Week Thirteen Prompt

Week Thirteen Prompt

Though this week's group of "genres" all seem very different, they all have in common the fact that many people don't feel that they are legitimate literary choices and libraries shouldn't be spending money on them or promoting them to adults. The common belief is that adults still don't or shouldn't read that stuff. How can we as librarians, work to ensure that we are able to serve adults who enjoy YA literature or graphic novels? Or should we? I can't wait to read your thoughts on this. Thanks!

When applied to any material that doesn’t pose an imminent threat of danger, such as an enchanted spell book that once opened will unleash a hell dimension on earth, the words “shouldn’t read” are not in my vocabulary. 

That is not to say that I don’t hold opinions on various titles or genres, in some cases very negative opinions and judgments, but it is not my place as a librarian to impose those views on a patron. Aside from observing age appropriate guidelines for young readers and respecting a patron’s reading tastes and needs, my personal opinion on a title is immaterial, except with regard to meeting the needs of the reader with suggestions. 

I wasn’t surprised to encounter the opposite attitudes in the profession in the past in Jennifer Burke Pierce’s, “the Borderland Age and Borderline Books: The Early Practice of Reader’s advisory for Youth.” I learned in “The History of the Book” class while working on a time capsule of children’s books that according to Grenby, “children’s literature of the 18^thand 19^thcenturies sought to improve its young readers, combining social and moral instruction with entertainment.” I particularly appreciated Pierce placing the attitudes in the context of the “purity” movement and the related impulses towards “moral” and “racial hygiene”. The idea that youth and women were particularly vulnerable to the “contagion” of sensational literature and the serious life consequences for their minds and bodies seems laughable, but the writers were totally serious. Several things popped into my mind as I read this article. The first was Jo March, of Little Women fame, and her love of sensational melodramatic stories. I am to this day still horrified that her love interest, the older schoolteacher she eventually marries, condemns her writing for its sensational and low qualities. (Perhaps condemns is too strong, but his insinuation that it is low moral quality irritates me.) She burns her work, I believe, and turns to writing highly moral quality stories for young boys.

The second thing I thought of was the viral internet list of reasons why people were committed to insane asylums in the 19^thcentury, which included “novel reading” and “hard study”. 

The connection made between women and the danger to their reproductive organs and moral health cannot be emphasized enough; it has a long-standing history. As recently as the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it was thought for both boys and girls impure thoughts inspired by immoral reading could lead down a dangerous road, eventually to blindness and insanity!  In the 16^thcentury it was thought that young women should be married to avoid “wandering wombs” and “greensickness” that virginity eventually led to. A literate girl, already fragile and susceptible to all sorts of wild emotions and womens' complaints, was a sitting duck of potential immorality if exposed to novel reading or ideas her brain was not designed to handle. Frank Furedi (2015) writes in "Books are Dangerous,"

"The triggering of dysfunctional imitative behaviour constituted a particular risk to the virtue of women. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in his novel Julie (1761), warned that the moment a woman opens a novel – any novel – and ‘dares to read but one page’, she ‘is a fallen girl'. "

In a 2014 New York Times piece, “When novels were bad for you”, Anna North, writes that today some reading is still viewed with if not skepticism or hysterical fears, some judgment, depending upon the format and the genre. In the past novel reading was the danger, but today, novel reading is seen as the superior choice of reading material, as opposed to online non-fiction, Twitter, or anything not in the traditional paper print bound book format. In her piece she offers some amusing examples of “dangerous works” and depictions of the dangerous consequences of novel reading. All this led me to recall Rosie M. Banks, novel writer, and wife of Bingo Little, friend of P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster. In “Bingo and the Little Woman” published in the Strand in 1922, Bertie has to assist his chum Bingo (always falling in love and short of cash) with Bingo’s rich uncle, in a plot to have Bingo’s allowance reinstated. Bertie must impersonate melodramatic and sensational novelist Rosie M. Banks by claiming it’s his pseudonym to influence Bingo’s uncle, who is a fan. Later, Bertie is called on again to convince the uncle that Bingo should definitely marry a waitress, despite their class differences and short acquaintance. In the end, the scheme blows up, as always, and the waitress turns out to be the real Rosie M. Banks! This short story is so charming and funny and I think it captures with humorous observation the general poo pooing of women’s sensational novels and the reality that people loved reading them! Wodehouse is also writing as a writer about writers and poking at some forms of literature being more valued and highly regarded than others, (like humorists like himself) so that’s fun too.

To answer the question, “How can we as librarians work to ensure that we are able to serve adults who enjoy YA and graphic novels?” and “Should we?”

Absolutely we should! The best way to approach this is like any other genre. Understand the appeal factors, who are the big names in the genre, who is a towering figure or what’s a major work, and who is up and coming. This will entail reading up and reading in the genre. Sometimes this requires an open mind, maybe more than we can give. I discovered this week that asking me to read new adult is like asking me to read Ayn Rand; it’s not going to happen. EVER. I am 43 years old. I have no interest in reading about college hook ups and coming of age getting your first job and apartment stories. I'm just not interested. Judging books by the covers, the stories seem shallow and the subjects just don't interest me. I'll gladly read romance stories. I enjoy fluff, provided it hits other requirements. Is it funny, is there time travel, is the heroine compelling, independent, interesting to me? It's clear my personal opinion of New Adult fiction is not high. But to each their own. I will do my best to understand this genre and the appeal factors that make it popular.I will listen when people tell me why they like it. I won't read it, but I will read about New Adult.

Perhaps this path will eventually lead to the kind of understanding that the Atlantic article, “What Girls Want” provided for me, a long time avowed Twilight hater. And I mean hater. The article reminded me of myself at that age, and the passions and dreams and yearnings of that in between stage adolescent girls occupy.(Though I was more of an Anne of Green Gables/Wrinkle in Time girl.) It also offered an explainer for the elements I like least about this series, such as Bella’s passivity and victim persona that I really can’t stand. Info on the author’s religious background and her personal moral outlook explained the story for me in a brand-new way, and Flanagan’s exploration of the erotic suspense and the melodramatic high stakes of consummation in the context of the novel revealed a completely different perspective on it, and the novel’s fans. It now makes sense that 50 Shades of Grey began as Twilight fan fiction. But it is not for me to suggest that adolescent girls who like vampires watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I believe she is a better role model, or that I think the vampires are more interesting. Having said that, familiarity with the appeal factors should always include the amount of sex and violence and the tone when it comes to recommending YA to younger readers. Adults can make their own choices! But the same applies, tailoring recommendations to the individual needs of readers.