And now you have a whole selection of them, right? I say they’re attacking books because books have always stood the test of time.The female writer, who uses the pen name Tianyi but was identified in state media by her surname Liu, published the book Occupy in 2017, and sold it through Chinese online shopping site Taobao. Just 15 to 20 years ago, it was hard to find queer books in the young adult. They are now starting to become much more profitable in the market.
Black and brown books are being turned into TV shows. White publishing is not as lucrative a business as it used to be. White people are now extremely fearful that they are losing their grip on the majority. As my colleague Olivia Waxman has reported, The American Library Association is seeing an unprecedented volume of challenges to books this school year. And I’ve been sharing their campaigns to make sure that they’re amplified. We’re making sure that they have books, we’re making sure they have supplies, and making sure that they’re okay. I’ve been in constant contact with students from multiple states who are organizing rallies. My book tells them that the first person you have to be an activist for is yourself. Because what I’m watching is the beautiful outcome of it: students rallying, students signing petitions, students activating their rights-which is what my book is teaching them to do. People say negative press is still press! But I don’t necessarily feel like this is a negative press. What has it been like to have something so honest and vulnerable about your experience be the focus of such a campaign? Your memoir is deeply honest and open about your experience as a Black queer person.
Having book though, gives them the tools, the language, the resources and the education so that when they are having to deal with a heavy topic, they have a roadmap for how to handle it.
Children still have to exist in a world full of these heavy topics, and are going to be affected by them whether they read the book or not. So they’re leaving very, very important context out, intentionally of course, to try and say my book is pornographic.īooks with heavy topics are not going to harm children. And how to fight back against those traumas that you can hold on to for so very long. I am teaching kids about not feeling guilty when sexual abuse happens, and how to recognize sexual abuse-most teens don’t even recognize they’ve been abused. And I am using my story to teach kids about the mistakes that I made the first time that I was having sex, so they don’t make those same mistakes. The part that’s also being left out is that I am talking about sexual education. So them reading about a sex scene is possibly more about their own experience, in their own life. 14-year-old child, by the time they’ve read my book, may have already had sex. We also have to stop pretending like my book is what’s introducing child to sex. There’s this misconception that this book is going to children-they’re using language like, ‘Do you think an eight-year-old should read this?’ And my response is, no, that’s why it’s geared for 14 to 18-year-olds.
How do you respond to claims that your book is “sexually explicit,” and should be banned for that reason? So for me to not only exist, but have the audacity to tell my story… were going to at some point try and shut it down. Before the book came out, my team had a meeting about what we would do when the book got banned, because I brought it up.
What was your first reaction when you learned your book was being removed in some school districts? I think it is really important that young white boys and white girls and whomever else have to start to learn about us too. I also thought it was important that people started to learn that this world exists outside of a heterosexual bubble-so that people who aren’t like us could also learn about people who aren’t like them. My life is led by the Toni Morrison quote: “If there’s a book that you want to read and it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” I was writing the book I wish I got to have when I was a youth struggling with the intersections of my Blackness and my queerness, and trying to navigate a society that wasn’t built for me. Courtesy of Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers