A long time ago in a tiny town far, far away there were a few things that redeemed my particularly angsty teenage years: hearing Bikini Kill on college radio, consuming Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, and discovering the work of Francesca Lia Block. These were the things that, in ways obvious and less so, taught me that as trapped and bored and persecuted I felt by the usual demons that haunt tiny towns far, far away, there was a big, beautiful world out there for the taking; and moreover, that sometimes feeling trapped and bored and persecuted was the best way to access the big, beautiful things that made life in it worthwhile.
Today, from my hard-won, comfortable bubble of urban adulthood, I'm guilty of assuming that the Internet has rescued kids in small towns who feel different or want more. It’s easy to forget how oppressive adolescent life can be with or without the web; how vital and formative culture really is; and how even in the era of HDTV and pocket computers there are still people who would burn books.
Take Baby Be-Bop, the 1997 installment of Block’s legendary Weetzie Bat young adult series, which chronicles the coming out -- complete with gay-bashing -- of a teenage character. Twelve years after its publication its been named in a claim against the city of West Bend, Wisc., by four members of the Milwaukee-area Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU). Calling the book “explicitly vulgar, racial, and anti-Christian,” “the complainants seek the right to publicly burn or destroy by another means the library’s copy of Baby Be-Bop. The claim also demands $120,000 in compensatory damages ($30,000 per plaintiff) for being exposed to the book in a library display, and the resignation of West Bend Mayor Kristine Deiss for ‘allow[ing] this book to be viewed by the public.’”
Let’s break that down. A group of grown-ups want to rally around a burning trash can, remove an elected public official from office, and pocket $30,000 public dollars a piece because they were “exposed” to a decade-old story the American Library Association called “[A] gift to young people who have known since they could remember that they too wanted -- and deserved -- love” as if it were asbestos.
Never mind the time and money the city will have to waste fighting such a juvenile, selfish, and regressive claim. (Last week library trustees unanimously rejected another complaint against certain YA titles deemed “biased, gay-affirming, promotional and romanticized” after more than a thousand local people signed a petition against restricting library materials.) Think for a second of what, in addition to Caribbean cruises and remodeled kitchens, the CCLU members are really demanding -- their comfort, material and otherwise, in exchange for that of the young people that need it most.
--JESSANNE COLLINS
Previously > Heathers 2: 2 Scary?
God, this makes me SO FUCKING ANGRY. The entire Weetzie Bat series made my childhood so incredibly luminous and beautiful and creative- in a way that I just can't see kids today getting from "The A List" or "The Clique" or whatever trash they're getting.
"Biased, gay-affirming, promotional and romanticized”? You know what else is biased, promotional, and romanticized? How about the YA books by Frank Peretti? I remember stumbling upon them and their sugary-sweet portrayal of a Christian crime-investigating family. The only difference is- I don't want to ban that book. I finished it, said "Eh, that's not the life for me." and walked away.
This just makes me depressed.
Posted by: Cand86 | June 10, 2009 at 01:10 AM