“going in, i knew this book was going to be great ban material,” says angie thomas, with a laugh that’s half amused and half too familiar with the experience. “We’re not just talking about gangs and drugs, we’re also talking about teen pregnancy and teen parenthood: sex.”
gasp!
You are reading: Angie thomas books banned
“I know, grab your pearls. but the thing is, these are real things that young people are dealing with.”
American author talks about her latest young adult novel, concrete rose, and her determination to write about the authentic experiences of today’s teens, despite resistance from the hand-wringers, will resonate with many authors in that field.
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However, not all authors remain on the New York Times bestseller list for 200 weeks and counting, as is the case with Thomas’ 2017 debut The Hate U Give. Billed as a “black lives matter novel,” it depicts 16-year-old Starr’s political awakening after losing a close friend to police violence. as is often the case when a white officer shoots an unarmed black youth, justice is not served; a grand jury fails to indict him, and both peaceful and violent protests erupt.
The book, adapted into a film starring Amandla Stenberg, has been frequently challenged and banned from American libraries and schools, occasionally for its depiction of police brutality (and its alleged “anti-police” stance), but mainly for its use of profanity and portrayal of drug use.
Most challenges to young adult literature, whether in the form of an online mob denouncing an author or a campaign to remove a title from a particular library, are very selective when it comes to which is considered unsuitable for young readers. Sometimes it’s easier to focus on a “bad word,” whether it’s a swear word or an insult, rather than engage with the content or context. (There are, of course, parallels here with the kind of excessive policing of black youth that Thomas writes about), and sometimes there is a clear bias in priorities.
Thomas is absolutely correct in pointing out that teen sex is a “problem” worth banning; Just as many fear that sex education encourages mischief by minors, many worry that portraying something in fiction means endorsing it. This is particularly the case for fiction already, read by a wide audience but associated with teenage girls, a group whose consumption of literature has been a cause for concern for centuries (see the confused heroine of Jane Austen’s books in Northanger Abbey). .
sexual problems
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When parents and guardians care about books, they tend to care more about sex than violence. Although it is tempting to insist that this is purely an American problem, conversations with Irish booksellers indicate that it is happening here as well. it is less controversial to describe a beheading than to mention contraception.
That said, maverick, the aptly named protagonist of concrete rose, is a bit careless in such matters, understandable considering he’s a 17-year-old, perhaps, but also because sex education in the US tends to be very inadequate. . Thomas’s home state of Mississippi currently offers “abstinence-only” or “abstinence-plus” programs (sex education with a strong emphasis on abstinence); it also (not coincidentally) has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy. And this book is set in the late 1990s, when having internet access in your pocket was unheard of.
“It was refreshing, beyond difficult,” notes Thomas, writing about a time before social media. “Because at least he reminded me that life existed before twitter and instagram, tiktok and facebook, and that’s okay: those things aren’t as important as we sometimes give them credit for.”
the world of concrete rose is one where caller ID (on a landline phone) is a novelty; where handwritten notes are left because text messages are not an option. thomas acknowledges the benefits of social media, particularly for social justice movements, but also acknowledges that “it consumes us a lot”. At the risk of sounding like “that old person, ‘in my day…'”, and aware that she is still in her early 30s, she hopes that younger readers “see, wow, they can have a life without those things “. and without being constantly online.
It was also a relief for her “to write about a time when not only was there no covid, there was no twitter, no presidents on twitter, no trolling.”
Angie Thomas and Amandla Stenberg attend The Hate U Give New York screening. Photograph: Santiago Felipe/Getty Speaking of American presidents (but not that one), the novel presents this phrase from maverick: “ma say bill clinton, the closest thing we can be to a black president”. Thomas was a little tickled to include it: “Because for so long, that’s what black people here in America used to say! It didn’t seem like an Obama was a possibility.” another “nugget” is a reference to basketball player kobe bryant, who died last january: “it felt like a fitting tribute to him, and it felt good to go back in time to where this basketball legend is just beginning , and there is so much hope.” hope is a vital part of thomas’s writing, despite frank acknowledgment of difficulties. The character of Maverick, who grows up to become Starr’s father in The Hate You Give, is the focus of this novel because people wanted to know more about a man who had “come out” of a gang. This included Russell Hornsby, who played the character in the film adaptation and “did a phenomenal job. when he stepped onto the set, he was a maverick whether the camera was rolling or not. he became that character in such a way that he blew my mind.” See Also: The Cat Who… Audiobooks | Audible.com hornsby asked questions to help shape the character in his own mind, some of which were answered on the fly. “It was definitely like being on the sidelines,” says Thomas. The artistic challenge with a prequel was, of course, “everyone is going to be like, well, we know he doesn’t die.” . . you can’t scare us with that.” Thomas realized that children don’t know everything about their parents. (He does not yet have children of his own, but is in the process of adopting a dog, a “stepping stone” for care.) for starr, “there will be some things about his father that he may never know.” this allowed thomas to craft a story that still offers surprises. it’s also an opportunity for us to see this “good father” in the early days of fatherhood: “the ups, the downs, the ups.” There’s a lot of bodily fluids, and Maverick isn’t impressed. but “at the end of the day he stands out, stands out and is there.” to show a young black man doing this is significant. “People act like Maverick is a unicorn,” observes Thomas, but “it’s very easy to find young people like him, young parents who are involved in the lives of their children. and it’s important to show that specifically when it comes to young black men because there’s an assumption that when the going gets tough, they get going. and that is not true. statistics show that black parents are more involved in their children’s lives than any other demographic group.” There is also a tendency to exaggerate the percentage of “absent black fathers”, focusing on marriage rates rather than fathers who live with or care for their children. concrete rose features tender moments alongside frustrating ones, with thomas having “the real mavericks” in mind and not wanting to “sweeten things” but also hoping that “people start to rethink the assumptions they make about parents young and young black parents.” Along with the hope, there is gratitude, to her editors, for letting her “do [her] thing” in writing instead of asking her to tone it down. she is “grateful for other books that, in a way, gave me permission to tell this story,” and for you, which features so many more black writers than several years ago, so many that “we can no longer count them on one hand or two.” . and thomas’s face lights up when he talks about his readers, some of whom have already read advance copies of the new book and have gotten in touch to say they’re “going” mavericks. “That’s what it’s about. human connection finding the ways we are the same. the concrete rose by angie thomas (walker books, £7.99) is released this month See Also: Java game programming books: A comparative review | InfoWorld:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/BPFX746PHFPD6E6WHBX5YAT544.jpg)
‘good father’