From http://www.ala.org
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=52205&src=2
Author defends using slur, but apologizes to students
By Melissa Jenco | Daily Herald Staff
Published: 10/5/2007 11:39 PM
Author Sherman Alexie says he stands by the strong language he used in his
recent speech at Naperville North High School, but apologizes to anyone it
may have offended.
Alexie's use of a racial slur last week during a presentation at the school
prompted a handful of angry students to walk out in protest and stirred a
controversy that carried into this week.
Author of "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," Alexie was
speaking about his experiences growing up in poverty and the prejudice he
endured as the only American Indian at an all-white high school.
"What makes me most sad is the kids I most offended are the ones the book
is written for," he said Thursday. "I apologize to them for causing pain
and I can only hope the administrators and teachers at that school are
attempting to show these kids exactly how much my book is written for
them."
Alexie used a derogatory racial term for blacks, along with a strong sexual
profanity, when relaying a story about prejudice that appears in his book.
He said using the exact words were necessary "because that was what was
said. And to blunt the hatred of that insult blunts the incredible
obstacles my character had to face."
Principal Ross Truemper said Thursday he's glad to hear Alexie apologized.
He and Alexie both expressed their hope the author's message of overcoming
obstacles got through to most students, despite the uproar triggered by
some of his word choices.
"I'm hoping his resiliency, where he started from and how successful he's
become overcoming so many barriers, would be a great thing for our students
to aspire to," Truemper said.
Alexie has given the same speech in a variety of schools -- large and
small, racially diverse and mostly white, public and private. He said no
similar incidents have occurred.
At North, he said he felt like he entered "the perfect storm" -- it was the
end of a half-day of classes and there was a big football game that night
causing elevated emotions. He also said other times he's talked to groups
that large, the students were often already familiar with his work.
Truemper said he believes a smaller group of students who had read Alexie's
writings -- as was the case when Alexie spoke that same day at Naperville
Central High School -- would have had more context as to the comments. He
said he would have liked for Alexie to have taken that into consideration
before speaking at a large-scale assembly.
But many students did enjoy the talk. Alexie said roughly 100 stayed after
to talk to him and ask for autographs. He also is receiving e-mails from
students who had a positive response to his presentation.
On Wednesday, students had discussions with the staff about Alexie's
appearance -- both about his message and the language he used, Truemper
said.
Alexie made several appearances in Naperville last week, including one at
Anderson's Bookshop and another at the annual Harvest Pow Wow at Naper
Settlement. Neither of those appearances caused any controversy.
Despite wide praise, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian has been challenged (removal requested from a school or library by a person or group) mutliple times since its publication. The American Library Association (ALA) monitors challenges and bans for the purpose of " inform[ing] the public about censorship efforts that affect libraries and schools." The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was on ALA's Top Ten List of most banned books in 2010 & 2011.
The following essay originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Alexie wrote it in response to Meghan Cox Gurdon's article "Darkness Too Visible" (also from the WSJ) which he acknowledges in this essay.
“Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood”
By Sherman Alexie
Recently, I was the surprise commencement speaker at the promotion ceremony for a Seattle alternative high school. I spoke to sixty students, who’d come from sixteen different districts, and had survived depression, attempted suicide, gang warfare, sexual and physical abuse, absentee parents, poverty, racism, and learning disabilities in order to graduate.
These students had read my young adult novel, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” and had been inspired by my autobiographical story of a poor reservation Indian boy and his desperate and humorous attempts to find a better life.
I spoke about resilience—about my personal struggles with addiction and mental illness—but it was the student speakers who told the most important stories about survival.
A young woman recalled the terrible moment when indifferent school administrators told her that she couldn’t possibly be a teen mother and finish high school. So they suggested she get a General Education Degree (GED) and move on with her life. But, after taking a practice test, she realized that the GED was far too easy for her, so she transferred to that alternative high school, and is now the mother of a three-year-old and a high school graduate soon to attend college.
After the ceremony, many of the graduates shook my hand, hugged me, took photos with me, and asked me questions about my book and my life. Other students hovered on the edges and eyed me with suspicion and/or shyness.
It was a beautiful and painful ceremony. But it was not unique. I have visited dozens of high schools—rich and poor, private and public, integrated and segregated, absolutely safe and fearfully dangerous—and have heard hundreds of stories that are individually tragic and collectively agonizing.
Almost every day, my mailbox is filled with handwritten letters from students–teens and pre-teens–who have read my YA book and loved it. I have yet to receive a letter from a child somehow debilitated by the domestic violence, drug abuse, racism, poverty, sexuality, and murder contained in my book. To the contrary, kids as young as ten have sent me autobiographical letters written in crayon, complete with drawings inspired by my book, that are just as dark, terrifying, and redemptive as anything I’ve ever read.
And, often, kids have told me that my YA novel is the only book they’ve ever read in its entirety.
So when I read Meghan Cox Gurdon’s complaints about the “depravity” and “hideously distorted portrayals” of contemporary young adult literature, I laughed at her condescension.
Does Ms. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?
When I think of the poverty-stricken, sexually and physically abused, self-loathing Native American teenager that I was, I can only wish, immodestly, that I’d been given the opportunity to read “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.” Or Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak.” Or Chris Lynch’s “Inexusable.” Or any of the books that Ms. Gurdon believes to be irredeemable. I can’t speak for other writers, but I think I wrote my YA novel as a way of speaking to my younger, irredeemable self.
Of course, all during my childhood, would-be saviors tried to rescue my fellow tribal members. They wanted to rescue me. But, even then, I could only laugh at their platitudes. In those days, the cultural conservatives thought that KISS and Black Sabbath were going to impede my moral development. They wanted to protect me from sex when I had already been raped. They wanted to protect me from evil though a future serial killer had already abused me. They wanted me to profess my love for God without considering that I was the child and grandchild of men and women who’d been sexually and physically abused by generations of clergy.
What was my immature, childish response to those would-be saviors?
“Wow, you are way, way too late.”
And now, as an adult looking back, I wonder why those saviors tried to warn me about the crimes that were already being committed against me.
When some cultural critics fret about the “ever-more-appalling” YA books, they aren’t trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren’t trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists.
No, they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children. Or the seemingly privileged.
Two years ago, I met a young man attending one of the most elite private high schools in the country. He quietly spoke to me of his agony. What kind of pain could a millionaire’s child be suffering? He hadn’t been physically or sexually abused. He hadn’t ever been hungry. He’d never seen one person strike another in anger. He’d never even been to a funeral.
So what was his problem?
“I want to be a writer,” he said. “But my father won’t let me. He wants me to be a soldier. Like he was.”
He was seventeen and destined to join the military. Yes, he was old enough to die and kill for his country. And old enough to experience the infinite horrors of war. But according to Ms. Gurdon, he might be too young to read a YA novel that vividly portrays those very same horrors.
“I don’t want to be like my father,” that young man said. “I want to be myself. Just like in your book.”
I felt powerless in that moment. I could offer that young man nothing but my empathy and the promise of more books about teenagers rescuing themselves from the adults who seek to control and diminish him.
Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.
And there are millions of teens who read because they are sad and lonely and enraged. They read because they live in an often-terrible world. They read because they believe, despite the callow protestations of certain adults, that books-especially the dark and dangerous ones-will save them.
As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life.
And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.
