As I change strategies to read straight through one book at a time instead of juggling 5 or 6, I'm also recommitting to reading through the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Disrupting Whiteness core reading list for an introduction to the problem of whiteness in librarianship and returning to the question of the state of young adult literary criticism in recent years.
For the latter, to create my own bibliography, I ran four searches in two different academic databases for articles on literary theory and young adult literature from 2010 through this year. I selected 68 titles that include articles from 40 academic journals, chapters from six books, and two doctoral dissertations. Am I actually going to read all this? I plan to, but I may run out of steam or get attracted by something shiny. All this is driven (A) by an improbably dream that I can make a significant contribution to the fields of librarianship and young adult literature and (B) by the pleasure I take in studying and, perhaps to an even greater degree, the pleasure I take in planning to study these subjects. Why drop these here? To be blunt, I have nothing better to report at this point, and I want to announce something, even if it is only an intention to report future findings. If you enjoy bibliographies as much as I do, read on.
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My one-year-old loves "Thomas and Friends," a toy model-based television series about living trains who strive to be useful for a rich capitalist on a British island. Something never sat quite right with me about the series, despite its narration by favorite comedian George Carlin. Imagine my surprise, or don't, when a Google search for "Thomas and Friends Marxist critique" came back with several hits: Slate's "Thomas the Imperialist Tank Engine" from 2011, The Guardian's "Thomas the Tank Engine had to shut the hell up to save children everywhere" from 2014, and the New Yorker's "The Repressive, Authoritarian Soul of 'Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends'" for instance. Sir Topham Hat as robber baron teaches trains and children that they must be "really useful engines" to have any worth at all. Since the barrage of criticism, the show has apparently been "shunted down the left track," angering conservatives with its "Marxist undertones." This revelation dovetails with the rabbit hole into which I've recently dived concerning pure vs. applied literary criticism and young adult literature.
There is a delicious irony in using Marxist criticism (an applied criticism) to point out the death of play in literary exploration. Play is the distinguishing element between the two approaches to literature, I think. Applied criticism seeks to establish that a work is "good for something," that it serves a purpose. Articles on how to use YA literature for this or that fall into this category: awakening empathy or fighting patriarchy as well as more traditional pedagogical concerns. Marxists don't decry the concept of being "really useful," after all. They only demand that one be useful (or at the very least, not harmful) to the right people: in this case, the workers. The other two critical theories Randy Ribay suggests we teach high school kids--feminism and postcolonialism--similarly demand that one be useful to women and indigenous peoples. There is nothing wrong with this: public education has multiple purposes--among them, to create good citizens, and good citizens care about equity and justice. Toward a Plan to Take Lit Crit, YA Lit (& Teens) Seriously, with some autobiographical extrania3/13/2021 Notes toward a new project
OK. There's a new bug in my brain. There's a new stumbling block. I'm obsessing a bit on having lost A.S. King as a Twitter follower. We had gone back and forth a bit about the need for serious critical treatment of YA literature--like (in my head) examining YA fiction through the lenses of not only pedagogy (what is its educational value? how do I best teach YA lit?) and politics (Marxist, feminist, & postcolonial theories), but psychoanalytical, deconstructionist, and postmodernist theory. I had brainstormed a grand project investigating the meanings of surrealism, the connection between surrealism and adolescence, and King's surrealist novels. However, I blew it. I said something offensive or was just plain irrelevant and uninteresting on Twitter, or she didn't like the four-star review I gave Still Life with Tornado (which I may change, just because on rereading it for a paper, it gets better and better), and she left, just before her birthday. Or maybe it was just time for her to cut back on the number of people she was following, and I didn't make the cut. I don't know. All I know is three things: (1) That I'm bored with YA lit crit and want to inject something new into it, (2) I have difficulty restraining impulses to say things on social media (was it my comments about my past behavior with women that I regret, or the somewhat mean things I said about Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, or ...?), and (3) I have a tendency to get really excited about connections and overstep boundaries. Anyway, she no longer follows me. Regardless, she seems like a stellar human being, and she's been through some rough stuff and come through the other side. I admire her, and my interest in her writing continues. Consider this a list of works to examine as a preliminary for a series of articles, and please suggest more if you know of anything, especially anything more recent: I haven't been here in a while (not that anyone asked). My youngest daughter (Calliope) was born February 5, two days before Ellowyn's first birthday. I'm in my final semester at Wayne State. Life is chaos with a thin veneer of order, full of cracks that make the chaos visible.
Still, I'm enjoying my classes. In YA Lit, I'm writing two papers on A. S. King, and in the course of that, I've had the good fortune to talk (virtually) with the author herself. In Creative Writing (which won't count toward the MLIS), I am currently writing a scene from a play in which Body and Soul (specifically mandated for this assignment, but I call them Mr. Corpus and Mr. Specter) have a wedding planning business and have a conversation about the floral arrangements for a wedding. It's fun, and creatively satisfying. I've made a start in seeking employment. Had a really good interview with an admirable system, but it was part-time and nonprofessional and over an hour commute. I will get back to that when my head is reasonably well above water. I would love to start the Disrupting Whiteness project, but I don't see that happening for a while. I can't pretend I'm anything but barely holding on, though. I will keep patching over the cracks so the chaos doesn't overwhelm me. If you didn't catch it, the short version is this: the Voice of Youth Advocates magazine published a review of a book called Run and recommended it for mature audiences due to “many references to Bo being bisexual and an abundance of bad language.” Certain parties were offended (rightly so, I believe) that (A) references to the fact of bisexuality were equated morally with "an abundance of bad language" and (B) references to the fact of bisexuality were themselves grounds for audience restriction. Just to be clear, a recommendation for a "mature" audience is not direct censorship, but it can have a chilling effect on the reception of a book by parents and educators. VOYA tried to claim that sexuality was the issue, not bisexuality. However, Phoebe North (according to Hannah Moskowitz) unearthed VOYA's history of recommending books with queer characters for mature audiences, but not restricting their recommendations for books that depicted heterosexual sex. This is a good account of the whole thing, if you want more detail: Oy, VOYA on SorryWatch.
This brings up three specific issues for me: the definition of bias, the definition of sexuality, and the interaction of identity politics and the workplace. I would define bias as the tendency to treat something as morally different from similar things. Morality, as I see it, often is apparent in terms of what “should” be done with a thing: Should it be allowed? Should kids have access to it? If I say a thing would upset the psychological development of a child, I am making a moral judgment about that thing. From what I understand, the folks at Voice of Youth Advocates repeatedly made a moral judgment about non-heterosexuality that they did not make about heterosexuality. On multiple occasions, VOYA recommended for mature audiences only YA books that showed homosexual relationships or made explicit that certain characters were gay or bisexual, even if no sexual act was depicted. At the same time, VOYA reviewed other books containing heterosexual sex scenes without restricting their recommendation. Clearly, if all of this is correct, it is not sexuality that VOYA believes is not for children, but certain kinds of sexuality. VOYA has a bias against homosexuality and bisexuality, based on their past and present publications. *** Some would agree with VOYA’s implicit moral statement. Many people from the LGBTQ community, understandably, do not agree. Many YA authors disagree. Many librarians, following professional values that celebrate diversity and inclusiveness, also disagree. I, personally, disagree. It is reasonable to expect a magazine with such a large audience of librarians to adhere to the values of librarians. When they clearly did not, many of us felt injured and insulted. As they persisted in refusing to admit the bias and make amends, the injury and the insult grew. The depth and sting of the cut I think is related to my second issue: homosexuality and bisexuality and other queer sexualities are not just about sex. They are about identity, emotions, romantic attraction, intimacy, and other things that are perfectly safe for children to read about, as well as about sex. Sex itself is not bad for children, but there are developmental considerations, and there are some depictions of sexual feelings and acts that are widely understood to be not good for kids up to a certain age. But sex is also a loaded term that carries connotations of explicit pornographic material. Many people who disagree with VOYA that bisexuality is harmful to children would agree with the statement that sex is harmful to children. The fact that the word bisexuality contains the word sex allows VOYA to excuse themselves by stating that sexuality is the problem, not bisexuality. It's bullshit, but it's a reasonable dodge, given the common (mis)understanding of sexuality. But the issue still stands: how do we talk about the non-sexual aspects of sex and sexuality? Do we need a new vocabulary to avoid pitfalls like these? *** Part of Tristina Wright’s response to this whole mess was this article, which brings up for me the issue of identity in the workplace. Identity politics is a tricky thing. Those of us whose identities cross into some realms that are not fully understood or accepted in society have a dilemma. Improvements in the situation can only come when more of us “come out” so that society can see different versions of “normal” and the young ones discovering their own identities can feel safe and validated. In the meantime, the more we "come out," the greater the danger we're in, especially if we work with kids. If I say, as Wright does, that I'm a bisexual with diagnosed mental illnesses, I have to take into account other people's (mis)understandings of sexuality, bisexuality, and mental illnesses. Should I be open about who I am and possibly suffer changes in my employment (which, depending on parental reaction and pressure, may be an issue)? Or should I proudly stand up and proclaim who I am, so that the next kid growing up with mood swings or multidirectional attractions doesn't have to feel quite so ashamed. This is nothing to take lightly. Wright cites some startling statistics: compared to gays and lesbians, bisexuals are more likely to experience mental illness and four times more likely to commit suicide. Something has to change. So, by the way ... |
AuthorJeffrey Babbitt, MLIS, is a graduate of the School of Library and Information Science at Wayne State University who is pursuing a career as a librarian in Michigan. Subject Headings
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