Authors And Readers Rally To Defend Rape Novel From School Ban

guardian.co.uk:

Judy Blume and fellow authors and readers have rallied behind Laurie Halse Anderson's acclaimed young adult novel about the rape of a teenager, "Speak," following a call to ban it from schools in Missouri.

Read the whole story: guardian.co.uk

Comments

[BlueZoo]

02:49 PM on 09/30/2010

NO book banning! Period! Teens and pre-teens cannot & should not be shielded from stories about rape. They know girls who have been raped. They hear about it on television and in chat rooms. They need to read about it and know how it is a crime of power and not passion, and it wreaks a lifetime of grief on every woman who has experienced it. These kids are far from ignorant but it appears their parents are stone-cold stupid! Their parents won't condone the use of condoms by their children but the kids go into our local pharmacies and convenience stores and purchase them by the dozens!

[roshni]

12:12 AM on 10/02/2010

I agree completely. They need to be aware of what is going on and obtain the tools to defend themselves.

[ItsAD]

12:06 PM on 09/30/2010

[e-mail] is the offending educator. Drop him a line and tell him he's denying rape victims a tool of understanding, and teenagers knowledge and power against sexual violence. He's leaving the children of Missouri less safe, not more.

[goijra]

03:42 PM on 09/30/2010

Idiots like this see rape as sex, not as the acts of despicable violence that they are.

[Lisa Shields]

08:06 AM on 09/30/2010

I always refer to St. Thomas Aquinas...who reminded us that there is no evil a book can inspire that will not occur to us all by ourselves...translation...of course people "get ideas" from books...but they'd get them ANYWAY, and the Virtuous are not going to be corrupted by something they read.

Man...they talk about Hitler enough...did they miss the point that he was a MAJOR book burner?

[Americulchie]

07:05 AM on 09/30/2010

Censorship should have no place in modern America.I find it mind boggling that in this century we have so many closed minds in this country it makes me sick.

[Lev Raphael]

10:32 PM on 09/29/2010

I think all books should be banned from the Missouri schools except the Bible.

No, wait, the Bible, too. It has rape, incest, drunkenness, murder, and its warning against many other sins could give children very bad ideas!

[healthanalyst]

03:59 AM on 09/30/2010

Do they have to read them cover to cover? When I taught at UMC it was like pulling teeth to get them to do that. Where I wen tto school? You got only ONE book, it was a light course. Most liberal arts courses could have up to a dozen required texts. And a few recommended.

[roshni]

12:12 AM on 10/02/2010

Can they read?

[socsdd]

05:18 AM on 09/30/2010

haha ..... agree

[bicycsual]

05:02 PM on 09/29/2010

Prof. Scroggins message is clear: "Don't Speak".

[edn]

01:20 PM on 10/01/2010

I think it's more "Don't think."

[pebblesvanpeebles]

05:01 PM on 09/29/2010

One more reality people want to ignore. I guess I should get used to indifference to the plight of women.

[galaxian]

04:40 PM on 09/29/2010

The "professor" from Missouri sounds like he came straight out of a satirist's head. How on earth does he find his way to work when he can't distinguish the erotic from the horrific, or that Vonnegut might have had a point or two by placing the hero of S5 in a zoo cage with a beautiful yet distant woman.

By the way, professor, it's a rhetorical question.

[healthanalyst]

04:00 AM on 09/30/2010

Down by Springfield. We're not talking Ivy League.

[GraceNotes]

03:23 PM on 09/29/2010

I have followed this story with interest, as I read Speak way back when I catalogued it for our library's collection. I just read the Guardian article in it's entirety, and literally got chills from reading author Lucy Coats reaction to her first reading of this fine novel.

[Lucy Owen]

09:46 AM on 09/30/2010

Thank you for reading it all--you are right. Speak is a very fine novel indeed. And it certainly did have a very big effect on me. Sorry about the chills, though!

[Jeff Cunningham]

03:13 PM on 09/29/2010

I could be wrong, but wouldn't book-banning run afoul of the First Amendment?

[notwaff]

02:33 PM on 09/29/2010

This Speak book should be made available to teens / young adults.

Judy Bloom has a book of letters she's received from kids who read her material. Some of them are also heartwrenching. There's a lot of bad stuff going on in this world and kids need ways to process it.

-------------------------------------------

I remember being at the Christian Promise Keeper event - probably 20,000 men. And the speaker said - statistically speaking, there is at least one man in this stadium who's raping his own daughter. And I'm tell you - you better stop it. His message was very in-your-face.

[sunflwer1975]

04:16 PM on 09/30/2010

if they knew who the father was I am sure they would pray over him to banish the devil in him.