Banned Books Month: Guest Post from Mindy McGinnis: When Rape Becomes a Bad Word

Squarefish, Reprint Edition, May 2011.

In addition to being a YA author, I’m also a librarian in a public high school. In that role I have carefully taped back together multiple much-loved copies of SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson. When a copy is so tattered that it can’t remain in circulation anymore, I toss it out on our plentiful Free Books table, and it quickly, quietly disappears despite its ragged condition. In my tiny high school that graduates under 100 students each year, we have 10 copies of SPEAK. Yet we can’t keep it on the shelves.

This is not only because it circulates widely, but also because I unfailingly have a few “walk away” from the library without being checked out. And I don’t mind. If a kid needs to read a book about rape but is too embarrassed to come up to the desk with it, I understand. I’ll buy another one.

But the fact that they don’t feel like they should be reading it, or even worse – that they’re ashamed to be reading it – bothers me greatly. In a sense, it’s directly in opposition to what the book is about. These girls (and boys!) shouldn’t feel awkward about wanting or needing to read an important book about a social condition. If it were about starvation, shop-lifting, or drinking, they wouldn’t respond in this way.

Katherine Tegan Books, September 2013.

Sadly, they’ve been taught that rape is a bad word. When they come up to the desk asking for books on the topic, they drop their voices, blush, whisper, or even talk around the word because it’s too difficult for them to pronounce the one simple syllable. SPEAK is about exactly the opposite – they should be able to say it, loudly and confidently, accusingly or sobbing, in whatever way they can squeeze it past their throats. It needs to be said.

Despite being banned in some places, SPEAK continues to be a cornerstone in my library, and many others. I always take the opportunity to tell the kid on the other side of the desk when they’re stumbling through their request that it’s OK – you can say it.

And if that means something to them on multiple levels, SPEAK just opened up the conversation.

Mindy McGinnis.

Mindy McGinnis is an assistant YA librarian who lives in Ohio and cans her own food. She graduated from Otterbein University magna cum laude with a BA in English Literature and Religion. She loves being a writer, because it’s the only occupation where you can legitimately stare into space and claim to be working. Her debut novel, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, goes on sale 9/24/13.