On Saturday, I attended a panel on CENSORSHIP IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE at a local book festival. It featured four Maine-based YA and children’s books authors.

Carrie Jones is the author of the Need series, and is co-founder of Young Adult Authors Against Bullying, and editor of Dear Bully, a collection in which “Today’s top authors for teens come together to share their stories about bullying in a collection at turns moving and self-effacing, but always deeply personal.”

Maria Padian is the author, most recently, of Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, and Jersey Tomatoes are the Best.

Charlotte Agell is the author of, among other books,  Shift and The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister.

And Kelly McClymer  is the author of Must Love Black and the Salem Witch Tryouts, among other titles.

I’m only an occasional YA reader (and a mother of an occasional YA reader), and even I am aware that attempts to censor YA literature are all too common. Two prominent cases this year involved YA fiction with gay characters, written by Jessica Verday and Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith. The Wall Street Journal’s attack on “dark” YA fiction (“so dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things”) plays nicely into would-be censors’ fears that children can be led astray by reading.  Since this topic is so important, I thought I would try to report the gist of what the panelists authors shared. I listened carefully and have tried to be faithful to the spirit of the comments, but if you happened to be there, and want to correct the record, please let me know in the comments or via email (jessica@readreactreview.com).

The authors on the panel haven’t been outright banned, but they have had their books challenged in different ways.  McClymer introduced the idea of different levels of censorship. There is outright banning, as when libraries or schools refuse to carry a book. Then there is a kind of pre-emptive censorship editors ask for. Her example of this was an editorial request to remove a reference to a “flyer” (the cheerleader on top in the formations) needing to lose five pounds, for fear it would be triggering to anorexic readers. McClymer explained that there were no other references to problematic beauty norms in the book, and that anyone who knows the world of cheerleading would recognize that this particular position requires a certain weight. But since the line wasn’t vital to the character or plot, she dropped it. Finally, there is self-censorship, the internal voice telling the writer that they have to change something.

McClymer has turned to self-publishing to publish a novel she believes would not otherwise find an audience. It’s a book about a teen who who killed his ex-best friend, whose ghost haunts him. McClymer is also self-publishing some old historical romances, and she noted she doesn’t write historical romance any more because she doesn’t like to write sex scenes.

Agell, a middle school teacher, said that different kids need different books. There is no “blanket audience.” She just tries to stay true to the characters. Padian agreed with this, saying she tries to create the truest characters she can. She mentioned that her current work in progress involves a friendship between a Franco-American boy and a Somali immigrant boy on the same soccer team in Lewiston. (Lewiston has enjoyed an influx of Somali and Bantu refugees in the past decade). Since the Somali boy has a sister, she’s wondered if she should introduce the issue of female genital mutilation. Her question is how she can write about it — if she does — in a way that is really true to the characters.

An author of illustrated children’s chapter books, Agell once had to swap a colorful drawing of a breastfeeding mother with a colorful drawing of the mother sipping a drink. She noted that her India series is about an adopted Chinese girl who lives in small town Maine with her single mother, an artist and breast cancer survivor, who spends weekends with her gay father and his partner. Agell had been asked to write a similar series, but this time not featuring a girl who has “issues.” Her response is that the India books are not “issue” books: rather, they are about a regular girl. During the Q&A, both a social worker, and a mom who had two adopted children objected to the idea that India (or the other characters) are “unusual” kids with “issues”, and thanked the panel for writing books in which the kids they know in real life can find themselves.

Jones described herself as a writer of “upper YA.” She said she writes a lot of kissing scenes that get edited out. She noted that she has written two characters whose sexual orientation is “not heterosexual” but that readers would not know, because her editor asked for certain edits. Jones did not say the editor asked they be removed due to their sexual orientation, but rather, because they did not help the plot. This rang a bell for me, and I remembered that when the Brown/Smith blowup occurred last month, their claims were denied by the editor in question, who took to The Swivet to say:

The book included five character points-of-view (POVs). Our second bit of editorial feedback was that at least two POVs, possibly three, needed to be cut. Did one of these POVs include the gay character in question? Yes. Is it because he was gay? No. It’s because we felt there were too many POVs that didn’t contribute to the actual plot.

It can be very hard to determine whether prejudice is at issue, when our decisions are overdetermined by so many different concerns and pressures. These days, we know a lot about implicit bias and unconscious prejudice (see this page at the Project Implicit site), and we know that so many of us are unaware of the way prejudice shapes our own beliefs and actions. I think it’s less hard to determine when a choice can contribute — in however small a way — to the silencing of a disadvantaged or oppressed social group. These choices certainly had that effect. But it’s easy to sit in the audience and wish that in some cases these authors had made different choices. They have families to support, other pressures of which I have no conception, and they can each point to ways in which their books contribute to society, and add to the voices to marginalized groups.

It was a fascinating, if at times disheartening, session. I came away very impressed by the thoughtfulness they each bring to their work. I’m hoping to read at least one book by each of them before the end of the year, and I’ve already purchased Dear Bully, for myself and my kids.