Is it dirtier if I say it's good?
Sep. 8th, 2007 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwOver the last weekend, I helped my mother complete a school assignment where a family member had to interview her for an hour about literacy (reading and writing in her past and present, plus some analysis questions). Some of the content of that interview, combined with some of the things that occurred to me while working on a similar project for youth services library class, have me considering the importance of social context to the reader.
Both my mother and I read some pretty raunchy books in middle school. I think my mother mentioned The Happy Hooker as a book her friends read covertly and discussed with much interest and a feeling of disgust and daring. For me, a favorite book in middle school was Exit to Eden. I've never read the Happy Hooker, but I presume from my mom's comments that it was pretty extreme.
Despite the fact that my mother enjoyed reading the Happy Hooker (and discussing it with her friends) and I enjoyed reading Exit to Eden (and discussing it with my friends), I don't think either of us ever has recommended a book similar in content to a middle schooler or high schooler. We were talking about this, and what I came up with was that it was the important difference between finding something for yourself, and being given something by an adult.
When we're children, every recommendation from an adult carries a kind of baggage that recommendations from peers don't carry. If our 12 year old friend slips us a dirty book or a copy of the Paris Limerick under the desk, that's very different from a parent, teacher, or librarian giving us a copy of the Paris Limerick or The Happy Hooker. When an adult gave me a book as a child, I would analyze the book - what was the adult trying to tell me? Was it a comment on me? On how I should try to be as a child? On how I should try to be as an adult? On how the adult world would work once I entered it? I was eager to garner answers to these kinds of questions from literature. And I think if I'd received a sexually explicit book from an adult (The Story of O or something) I would have been very distressed. I think this because when I was a bit older (a freshman in high school) a parent who I was in a play with gave me a copy of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Now, the sexuality in Outlander is not nearly as sustained and explicit as the sexuality in Exit to Eden, but reading Outlander really disturbed me. It wasn't the book that disturbed me - I enjoyed it, and I still read all the new books in the series now, some 14 years later. Instead, I was disturbed that an adult, a community member, a parent had recommended this book to me. I wondered if she thought I was sexual? If she thought I was now at an age where I should be discussing sex with adults? I was nervous after I finished it that she would ask for my thoughts. Of course, she had made the recommendation thinking of the overall tone of the story, its content, its characters, and wasn't focused on the sexuality. I don't think she ever asked me anything further about the book. But I still remember wondering if she would, and being nervous about what I would say. "I thought that love scene after they have to get married was pretty hot" wasn't something I could imagine every saying to an adult!
The reason I've been thinking about this a lot relates to my role as a youth services librarian and the kinds of books I might select or recommend for others to read. I consistently find that when wearing my Library Hat I make more conservative selections and recommendations than I do when wearing my Fellow Reader hat. And I suspect that it has to do with the sense that the Library Hat is a heavier hat. It carries with it a bigger weight of social approval and pressure. I suspect that the reaction of a teen to a book with sexual elements is different when the book was recommended by an adult, especially an adult given moral importance in the community the way a librarian or a teacher or parent is given moral importance.
This is not to say that I think kids shouldn't be able to read these books. If a teen asks me where the latest urban fiction bestseller by Zane is, my general urge is to just locate it and say no more about it. But I'd be very unlikely to recommend Zane to a teenager (actually, I can't imagine the readers' advisory conversation coming up). I'm more likely to recommend Angela Johnson or Jacqueline Woodson or Virginia Euwer Wolff.
My thoughts are still up in the air on this issue. It was one that wasn't really covered in library school. There was a lot of discussion about censorship vs. selection and the importance of the freedom to read, but it was mostly in the context of literature explicitly intended for adolescents, works whose themes might be mature but whose content was rarely what I would think of as explicit. I don't remember any discussion of how the reactions of youth to content and themes in books recommended by adults might be different than their reaction to those same themes and levels of content in books they choose for themselves.
Despite the fact that my mother enjoyed reading the Happy Hooker (and discussing it with her friends) and I enjoyed reading Exit to Eden (and discussing it with my friends), I don't think either of us ever has recommended a book similar in content to a middle schooler or high schooler. We were talking about this, and what I came up with was that it was the important difference between finding something for yourself, and being given something by an adult.
When we're children, every recommendation from an adult carries a kind of baggage that recommendations from peers don't carry. If our 12 year old friend slips us a dirty book or a copy of the Paris Limerick under the desk, that's very different from a parent, teacher, or librarian giving us a copy of the Paris Limerick or The Happy Hooker. When an adult gave me a book as a child, I would analyze the book - what was the adult trying to tell me? Was it a comment on me? On how I should try to be as a child? On how I should try to be as an adult? On how the adult world would work once I entered it? I was eager to garner answers to these kinds of questions from literature. And I think if I'd received a sexually explicit book from an adult (The Story of O or something) I would have been very distressed. I think this because when I was a bit older (a freshman in high school) a parent who I was in a play with gave me a copy of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Now, the sexuality in Outlander is not nearly as sustained and explicit as the sexuality in Exit to Eden, but reading Outlander really disturbed me. It wasn't the book that disturbed me - I enjoyed it, and I still read all the new books in the series now, some 14 years later. Instead, I was disturbed that an adult, a community member, a parent had recommended this book to me. I wondered if she thought I was sexual? If she thought I was now at an age where I should be discussing sex with adults? I was nervous after I finished it that she would ask for my thoughts. Of course, she had made the recommendation thinking of the overall tone of the story, its content, its characters, and wasn't focused on the sexuality. I don't think she ever asked me anything further about the book. But I still remember wondering if she would, and being nervous about what I would say. "I thought that love scene after they have to get married was pretty hot" wasn't something I could imagine every saying to an adult!
The reason I've been thinking about this a lot relates to my role as a youth services librarian and the kinds of books I might select or recommend for others to read. I consistently find that when wearing my Library Hat I make more conservative selections and recommendations than I do when wearing my Fellow Reader hat. And I suspect that it has to do with the sense that the Library Hat is a heavier hat. It carries with it a bigger weight of social approval and pressure. I suspect that the reaction of a teen to a book with sexual elements is different when the book was recommended by an adult, especially an adult given moral importance in the community the way a librarian or a teacher or parent is given moral importance.
This is not to say that I think kids shouldn't be able to read these books. If a teen asks me where the latest urban fiction bestseller by Zane is, my general urge is to just locate it and say no more about it. But I'd be very unlikely to recommend Zane to a teenager (actually, I can't imagine the readers' advisory conversation coming up). I'm more likely to recommend Angela Johnson or Jacqueline Woodson or Virginia Euwer Wolff.
My thoughts are still up in the air on this issue. It was one that wasn't really covered in library school. There was a lot of discussion about censorship vs. selection and the importance of the freedom to read, but it was mostly in the context of literature explicitly intended for adolescents, works whose themes might be mature but whose content was rarely what I would think of as explicit. I don't remember any discussion of how the reactions of youth to content and themes in books recommended by adults might be different than their reaction to those same themes and levels of content in books they choose for themselves.
