Engie Talks About Banned Books (Again): The LGBTQ+ Edition

IT’S BANNED BOOKS WEEK 2014!

I mean, it’s Banned Books Week 2014. I got a little overexcited there. Sorry about that. I just really love talking about banned books, about how silly the practice is and about how it often backfires completely.

So, with that in mind, I thought I’d write a post for this year’s BBW. In past years I have written the following posts about banned books:

• General post about book-banning
• People ban what they don’t understand
• Why I love banned books (and Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in particular)
• Common reasons for banning YA books (and why those reasons are silly)

So this year, I thought I’d write about something new. I really enjoyed writing the post about YA book banning because it was about a specific aspect of book banning, so I’m going to do the same thing here and narrow down my topic: Banned LGBTQ+ books.

Or, even more specifically, banned LGBTQ+ books that were written for children’s or YA audiences. Books can’t

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Nancy Garden’s book Annie On My Mind is one of the most-challenged LGBTQ+ YA books – and if I were only a wee bit more organized, I’d be sharing my thoughts on it with you now! Alas, alas, I forgot that my library system’s only copy of the book is located at another branch, so I had to request it. But it still hasn’t been delivered yet, so… to make a long story short, I haven’t read it yet and cannot amuse you with various witty remarks. Sorry about that.

What I can do is provide you with various facts gleaned from Googling:

• It was published in 1982, making it one of the earliest LGBTQ+ YA books
• It’s about two girls who fall in love
• It has an adorable cover (and the reissued version is even cuter)
• It’s been banned a bunch of times (duh) and even burned (I didn’t think that happened anymore, except perhaps with Harry Potter books)
• I swear I’ll read this book soon and then review it
• I promise
• Why don’t we move on to the next thing?

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OK, this next thing is just a piece of someone else’s writing, but I thought you might like it, so I’ll link to it. One of my favorite LGBTQ+ authors, Malinda Lo, answered the question, “Have your books ever been banned?” on her blog. It’s a fascinating post.

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Now it’s time for the third and final thingy! (I like to split up my posts into sections so I

can talk about a bunch of little things. In case you haven’t already noticed.) So. This summer, one of my favoritest books EVER was banned.

The book in question is The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth. Here’s some context: I hardly EVER give any book a five-star rating. (I’ve rated only two books that high thus far this year. Coincidentally, they were both written by Malinda Lo… but I digress.) But with this book, there was absolutely no question that it deserved five stars.

And in my mind, there was absolutely no way it wouldn’t be banned. It’s a novel about a lesbian who grows up in small-town America (circa 1980s/90s) and who is eventually sent to a “de-gaying” camp to make her straight.

And that sort of thing makes some people uncomfortable.

I follow a blog called Diversity in YA (which is run by Malinda Lo – no surprise there, ha ha) and this summer, one of its best posts discussed the banning of this book. It really made me think.

A school library board in Delaware removed The Miseducation of Cameron Post from its
list of ten books for high school students to read over the summer. The other nine books were as follows:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Butter by Erin Jade Lange
• Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
• March by John Lewis
• If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch
• More Than This by Patrick Ness
• Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Boxers by Gene Luen Yang and Lark Pien

What was the reasoning for removing Miseducation? “It contains swearing!”

And it does. Quite a bit of it, actually. But why don’t we see how many of the other books from the reading list contain swearing? A quick Google search show that the following books feature curse words:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor
• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
• More Than This by Patrick Ness
• Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Oh my goodness! Some of the other books feature swearing. Hmmm.

Now, let’s narrow down the list one final time. This time, I’m picking out the books that are most similar to Miseducation. These books feature swearing AND a bit of sexual content. (They’re all what I’d call “upper YA,” after all. They’re meant for slightly older readers.) Only two books fit those specifications:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Why weren’t these books also removed from the list? I have a pretty good idea, and it has nothing to do with swearing. It has everything to do with The Fault in Our Stars and Eleanor & Park having entire straight casts of characters.

…there is an upside to all of this. And it makes me giggle. You see, book banning doesn’t usually work. It usually backfires. Spectacularly. People naturally protest such restrictions, and the book ends up getting more publicity than it had before.

In the case of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, sales of the book on Amazon increased by a looooot. (That’s a highly scientific measurement, by the way. A “looooot.”) Copies were donated to the kids in the town where it was banned. So, yeah. It was banned. But in the end, everything ended well. Book banning doesn’t work, and it never really will work. In the end, all it does is bring the story to the attention of more and more people.

Thank you, book banners. You just made one of my favorite novels better known. For that, you must be commended.

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Have any of your favorite LGBTQ+ books (YA or otherwise) been banned? Tell me about them!