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[CCBC-Net] Twilight, better reads, and sex
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From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maiacheli>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:36:51 -0700
What are fans of Twilight looking for? When a book is that popular, you're going to get a number of different constituents, right? A few major motivations or interests occur to me:
(1) wanting to read what's "in" -- these kids will want to talk to their friends, gossip about the characters, put sparkly dudes on their wallpaper; this reading is a social experience. In this event, I think you need to appeal to a group of kids (book club with an edge?) and/or be ready to start (or follow) a local trend.
(2) wanting romance -- for the more sophisticated readers, turn them onto Eva Ibbotson's romance novels (recently republished) or Madeleine L'Engle. For fantasy romance, I'd highly recommend Sharon Shinn's Archangel, Twelve Houses or Safe-Keeper series -- there is the 'ache before requitement' in many of these series, but each book turns out well.
(3) wanting romance with a touch of danger-to-be-resolved -- also for slightly more sophisticated readers, I'd highly recommend Nina Kiriki Hoffman's "A Fistful of Sky" and Juliet Marillier's "Wildwood Dancing"; also, most of the books by Tanya Huff fit this bill, and she does have an entire vampire series.
I haven't read Cynthia Leitich Smith's vampire books yet, but her writing is excellent, so I'd probably incorporate those. Also, check out anything edited by Terri Windling, including her anthologies.
All of the above have intelligent, strong women, and do not make emotion a correlative for weakness!
*** Beyond specific book-talking.... From my understanding of Twilight, Meyer is conflating sex and violence. Sex and danger. Many elements in our media, religion, and music do this as well. While sexual objectification is shoved down everyone's throats, especially in advertising, girls are simultaneously told that sex is bad and dangerous for them. And, by implication, that they are bad and dangerous if they engage in sexual expression. So something like Twilight makes a lot of sense in terms of its appeal, because it is articulating a strong underlying message that most American girls hear and feel - the desire, the danger, the forced resistance, the forced obedience.
What do these girls need, then? I think some honest sexual discussion and representation would be a good start. It might be a little late to hand some of them "It's Perfectly Natural" -- but there are girls as young as ten reading Twilight, and I would definitely hand "It's Perfectly Natural" to them. I would double-file "It's Perfectly Natural" as well as "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and anything else I could find in the YA section. Sex is a great part of life, for many of us. I think we owe it to our kids to represent that as a positive, powerful force to anticipate and manage. Because if we just tell them that sexuality is dangerous and bad, then dangerous and bad becomes normal, and girls won't know how to tell apart sexual desire and sharing from sexual abuse and manipulation. Honestly, it infuriates me that people are publishing books like Twilight... but it does at least expose the ideology that so many girls are struggling through -- and opens the ground for conversation?
I think we need lots of books about sex and sexuality in the kids, YA, and adult sections. I hate pornography. But I think that making sexuality nasty and hidden is what leads to pornography; honesty and celebration and accountability really aren't good precursors to that kind of creepiness. :)
I think that we all have to ponder our messaging about sex, pregnancy, etc... if we tie sex to danger, and sex to badness, and sex to violation, then at some point when adolescent bodies begin to be sexual (which they will, whether they act on it or not), those adolescents' self-definitions are already linked to danger, badness and violation. This is so fundamentally wrong, so fundamentally opposed to concepts of divinity and science, that it perplexes me how we could be getting it so wrong!
Can we put out a clarion call for great, humanizing books about sex, for all ages? Because I think we need them, lots of them. And if we writers write them, and some gutsy publishers publish them, then will you fierce librarians buy and protect them, and will all of us read them and buy them and fight for their right to remain?
I think we ought not to publish or buy more books that leave people feeling icky about the nature of their humanity. Especially, for kids. How about, for one year, we don't write or edit or publish or buy anything that doesn't ultimately (ultimately -- I'm not saying unmixedly, or without troubles along the way) leave readers more whole, more full, and more rich in who there are? One year, where we didn't teach shame? Maybe that would start to make room for the sort of books I wish I could hand to every Twilight reader... :)
Cheers, Maia
Received on Wed 15 Jul 2009 12:36:51 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:36:51 -0700
What are fans of Twilight looking for? When a book is that popular, you're going to get a number of different constituents, right? A few major motivations or interests occur to me:
(1) wanting to read what's "in" -- these kids will want to talk to their friends, gossip about the characters, put sparkly dudes on their wallpaper; this reading is a social experience. In this event, I think you need to appeal to a group of kids (book club with an edge?) and/or be ready to start (or follow) a local trend.
(2) wanting romance -- for the more sophisticated readers, turn them onto Eva Ibbotson's romance novels (recently republished) or Madeleine L'Engle. For fantasy romance, I'd highly recommend Sharon Shinn's Archangel, Twelve Houses or Safe-Keeper series -- there is the 'ache before requitement' in many of these series, but each book turns out well.
(3) wanting romance with a touch of danger-to-be-resolved -- also for slightly more sophisticated readers, I'd highly recommend Nina Kiriki Hoffman's "A Fistful of Sky" and Juliet Marillier's "Wildwood Dancing"; also, most of the books by Tanya Huff fit this bill, and she does have an entire vampire series.
I haven't read Cynthia Leitich Smith's vampire books yet, but her writing is excellent, so I'd probably incorporate those. Also, check out anything edited by Terri Windling, including her anthologies.
All of the above have intelligent, strong women, and do not make emotion a correlative for weakness!
*** Beyond specific book-talking.... From my understanding of Twilight, Meyer is conflating sex and violence. Sex and danger. Many elements in our media, religion, and music do this as well. While sexual objectification is shoved down everyone's throats, especially in advertising, girls are simultaneously told that sex is bad and dangerous for them. And, by implication, that they are bad and dangerous if they engage in sexual expression. So something like Twilight makes a lot of sense in terms of its appeal, because it is articulating a strong underlying message that most American girls hear and feel - the desire, the danger, the forced resistance, the forced obedience.
What do these girls need, then? I think some honest sexual discussion and representation would be a good start. It might be a little late to hand some of them "It's Perfectly Natural" -- but there are girls as young as ten reading Twilight, and I would definitely hand "It's Perfectly Natural" to them. I would double-file "It's Perfectly Natural" as well as "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and anything else I could find in the YA section. Sex is a great part of life, for many of us. I think we owe it to our kids to represent that as a positive, powerful force to anticipate and manage. Because if we just tell them that sexuality is dangerous and bad, then dangerous and bad becomes normal, and girls won't know how to tell apart sexual desire and sharing from sexual abuse and manipulation. Honestly, it infuriates me that people are publishing books like Twilight... but it does at least expose the ideology that so many girls are struggling through -- and opens the ground for conversation?
I think we need lots of books about sex and sexuality in the kids, YA, and adult sections. I hate pornography. But I think that making sexuality nasty and hidden is what leads to pornography; honesty and celebration and accountability really aren't good precursors to that kind of creepiness. :)
I think that we all have to ponder our messaging about sex, pregnancy, etc... if we tie sex to danger, and sex to badness, and sex to violation, then at some point when adolescent bodies begin to be sexual (which they will, whether they act on it or not), those adolescents' self-definitions are already linked to danger, badness and violation. This is so fundamentally wrong, so fundamentally opposed to concepts of divinity and science, that it perplexes me how we could be getting it so wrong!
Can we put out a clarion call for great, humanizing books about sex, for all ages? Because I think we need them, lots of them. And if we writers write them, and some gutsy publishers publish them, then will you fierce librarians buy and protect them, and will all of us read them and buy them and fight for their right to remain?
I think we ought not to publish or buy more books that leave people feeling icky about the nature of their humanity. Especially, for kids. How about, for one year, we don't write or edit or publish or buy anything that doesn't ultimately (ultimately -- I'm not saying unmixedly, or without troubles along the way) leave readers more whole, more full, and more rich in who there are? One year, where we didn't teach shame? Maybe that would start to make room for the sort of books I wish I could hand to every Twilight reader... :)
Cheers, Maia
Received on Wed 15 Jul 2009 12:36:51 PM CDT
