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Kate Nepveu has a post talking about a panel on taboos in fantasy, which made me think about my own personal taboos and how they've been violated recently.
I recently read this book Burned by Ellen Hopkins, a YA book about an adolescent girl who is part of an abusive family and is looking for love, and the ways that sex plays into both of those. The problem is not that it's a bad book. In fact, despite the part where it's in "poetry," it's actually a good book. More than that, it's a powerful book. First of all, it deals with powerful themes (abuse, teenage sex), and furthermore it is good at what it does-- it seared its message into my brain the way that the best YA-targeted novels do, like Chris Crutcher's (more on him in a sec!) did when I was a teenager, and I'm not even an adolescent now.
So why am I about to tell you NOT to read this book, that I would prefer you to avoid this book at all costs? Because it's riddled with inaccuracies of portrayal of something I feel rather strongly about, mostly implicitly but sometimes explicitly, and because I think the message is both incorrect and damaging (both to an external group and to its target audience).
( Cut for severe incoherent rantings about the confluence of religion-abuse-sex, and thoughts on what YA authors owe their audiences. Also, if you need to read gritty YA about troubled adolescents, go read Chris Crutcher. )
I don't know. That's where I draw the line, at what emotionally sets me off, but I'm not entirely comfortable with it, since I know it's not entirely consistent.
I recently read this book Burned by Ellen Hopkins, a YA book about an adolescent girl who is part of an abusive family and is looking for love, and the ways that sex plays into both of those. The problem is not that it's a bad book. In fact, despite the part where it's in "poetry," it's actually a good book. More than that, it's a powerful book. First of all, it deals with powerful themes (abuse, teenage sex), and furthermore it is good at what it does-- it seared its message into my brain the way that the best YA-targeted novels do, like Chris Crutcher's (more on him in a sec!) did when I was a teenager, and I'm not even an adolescent now.
So why am I about to tell you NOT to read this book, that I would prefer you to avoid this book at all costs? Because it's riddled with inaccuracies of portrayal of something I feel rather strongly about, mostly implicitly but sometimes explicitly, and because I think the message is both incorrect and damaging (both to an external group and to its target audience).
( Cut for severe incoherent rantings about the confluence of religion-abuse-sex, and thoughts on what YA authors owe their audiences. Also, if you need to read gritty YA about troubled adolescents, go read Chris Crutcher. )
I don't know. That's where I draw the line, at what emotionally sets me off, but I'm not entirely comfortable with it, since I know it's not entirely consistent.
