Banned Books Month: Guest Post from Laura Lam: My Book Hasn’t Been Banned, but it’s Been Unintentionally Censored
PANTOMIME hasn’t been officially banned, but there’s a possibility it could be.
Strange Chemistry, February 2013.
My debut YA fantasy features an intersex protagonist, Micah Grey. Raised as the daughter of a noble family named Gene, when it comes to light what Gene’s parents plan to do, she runs away from home and joins the circus as a male trainee trapeze artist. It’s a coming of age story with romance, as well as a fantasy set in a pseudo-Victorian world.
So far, PANTOMIME has only had one or two homophobic reviews that I’ve seen, and even so, they’ve been pretty mild. I haven’t received any hate mail. No one has petitioned to have it removed for a school or library (as far as I know). However, I have observed something a little subtler, but in a way just as problematic: A few librarians that have read it have stated they wouldn’t buy it for their library because they’re not sure how their children would take it. One worried that her students wouldn’t be mature enough to deal with its LGBT themes. When I saw that, I felt so very sad. I wanted to ask: But what about your LGBT students? Because, of course, there will be some.
I didn’t comment, because even though it’s my book, it’s not my place. I’ve seen too many author/reader blow-ups. But I thought I’d write a general post on my feelings of the subject here, without naming names.
Can you see censorship?
Thinking like that is dangerous for several reasons. One, it’s censorship. Even if the people who read it loved the book, they shied away from putting it in a position where perhaps the book could become banned. They didn’t want to deal with any potential parent complaints that may or may not arise. If parents complained, maybe they’d have to discuss it with their line managers. It’s easier not to court controversy. And it’s easy to fall into that line of thinking, without realising that it is censorship.
Some teens can be immature about LGBT themes. They throw the words “gay” and “fag” around as an insult without any thought as to how those words can hurt people. Some teens do the same with racial slurs. But the best way to combat that is to expose them to it, have them read a book and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. Not keeping it away from them. If their beliefs are never challenged, then how can they change?
As a teen, I was a depressed and lonely, and I escaped from the world through books. It was very easy to find myself in fiction as a white, cis-gendered girl. They were always off having adventures, falling in love, having happy endings. But queer characters? Characters from different cultures and abilities? They’re a lot harder to find in fiction. And if I already felt isolated in the real world, to then feel isolated and not find myself in fiction would have been very difficult. That’s one of the reasons I wrote PANTOMIME.
PANTOMIME underwent some mild online controversy because people feel the blurb is misleading. It makes it seem like Gene and Micah are two different people. And I know that’s problematic, but see why people have been upset by that. But we do live in a world where booksellers of national chains will see a book has a LGBT protagonist and take fewer copies, evidently. And that means fewer copies to go into the hands of people who would have zero problem reading about someone of a different sexual orientation to themselves, or who are desperately hunting for more books with characters of the same sexual orientation as they are.
So I haven’t been banned. But I have been censored. Only twice that I know of, but who knows how many others have picked it up, realized it’s about an intersex character, and decided not to carry it in a bookstore, a library, or a school? I’ll never know. How many other books with potentially contentious content have undergone the same treatment? But I have to hope that PANTOMIME and other books that feature diverse characters, can have a wide enough reach so that the teens who really need it can find it. It’s not about the librarians. It’s not about the parents.
It’s about the teens.
Laura Lam.
Laura Lam was raised near San Francisco, California, by two former Haight-Ashbury hippies. Both of them encouraged her to finger-paint to her heart’s desire, color outside of the lines, and consider the library a second home. This led to an overabundance of daydreams.
She relocated to Scotland to be with her husband, whom she met on the internet when he insulted her taste in books. She almost blocked him but is glad she didn’t. At times she misses the sunshine.
PANTOMIME was released February 2013 through Strange Chemistry, the YA imprint of Angry Robot Books. The sequel, SHADOWPLAY, will follow in January 2014.
She can be found on her website, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Pinterest (not that she uses social media as a procrastination tool, or anything…).
