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We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading.
B. F. Skinner (via absynthe-words)
It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.
Judy Blume
Why boys don’t read girls (sometimes)
When I do book signings, most of my line is made up of young girls with their mothers, teen girls alone, and mother friend groups. But there’s usually at least one boy with a stack of my books. This boy is anywhere from 8-19, he’s carrying a worn stack of the Books of Bayern, and he’s excited and unashamed to be a fan of those books. As I talk to him, 95% of the time I learn this fact: he is home schooled.
There’s something that happens to our boys in school. Maybe it’s because they’re around so many other boys, and the pressure to be a boy is high. They’re looking around at each other, trying to figure out what it means to be a boy—and often their conclusion is to be “not a girl.” Whatever a girl is, they must be the opposite. So a book written by a girl? With a girl on the cover? Not something a boy should be caught reading.
But something else happens in school too. Without even meaning to perhaps, the adults in the boy’s life are nudging the boy away from “girl” books to “boy” books. When I go on tour and do school visits, sometimes the school will take the girls out of class for my assembly and not invite the boys. I talk about reading and how to fall in love with reading. I talk about storytelling and how to start your own story. I talk about things that aren’t gender-exclusive. But because I’m a girl and there are girls on my covers, often I’m deemed a girl-only author. I wonder, when a boy author goes to those schools with their books with boys on the covers, are the girls left behind? I want to question this practice. Even if no boy ever really would like one of my books, by not inviting them, we’re reinforcing the wrong and often-damaging notion that there’s girls-only stuff and you aren’t allowed to like it.
I hear from teachers that when they read Princess Academy in class (by far the most girlie-sounding of all my books) that the boys initially protest but in the end like it as much as the girls, or as one teacher told me recently, “the boys were even bigger fans than the girls.”
Another staple in my signing line is the family. The mom and daughters get their books signed, and the mom confides in me, “My son reads your books on the sly” or “My son loves your books too but he’s embarrassed to admit it.” Why are they embarrassed? Because we’ve made them that way. We’ve told them in subtle ways that, in order to be a real boy, to be manly, they can’t like anything girls like.
Though sometimes those instructions aren’t subtle at all. Recently at a signing, a family had all my books. The mom had me sign one of them for each of her children. A 10-year-old boy lurked in the back. I’d signed some for all the daughters and there were more books, so I asked the boy, “Would you like me to sign one to you?” The mom said, “Yeah, Isaac, do you want her to put your name in a girl book?” and the sisters all giggled.
As you can imagine, Isaac said no.
This honestly makes me really sad…
bi-yonce asked:
Hi! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for books with a bisexual POC? I've yet to find any yet, thanks!
bisexual-books answered:
We have some! Not as many as we’d wish for, but still here are a few good choices:
If you’re looking for a literary fiction coming of age story about a Egyptian girl moving to America, go with A Map of Home by Rhanda Jarrar
If you’d like a semi-autobiographical experimental punk novella of vignettes, try Corona by Bushra Rehman.
If you like fantasy series with multiple POC queer women including lesbian and bisexual women, try Shira Glassman’s The Second Mango (first of three).
If you’d like a coming out YA romance with a bisexual Mexican boy in a multi-racial group cast, try Boyfriends with Girlfriends by Alex Sanchez.
If you like YA novels, magic, and sexy bisexual Indonesian warlocks, try The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan and Maureen Johnson.
If you want a steampunk romance with a black bisexual man in the lead, try Prosperity by Alexis Hall.
If you want to read a black bisexual woman talking about her life, politics, feminism, and history, go with Some of Us Did NOT Die: New and Selected Essays by June Jordan
If you like grotesque art and memoir graphic novels about growing up Cuban in the 90’s, try Spit and Passion by Christy R. Road.
If you’re looking for a more in-depth memoir about growing up Latina between Mexico and California, I’d try Barriers to Love by Marina Peralta.
If you want a truly intersectional look at bisexuality and feminism, go with Bi Notes For A Bisexual Revolution by Shiri Eisner
If you want a memoir of a powerful bisexual black man in media discussing his difficult and abusive childhood, go with Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Charles Blow.
For more articles, books, poems, and perspectives on the intersection of bisexuality and POC, browse our POC tag. Other bisexual POC writers include Roxane Gay, Samantha Irby, Margaret Cho, James Baldwin, and Dr. Herukhuti.
Happy reading!
- Sarah
Don’t ever apologize to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that’s what they’re there for. Use your library). Don’t apologize to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend’s copy. What’s important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read…
Neil Gaiman (via anastasiabooks)
Ever skipped a party to read? Missed your train stop because your book was so good? This one’s for you.
The more I write, the more I’ve come to realize that books have a different place in our society than other media. Books are different from television or film because they ask you to finish the project. You have to be actively engaged to read a book. It’s more like a blueprint. What it really is, is an opportunity… A book is a place where you’re forced to use your imagination. I find it disappointing that you’re not being asked to imagine more.
Joe Meno (via dyinginback)
In the Sandbox: An Interview With Junot Díaz
- The Tech: You’ve said that your father had a library in the basement that showed you that reading could be masculine. I never thought of it as special to any gender in particular — in your culture, does everything have to be either masculine or feminine?
- Junot Diaz: In my culture? You mean our culture? Are you trying to tell me that reading and intellectual activity isn’t feminized in the U.S.? At a cultural level? That gender doesn’t infect nearly all our thinking in this, our society? These false binaries between masculine and feminine [are] not something that I invented nor something that’s exclusively “Dominican.” I might just happen to be more aware of these things but that doesn’t mean that we’re not all in the same sandbox.
My wife calls me the scavenger of shelves. It’s not necessarily a term of endearment, uttered more in the spirit of toleration, or exasperated love. We’ve been together for a long time, more than thirty years, and she’s had no choice but to come to a reckoning with my book absorption, with a library that grows and grows again.