The Tennessee legislature recently passed a bill stating that teachers cannot encourage “gateway sexual activity,” as part of the state’s abstinence-based sexual education movement.
Seizing the opportunity implied by the new law, officials in Sumner County last week banned John Green’s Young Adult novel “Looking for Alaska” from the school curriculum because it contains an oral sex scene- one of two mildly-erotic passages in the novel. The book had already been banned as pornography in Knox County in March, 2012 after a parent protested that the book went against what she was trying to teach her child.
The book, published in March, 2005, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association, as well as being named in 2005 a LA Times Book Prize Finalist, NY Public Library Book for Teen title, Booklist Editor’s Choice, and School Library Journal Best Book of the year.
Set at a boarding school in Alabama and divided into two parts, ‘Before’ and ‘After’, it chronicles the story of Miles “Pudge” Halter, is fascinated by the last words of famous people, and seeks what a dying Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.”
Pudge’s new friends have lives that are anything but safe and boring. Their core is the razor-sharp, sexy, and self-destructive Alaska, who has perfected the arts of pranking and evading authority. Pudge falls impossibly in love, but when tragedy strikes the group, it is only by coming face-to-face with death that Pudge discovers the value of living and loving unconditionally.
SafeLibraries.org, a conservative blog site which promotes censorship, has accused the American Library Association and John Green of being “porn pushers” and attempting to corrupt the young.
The Tennessean quotes one Sumner parent as saying: “Kids at this age are impressionable. Sometimes it’s monkey see, monkey do. I’m going to trust that my school board made the right choice. If they feel like this book is a little too graphic, I’m all for it.”
The monkey reference is a tad ironic, as Tennessee was the site of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 that debated over evolution being taught in the classroom.
The book will remain in libraries, but critics of the decision feel that more reasonable and responsible compromises could be reached, such as offering an alternative title to objecting parents. They also point out that the book isn’t pornographic in even in the broadest sense of the term as the most objectionable word used in the realistically-rendered sex passage is “penis.” The second of the two so-called “steamy” scenes concludes:
‘We didn’t have sex. We never got naked. I never touched her bare breast, and her hands never got lower than my hips. It didn’t matter. As she slept, I whispered, “I love you, Alaska Young.’
Nonetheless, Sumner County school spokesman Jeremy Johnson used a popular justification for the ban, explaining that because the book is not a classic, it’s okay to ban it. “You take somebody like Hemingway or a John Steinbeck and there can be some language or description that may make parents uncomfortable, but the value of a writer like that outweighs what controversy may be in the individual book.”
WHAT?!
John Steinbeck’s novels have been, and are still, routinely banned and challenged around the country. In fact “Grapes of Wrath” was banned for its “leftist sensibilities.” So, if this is the educational measuring stick, Green is in good company. Do we wait ten years before it’s old enough to be on school shelves? Twenty years? As far as the “literary merits” one needs simply to look at the list of awards an accolades already achieved in the first year of publication.
John Green is a respected Young Adult novelist whose books depict the real-world lives of teenagers and consistently receive national acclaim by critics and literature educators.
Depew, New York, near Buffalo, found itself in a related debate in 2008, when two 11th-grade teachers decided to teach “Looking for Alaska.” The debate caused Green to make a video in which he says, “I am not a pornographer,” at which point opponents relented.
For more information on the Banned Books Awareness and Reading for Knowledge project and the complete list of titles covered, please visit the official website at http://www.deepforestproductions.com/BBARK.html
Sources: Wikipedia, Amazon, Marshall University, New York Daily News, The Tennessean
© 2012 R. Wolf Baldassarro/Deep Forest Productions
You said, "SafeLibraries.org, a conservative blog site which promotes censorship, has accused the American Library Association and John Green of being 'porn pushers' and attempting to corrupt the young."
1) I'm not a "conservative" blog. Even if I were, it's irrelevant–even "liberals" like Naomi Wolf show concern for inappropriate material for children: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/books/review/12…
2) I do not promote censorship. I oppose it. Keeping inappropriate material from children has nothing to do with censorship: http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2009/02/safelib…
3) I have not accused John Green of being a pornographer: http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2011/02/looking…
4) I have not accused the ALA of being pornographers. You obviously did not read what I wrote closely enough.
5) You really have got me so completely wrong that I have to doubt the veracity of anything you published here or anywhere else. Your completely false statements are either unintentional or intentional, in either case the weight I would give to your statements is very little. But if the latter, that weight drops to zero.
Now, if you want to get the facts straight, I'll be happy to communicate with you. Something tells me that would not interest you.
Let me include another excerpt from the book that might explain to your readers what the fuss is about. “Lara randomly asked me, “Have you ever gotten a blow job?” “Um, that’s out of the blue,” I said. “I’ve just never geeven one,” she answered, her little voice dripping with seductiveness. It was so brazen. I thought I would explode. “No,” I said. “I never have.” “Think it would be fun?” “DO I!?!?!?!?!?!?! “Um. yeah. I mean, you don’t have to.” “I think I want to,” she said, and we kissed a little, and then. And then with me sitting watching The Brady Bunch, watching Marcia Marcia Marcia up to her Brady antics, Lara unbuttoned my pants and pulled my boxers down a little and pulled out my penis. “Wow,” she said. “What?” She looked up at me, but didn’t move, her face nanometers away from my penis. “It’s weird.” “What do you mean “weird?”
“Just beeg, I guess.” “I could live with that kind of weird. And then she wrapped her hand around it and put it into her mouth.” And waited. We were both very still. She did not move a muscle in her body, and I did not move a muscle in mine. I knew that at this point something else was supposed to happen, but I wasn’t quite sure what. She stayed still. I could feel her nervous breath. For minutes, for as long as it took the Bradys to steal the key and unlock themselves from the ghost-town jail, she lay there, stock-still with my penis in her mouth, and I sat there, waiting. And then she took it out of her mouth and looked up at me quizzically. “Should I do sometheeng?” “Um. I don’t know,” I said. Everything I’d learned from watching porn with Alaska suddenly exited my brain. I thought maybe she should move her head up and down, but wouldn’t that choke her? So I just stayed quiet. “Should I, like, bite?” “Don’t bite! I mean, I don’t think. I think–I mean, that felt good. That was nice. I don’t know if there’s something else.” “I mean, you deedn’t–” “Um. Maybe we should ask Alaska.”
So we went to her room and asked Alaska. She laughed and laughed. Sitting on her bed, she laughed until she cried. She walked into the bathroom, returned with a tube of toothpaste, and showed us. In detail. Never have I so wanted to be Crest Complete. Lara and I went back to her room, where she did exactly what Alaska told her to do, and I did exactly what Alaska said I would do, which was die a hundred little ecstatic deaths, my fists clenched, my body shaking. It was my first orgasm with a girl, and afterward I was embarrassed and nervous, and so, clearly, was Lara, who finally broke the silence by asking, “So, want to do some homework?”
Yes. That would the oral sex scene aforementioned in the post.
You did not make your viewpoint clear as to whether or not you were opposed to the ban on this novel, so I will look at this 50/50 choice and hypothesize that you support the ban. If I have made an incorrect observation, I do greatly apologize, and please correct me if this is so. But given the limited information as to your standpoint on the issue, I will continue with the inference that you agree with the ban.
This scene is indeed from “Looking for Alaska,” the words used (far as I can understand), accurately and in the correct order. One thing, however, that you failed to include–understandably, for there is no way to include such in a mere comment–is the CONTEXT of this scene. And really, what are words without context? Reciting a quote without knowledge of the context leads to that quote being disembodied from its meaning.
The oral sex scene in “Looking for Alaska” is overly descriptive, yes, and quite physical, but wildly unerotic. While the characters are very physically engaged, there is no connection present. This scene is very near another that is, instead, between the narrator and Alaska. In that scene, there is none of the “vulgarity” to which people are so opposed, and yet it bears a total emotional resonation that speaks to the reader on a completely different level.
So the ones that ban “Looking for Alaska” are those who focus on the physicality of the scene you transcribed, but they fail to recognize the meaning of these fictional occurrences. Books are rife with below-the-surface meaning, and this is no exception. The reason behind these scenes: so many people in our society seek a physical relationship to satisfy a base desire, but no physical relationship can compete with the satisfaction of emotional intimacy–and that intimacy can be embodied in something as simple as a smile.
Thank you for listening to my viewpoint. I rest my case.
A parent in Wisconsin can’t handle the topics, so she wants it banned district-wide to protect her fragile feelings. It’s the latest attempt to ban this book.
http://www.wisn.com/news/parent-wants-book-banned-from-waukesha-school-district/26893994#!bhS7Xx
One Hundred and Thirty-six days before Miles Halter met Alaska Young,his life as a non-typical floridan featured friendlessness and was constantly uneventful.
When Miles meets Alaska,this,like you may expect,changes.You see,Alaska is the kind of girl who loves sex more than a Bishop loves the Bible,and also is the kind of girl who thinks as deep as making a lifetime reading list and ‘finding the way out of the labyrinth of suffering’ (spoiler: straight and fast),and is totally attractive in the sense that,if you’ve got two X chromosomes involved in your creation,you have to repeatedly remind yourself that
a) she is a fictional character;and
b) you are straight.
I’m not even exaggerating.
So naturally,she alters Miles Halter’s whole life,breaks his heart,and also,yours.
One Hundred and Thirty-six days after Miles meets Alaska,he can never be the same again.
Now I know a lot of books will tell you this,and most of them are actually very wrong about it,but i’m not a book,I’m a person,not a publisher or an editor or whoever writes the review at the back of the book.I’m a reader,so trust me now when I say this – this book will stay with you forever.It will break your heart.You will pick it up and read it again and again and again and again,and go through the same heartbreak EVERY SINGLE TIME.
This book is too amazing a debut.John Green is going to be mentioned in my will.
And if you read this book,
he’s going to be mentioned in yours,too.
My dedication to John Green now,is:
If people were McDonald’s take-away,
I was fries and he was a Big Mac.
Last week Looking for Alaska was banned at another school- this time in New Jersey.
NJ.com reports (http://bit.ly/1k8ZA92 ) the controversial book was removed from the district by Superintendent Joseph Langowski on Oct. 9, a day after a parent voiced concerns regarding the novel’s sexual content at a school board meeting.
It was just reinstated following a review of their policy.
The book was never part of the district’s curriculum, but it was removed from libraries and wasn’t to be used as resource material.
Nevertheless, the reversal came after it was noted that a ban must be first put into writing and go before a committee for review.
Langowski says he believed district policy gave the superintendent the unilateral power to remove the book.