I walked up 7th Avenue today. Between 40th and 41st Streets the crowd suddenly swelled a bit. As it did, a man in khaki shorts and a clean bright yellow polo shirt stepped to my right, carrying a slice of pizza on a paper plate, wrapped in a brown paper bag. The grease from the cheese had made an impression on the bag from the inside that looked kind of like America. On the other side of this man were some caricature artists near the curb--sidewalk art--tourist art.
The artists are, for the most part, very well trained Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Philippine and Thai artists who have found, upon arrival on America's shores, that the only way to make money on their art as non-citizens is to sell their personalized and often very beautiful caricatures on the street. They didn't come to America to do so. Many of them came with higher hopes for themselves, for their families, for their art. But America seems to have a problem with welcoming them. America has a problem with art, too.
The polo-wearing-America-pizza-stain-carrying man brushed past me just as the crowd swelled. Instead of getting behind or in front of anyone, he pushed his way into the crowd of artists--nearly tripping on one who has seated, working. When his balance saved him from falling, he looked down, sneered, aimed at the man's tin of charcoals placed next to him, and kicked it, barely missing a step in his stride. The charcoals scattered across the sidewalk, crackling under the feet of the ever-swelling crowd. And surprise never left the artist's face. And the polo-wearing-America-pizza-stain-carrying man swaggered on, pounding fists with his friends.
America must be so proud of its boy--who cried when Michael Jackson died, who doesn't know where Iran is, whose sneakers were made by orphans in Indonesia, whose pizza was made by Mexican immigrants, whose girlfriend was the prom queen that never went to college. How proud America must be to let their boy carry on--the boy who speaks English good. The boy who can't tell the difference between charcoals, chalk and oil pastels.
And how proud America must be to be rejecting and denying artists who wish they were American, who once were the orphans making toys in Taiwan, the orphans making sneakers and soccer balls in Indonesia. How proud America must be to have the polo-wearing-America-pizza-stain-carrying boy as their poster child for the American dream.
6.28.2009
6.13.2009
I....am a librarian.
Tonight I shall watch The Mummy and imitate Rachel Wiesz: “I….am a librarian!”
It seems silly, and it is, but it’s one of the first references I have for why I’ve made the decision I have. Indiana Jones was the very first. And true, he’s no librarian, but the library in The Last Crusade made me want to cry. As did the towering of the stacks in The Mummy and the grandeur of the shelves in Beauty and the Beast as compared to the measly offerings of Belle’s town bookshop. I think the Last Templar is the most recent inspiration I’ve come across. No one it is a librarian and I doubt very much that they ever even talk about a library, let alone enter one. But the story made me wish I was surrounded by hundreds of very old books.
My truest inspiration, I think, is “And Tango Makes Three” which is a children’s book that came out just a few years ago. It tells the true story of two male zoo penguins who, lacking female companionship, bond together to raise another couple’s extra egg/baby. There was a lot of controversy surrounding its publication because of its theme in the realm of homosexual unions. I love the book and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. But ultra-right-wing-christian-conservatives beg to differ. It was the number one most frequently challenged book, according to the ALA in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
There are other books that were focused on during the election/Prop8 business of the last year. Agencies for the protection of “traditional” families argued that children in K and 1st grade should not be exposed to books like Daddy’s Roommate and Heather has Two Mommies, if their parents didn’t want them to be. And I remember becoming very angry that any parent would feel the need to so control what their children are reading. I can understand wishing to control the level of violence or the level of promiscuity….but what is so very different between a book about a heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple? Both exist in our world and have for quite some time, so why shouldn’t our children be knowledgeable of that fact. Sure, that may go against your belief of what is acceptable based on your church, but if that is your argument, then you should send your child to private school or homeschool them so that you can control the rate at which they become their ultra conservative parents.
You are raising ignorant children! And how dare you! My parents never made an attempt to “control” my reading. As a child, my reading skills were something that I took a great amount of pride in, and even if they HAD tried to control my literary urges, they probably would not have stopped me. How is “whoever the kid is has two mommies” any different from when, in the Babysitters’ Club series, Dawn’s mother started “dating” Mary Ann’s father and then got married, so Dawn has two daddies?!? What about the promiscuity of the adults? The Babysitters' Club is more suggestive than Heather Has Two Mommies! And then there’s Redwall. I have no idea how my first book of Redwall, Martin the Warrior, ended up in my 11-year-old hands. But it did. The Redwall books contain a good deal of violence and terror…but they’ve got their morals.
Not all levels of violence are “bad” books. Which brings me to the subject of “banned” books. This is something that truly makes my stomach boil and make me want to retch. The ALA has a list of the most frequently challenged books…formal complaints from patrons based on “unsuitability.” The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a book that changed my life at the age of 18 is a pretty consistent member of that list, as is Huckleberry Finn, the previously mentioned And Tango Makes Three, and The Bluest Eye. I don’t get it…do you just want your children to be completely ignorant? To have no idea what the world is like outside of Mommy and Daddy and church pew? Oh and one of those highly contested books during the election: King and King. I have to enjoy that Harry Potter is on these ridiculous lists. The “complaints” seem to die out after 2003…it dropped from the #2 spot to not being in the top 10. Of course, that was after the first two movies had come out and parents had no choice but to buy into it. The idea of something “not belonging in a library” is baffling to me. Baffling and sad and frightening, really.
ALA.org provides the Radcliffe 100 – the top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. The Top 9 are either banned or challenged. Let that be a lesson. If you deny your child books because you think they’re “unsuitable” then perhaps you should reevaluate whose life you’re living, yours or theirs. The top 9 are The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Color Purple, Ulysses, Beloved, Lord of the Flies, and 1984. There's more violence in the newest Shia LaBeouf film than there is in those books put together! (The newest SL film is Transformers...for the record, I love transformers. I am not dissing transformers. Thank you). Out of the 100, 42 have been banned or challenged. Of the 42, I have read 19. Of those 19, I can say that 11 of them changed my life or made me the person I am today. Most of them were invaluable history lessons that out-taught ANY history teacher I EVER had.
Banning books is absurd. It’s one thing for an extremist government to ban books that argue against their social structure….that’s an ENTIRELY different situation and, while I don’t condone extremist governments, it makes SENSE to me. What DOESN’T make sense to me, is the people of a society censoring freedom of speech, something we so treasure as the formidable nation we are. If you don’t like what your kid is reading, then you should talk to them about it, gauge their reaction, etc. Like I said, my parents could not have stopped me from reading whatever I wanted. I was going to read everything my fingers and eyes could find. If you’ve done your best to soundly moralize your children, then you have nothing to fear from them reading “rubbish” because they will probably see it as such or they’ll at least be able to apply their morals to each item.
But not all libraries are school libraries. You can’t protect your children from every written word. Honestly the daily newspaper is much more threatening to a child’s moral stance than a book like the And Tango Makes Three is. You cannot deny a child their right to the world and all the knowledge it contains. Guide them, surely. Monitor them, for certain. But do no attempt to control them. You’ll end up finding renegade copies of Goosebumps and A Separate Peace under their beds and you won’t know what to do because, secretly, they’ve become braver and smarter than you. Read with your children. Read what your children are reading. Talk to your children. We live in a society of Disney Channel and fear because parents are afraid to talk to their children about reality. 50% of what I know of reality, I learned from books. Novels. Classics. 25% of what I know of reality, I learned from experience. The other 25% I learned from my parents. Because, while they left a lot up to self-education which of course thrived in my copious reading, they never told me NO do NOT attempt to read that book, it’s too big for you, or it’s unsuitable. My mother forced my 6th grade class to read and test on The Giver. I know adults who today could not HANDLE the Giver because their parents would not let them breathe in the stacks. Let your children read. Let your children breathe.
It seems silly, and it is, but it’s one of the first references I have for why I’ve made the decision I have. Indiana Jones was the very first. And true, he’s no librarian, but the library in The Last Crusade made me want to cry. As did the towering of the stacks in The Mummy and the grandeur of the shelves in Beauty and the Beast as compared to the measly offerings of Belle’s town bookshop. I think the Last Templar is the most recent inspiration I’ve come across. No one it is a librarian and I doubt very much that they ever even talk about a library, let alone enter one. But the story made me wish I was surrounded by hundreds of very old books.
My truest inspiration, I think, is “And Tango Makes Three” which is a children’s book that came out just a few years ago. It tells the true story of two male zoo penguins who, lacking female companionship, bond together to raise another couple’s extra egg/baby. There was a lot of controversy surrounding its publication because of its theme in the realm of homosexual unions. I love the book and I think it’s absolutely brilliant. But ultra-right-wing-christian-conservatives beg to differ. It was the number one most frequently challenged book, according to the ALA in 2006, 2007, and 2008.
There are other books that were focused on during the election/Prop8 business of the last year. Agencies for the protection of “traditional” families argued that children in K and 1st grade should not be exposed to books like Daddy’s Roommate and Heather has Two Mommies, if their parents didn’t want them to be. And I remember becoming very angry that any parent would feel the need to so control what their children are reading. I can understand wishing to control the level of violence or the level of promiscuity….but what is so very different between a book about a heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple? Both exist in our world and have for quite some time, so why shouldn’t our children be knowledgeable of that fact. Sure, that may go against your belief of what is acceptable based on your church, but if that is your argument, then you should send your child to private school or homeschool them so that you can control the rate at which they become their ultra conservative parents.
You are raising ignorant children! And how dare you! My parents never made an attempt to “control” my reading. As a child, my reading skills were something that I took a great amount of pride in, and even if they HAD tried to control my literary urges, they probably would not have stopped me. How is “whoever the kid is has two mommies” any different from when, in the Babysitters’ Club series, Dawn’s mother started “dating” Mary Ann’s father and then got married, so Dawn has two daddies?!? What about the promiscuity of the adults? The Babysitters' Club is more suggestive than Heather Has Two Mommies! And then there’s Redwall. I have no idea how my first book of Redwall, Martin the Warrior, ended up in my 11-year-old hands. But it did. The Redwall books contain a good deal of violence and terror…but they’ve got their morals.
Not all levels of violence are “bad” books. Which brings me to the subject of “banned” books. This is something that truly makes my stomach boil and make me want to retch. The ALA has a list of the most frequently challenged books…formal complaints from patrons based on “unsuitability.” The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a book that changed my life at the age of 18 is a pretty consistent member of that list, as is Huckleberry Finn, the previously mentioned And Tango Makes Three, and The Bluest Eye. I don’t get it…do you just want your children to be completely ignorant? To have no idea what the world is like outside of Mommy and Daddy and church pew? Oh and one of those highly contested books during the election: King and King. I have to enjoy that Harry Potter is on these ridiculous lists. The “complaints” seem to die out after 2003…it dropped from the #2 spot to not being in the top 10. Of course, that was after the first two movies had come out and parents had no choice but to buy into it. The idea of something “not belonging in a library” is baffling to me. Baffling and sad and frightening, really.
ALA.org provides the Radcliffe 100 – the top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. The Top 9 are either banned or challenged. Let that be a lesson. If you deny your child books because you think they’re “unsuitable” then perhaps you should reevaluate whose life you’re living, yours or theirs. The top 9 are The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Color Purple, Ulysses, Beloved, Lord of the Flies, and 1984. There's more violence in the newest Shia LaBeouf film than there is in those books put together! (The newest SL film is Transformers...for the record, I love transformers. I am not dissing transformers. Thank you). Out of the 100, 42 have been banned or challenged. Of the 42, I have read 19. Of those 19, I can say that 11 of them changed my life or made me the person I am today. Most of them were invaluable history lessons that out-taught ANY history teacher I EVER had.
Banning books is absurd. It’s one thing for an extremist government to ban books that argue against their social structure….that’s an ENTIRELY different situation and, while I don’t condone extremist governments, it makes SENSE to me. What DOESN’T make sense to me, is the people of a society censoring freedom of speech, something we so treasure as the formidable nation we are. If you don’t like what your kid is reading, then you should talk to them about it, gauge their reaction, etc. Like I said, my parents could not have stopped me from reading whatever I wanted. I was going to read everything my fingers and eyes could find. If you’ve done your best to soundly moralize your children, then you have nothing to fear from them reading “rubbish” because they will probably see it as such or they’ll at least be able to apply their morals to each item.
But not all libraries are school libraries. You can’t protect your children from every written word. Honestly the daily newspaper is much more threatening to a child’s moral stance than a book like the And Tango Makes Three is. You cannot deny a child their right to the world and all the knowledge it contains. Guide them, surely. Monitor them, for certain. But do no attempt to control them. You’ll end up finding renegade copies of Goosebumps and A Separate Peace under their beds and you won’t know what to do because, secretly, they’ve become braver and smarter than you. Read with your children. Read what your children are reading. Talk to your children. We live in a society of Disney Channel and fear because parents are afraid to talk to their children about reality. 50% of what I know of reality, I learned from books. Novels. Classics. 25% of what I know of reality, I learned from experience. The other 25% I learned from my parents. Because, while they left a lot up to self-education which of course thrived in my copious reading, they never told me NO do NOT attempt to read that book, it’s too big for you, or it’s unsuitable. My mother forced my 6th grade class to read and test on The Giver. I know adults who today could not HANDLE the Giver because their parents would not let them breathe in the stacks. Let your children read. Let your children breathe.
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