amazon forums

[rm]

So I've been participating in the Amazon forums a bit over the last couple of days, mostly in the HP topics for reasons that should be obvious, but also, because it shows up on the page for my book, on requests for reading recs for teens. Most of the requests are either from teen girls themselves looking for more challenging books and apologizing for seeming bratty for saying they have a high reading level or from parents emphasizing the need to find SAFE and CLEAN books for said teen girls.

All of this makes me by turns unspeakably sad and angry. Because books are always safe and never safe. And I think people are afraid not that these girls will discover ideas and characters which are foreign, adult and theoretically disturbing, but that in reading these girls will find out that they are not singular, defective or naughty, but capable and covetous.

I am SO GLAD I grew up without the Internet and clear backpacks and cell phones and everything having to be checked and cross-checked for the so-called safety, cleanliness and morality of my private thoughts.

Comments

[abbismom.livejournal.com]

I understand exactly where you're coming from. I often have thought that children growing up now feel like they are under a glass bowl with unknown faces staring down at them observing their every move.