We’ll speak about #SpeakLoudly
By Kathleen Bolton | September 21, 2010 |
If you are a Twitter user, you may have noticed #SpeakLoudly trending over the last 48 hours. That’s because Laurie Halse Anderson’s highly-regarded YA novel Speak, which was awarded a Printz medal of honor, is the target of banning. Yes, my friends, ALA’s Banned Books week (Sept. 25 – Oct. 2) is coming up, and there’s a reason to spread the word like never before.
Laurie Halse Anderson blogs eloquently about the banning on her website. She details the mind-boggling efforts of a Missouri pastor to get Speak, which is about a teen’s struggle with the aftermath of a brutal rape, labeled pornographic so it will be banned (it’s incredible to me that people actually think rape is pornographic instead of a crime, but there it is). YA Librarian also offers an excellent summary of the situation and how teens connect to Halse Anderson’s book, as well as more links.
You can support the #SpeakLoudly effort by adding a Twibbon to your Twitter avatar: https://twibbon.com/join/Speak-Loudly.
Before she became famous as the girl who loved a vampire, Kristen Stewart played the protagonist Melinda Sordino in the film version of Speak, and she’s terrific.
If you’re so inclined, please feel free to SPEAK about #SpeakLoudly on your own social media networks. And we encourage you to take a look at the ALA’s webportal to see the other books targeted for banning and support those authors as well.
Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton.
She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter–both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President’s teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.
Done the twibbon thing, and if the library where I work does another Banned Books Week festival, I’ll be sure to find a copy of SPEAK to read from. (We usually do a read-out, but I haven’t heard anything about it this year. Better follow up and find out whether it’s going to happen!)
Rape is not pornography. Rape is a brutal act that takes many people years to recover from. We shouldn’t silence writers who want to address that.
It’s so ironic that one man is trying to silence a book that speaks against the cultural silencing of rape victims.
I also find it disturbing that this man would equate the violent crime of Rape with pornography, which by definition is intended to be sexually *exciting*.
I’m buying SPEAK for my daughter because I believe the way to defeat evil is to confront it head on.
Wait, what century is this???? Blatant. Sexism. *&^$*^%$. Oy.
I’ll mention this in my next blog post too, and spread the word. https://dufflyn.blogspot.com/2010/09/to-tell-truth-2010.html
Great, great post, Kath! Shannon Hale also had an excellent response to this on her blog:
https://oinks.squeetus.com/2010/09/speak-loudly.html
Wow. The stupidity of some people boggles the mind.
Yes, wow. I had no idea about this until now, so thanks for this important post. I had just started noticing those twibbons but Therese, if you didn’t have one, I might not have thought to ask.
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I’ve been following this controversy all week, though I suppose “controversy” is the wrong word. More like utter stupidity. The more I think about it, the more I feel sure Dr. Scroggins never even read Speak. He probably just sifted through it looking for scary words he could pull out of context, like rape and abortion, without having any understanding of the book’s underlying message. For those (like Scroggins) who missed it, the message is: Speak Up! And be heard.
–Maria