Month: February 2018

A couple new avenues have opened in our research as the approach Liz and I hope to take also becomes more clear. We’ve began to think about our eventual project as one that intends to represent multiple perspectives: student, author, librarian, administrator, teacher, and community member. Hearing voices from all of these perspectives will be somewhat challenging and some might be more prominent or detailed than others, but we’re already pretty well on our way. I imagine an eventual menu on our WordPress site that allows someone to view our project through the lens of these varying perspectives. At the point of the last blog progress report, I had contacted the Webster Thomas librarian Trish Warren, learned her account of the challenge and temporary ban to Rainbow Boys, and made plans to have an official interview with her over spring break. Since then, Liz has emailed the district in an attempt to track down the name of one or more of the challenging community members, though progress with the district has been slow. This comes after I initially emailed the superintendent and asked if there were any records from this case and was told “no, there are not,” but Liz and I figure we will look at the meeting records ourselves.

Our continued search for these records was inspired by Carly Maldonado, the older sister of one of my friends from home. Carly’s name came up when we found an op-ed she wrote to the Rochester newspaper, Democrat and Chronicle during the challenge to voice her opposition to the district’s position. I emailed Carly for more information and she broadened what we are now calling the student perspective, sharing how the issue was addressed in town and school, her efforts to gain acess to the district decision making process, and her impressions of the district’s policies at that time. I asked Carly if she knew the name of the challenger, and she did not, but she recommended the board minutes from the summer of 2006 as a place to find it, hence Liz’s renewed quest to have the district send them to us. Carly also named a since-retired teacher from that time who was involved in a way that was not made entirely clear but that she would probably be willing to share her perspective of the issue with us if we reached out to her on Facebook which Liz has since done.

Meanwhile, in my “Topics in Secondary English” class just today, an interesting supplemental case was revealed to me by a student who also went to my high school. This student, Devin, told me that she was involved in arguing against an even more recent case of a challenged book in Webster where Perks of Being a Wallflower was removed from our school library. Again, totally surprised because I never knew of any challenge in Webster and now there’s two! 

Though the Perks challenge does not come up on the internet, I’m going to email Devin to get more information because I think it could provide interesting context and comparison material for our investigation of Rainbow Boys. Through all of these cases it’s important to  think about the context in which these contributors were raised in terms of education, generation etc. because as the Downs article we discussed explains, the prevailing attitudes on censorship have shifted dramatically in the last century.

Kenan Metzger and Wendy Kelleher’s call for “more young adult literature by and for indigenous peoples” in their article in the ALAN Review on the current absence of those voices for young readers. I was able to interpret this article from a few different perspectives; namely from the ideas of censorship in this course, and also from my knowledge of young adult literature from my adolescent education classes. After exploring the damage that stereotyped portrayals of Native Americans exhibits on both Native and non-Native students, the authors argue that publishers continue to limit the amount of culturally accurate voices in YA literature as they “are looking for what they are familiar with – which is stereotyped, romantic, non- Indian view of Indians. ” Belinda Louie’s writing advances this concern as she characterizes publishers as “deeply committed to profit making” and thus less likely to publish new authors’ work along with work that fails to cater to the dominant market. Authors writing honestly about Native American life unfortunately fit both of those categories; they are new voices from an unexpected source, and the stories they tell do not fit the dominant market’s expectation of what Indian life is like. Indeed, this is censorship. Stories that have the opportunity to benefit children, building confidence in their own image through fiction that replicates and expands upon their world, are swapped for appropriated, identity-conflicting works that fit the worldview of parents and by extension fill the wallets of publishers. “Relatability” is certainly an overused favorite aspect of a work that students identify, and one we hope they can come to look beyond or recognize in less obvious sources, but as Cynthia Smith contends, “It is crucial for young people to have a choice of books… with characters that reflect them… This is not only the case with regard to race ethnicity of tribal affiliation, but also of religion, sexual orientation, region, and so forth.”

Looking beyond the dearth of representation of Native issues, Liz and I continue to research the challenge to Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez which offers an honest portrayal of life as a gay teenager. In this instance, many parents (and publishers) do not want modern portrayals that challenge the traditional dominant view of homosexuality as an outcast behavior. What they fail to see, or intentionally neglect, is the world created in Rainbow Boys or other novels of similar background can encourage identity building for LGBT teenagers while fostering understanding and empathy towards gay people among straight teens. And while the opportunity to read stories that fairly portray marginalized groups outside of the curriculum is a great start, placing those stories in the English (or History) curriculum gives students access to educators that can bring about more fulfilling and contextualized comprehension of these works. This collection of authors on the topics of YA literature and censorship continue to provide background for and shape my interest in our case study and the issue of accurate representation in general.

Week 2 of investigation into censorship and our own specific case proved to be fascinating and open up many paths for research. Liz and I finalized that we would like to look into the challenge to Alex Sanchez’s Rainbow Boys, having a strong start with the book being challenged in my hometown of Webster, NY. A Google search reveals some of the basics of the case: following a parent complaint, Webster removed Rainbow Boys from their summer reading list, before electing to return the book to the list the next summer. For additional information, I started with my high school librarian, Patricia Warren. I asked Ms. Warren if she had any recollection of the case and she responded with a useful email that shared more about the questionable administrative pathways by which the book was removed. Most interestingly, Warren recalled a meeting during the 06-07 school year where she, members of administration, and three parent representatives discussed the case and decided Rainbow Boys could return, but all books on the list would need to be reviewed by the librarian for future content issues. Liz and I think interviewing Ms. Warren for more details on that meeting would be useful. On a less productive note, the district representative I asked for records of complaint and discussion on the novel informed me no such records could be found. Liz is preparing to dig deeper under the Freedom of Information Act, asking the district for records from that year that the two of us may have to look through ourselves.

Our project continued to expand in possible scope after meeting with the archivist at SUNY Geneseo, Liz Argentieri. Liz A. started by showing us some useful databases on the library website that could be used to find beginning information on a variety of vases of Rainbow Boys being challenged. One of those databases, the Literature Resource Center, revealed a case of the novel being challenged in Texas in 2015, reflecting the novel’s consistent state of debate since being published in 2001. Liz A. helped us consider further sources that could have been interested in the case of Rainbow Boys being challenged, especially in Webster. The LGBT-oriented publication, Empty Closet, has an extensive database that includes challenges to material with gay themes that could be worth investigating. Additionally, Liz A. pointed out that the town newspaper, Webster Herald, supposedly has all of its issues archived in the Webster public library and that could be a useful source. Also the public library may have district meeting minutes; with this in mind, I intend to contact the library and see what helpful material they have. Lastly, Liz A. noted that some of the articles Liz V. and I have seen online from the larger Rochester, NY paper, Democrat and Chronicle, are available in microfilm in the SUNY Geneseo library which could make a nice addition to our project. With all of the interesting resources discovered in the past week, I’m very excited about this project going forward.