I know a lot of you have already heard about this, but for those of you that haven’t, a bunch of YA authors have joined together to support Intellectual Freedom. The group, calling themselves AS IF, first began as news surfaced about St. Andrew’s decision to turn down a $3 million donation (yes, I said million) instead of removing Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain from their library. The recent banning of Brent Hartinger’s Geography Club is only a reminder that the issue will not go away; we must continue to fight censorship.
I am extremely proud to call myself a member of this group.
We may not always win all of the battles we fight concerning censorship, but as one of the founders of my college fraternity said, “We must fight till hell freezes over and then fight on the ice.”
For more information, see http://www.asifnews.blogspot.com.
Thanks for the link. I knew about the group, but I did not know about the blog.
Hey Varian, I respect your thoughts on this. I love all the discussion, it will help me greatly when I start to seriously write YA, and I my opinions may start to shift, too. I won’t want my creativity limited. I think yours may shift a bit too, once you have a teen-aged daughter in public schools. Let me scoot on over to that site and see if I can make out who on that list has teen aged kids.
On another note, I’m almost finished with Polka Dot. I’m past Maxine’s and Dekes big scene, and I thought you told a beautiful story here. I know you’ve mentioned, maybe warned a few times about the situations and language, but nothing stood out to me as inappropriate, not even the couple of f-bombs. I’d have welcomed my daughter at even 13 to read this book. It has some great positive messages for any kid to grow from. Wow you told a good story.