into people who give only "partial attention" to our work, our families, our lives. "Who can think, or write, or innovate under such conditions?"

I wasn't completely unplugged at Hedgebrook. We had Internet access available. But--and this is key--it wasn't available in the working and living space of our beautiful cottages. I allowed myself a once-a-day check-in with email. But for the most part, I really was focusing on my current work-in-progress. At about night ten, as I sat down for a couple hours of writing before bed, I felt as though I was inhabiting the world I'd created on the page in a way I haven't felt for a while.

Evening meals with other residents were wonderful. I met some amazing women.

For the next two weeks, I'll be in a cottage in the woods here.

I wonder if this really is the first instance of product placement in a YA book, or if it's just the first product placement in a YA book that's being disclosed as such. Alloy Entertainment (those folks who bring us Gossip Girls and A-List) boasts on its corporate site that it "partners with clients to facilitate brand integration or product placement within popular youth media - books, internet, online gaming, film and TV." The current VOYA features an interview with Emily Meehan at Simon & Schuster where she says that packaged books are "completely freelanced. From proposal to finished books, all author hunting, copyediting, research, designing, proofreading, and sometimes editing is done by the packager. We get a finished disk with the book and its jacket on it." She adds that they are "involved in every step."

Still, I wonder.

Then there are the Limited Too books commissioned and sold by the chain and featuring its clothing, and the Roxy Girl books, commissioned by the Roxy Girl clothing line and published by Harper.

A few years ago it seemed every book by/for women was graced with a pair of women's legs.

Today's NYT Book Review features The Geography of Girlhood by Kirsten Smith. After reading the review, I went to look the book up on Amazon and found myself looking the cover thinking, I have seen this before. And yes, I pretty much have.


Compare and contrast: So we've got two brown haired gals in jeans and tanks with just about the same amount of exposed midriff. We've got writing on the bodies of both. We seen the chins and lips of both. A little nose and ear on Envelope Girl. And I guess if you wanted to press it you could say that Envelope Girl--can we really call it a girl? it's just a torso--looks a little more open to who-knows-what possibilities than Geography Girl, whose shoulders are slouching inward.


And? So? What does it mean? That today's book designers are terribly unoriginal? That sex sells? Oh now that's original.