A Report from the Forbidden Fruit Conference

May/June 2008

Wendy Steadman Stephens

The Forbidden Fruit conference was convened by Sarah McNicol, a former school librarian most recently affiliated with the University of Central England, who has studied the attitudes of young people towards censorship in libraries.

This June (2008), blue language and sexual situations punctuated the atmosphere of an English seaside town, as academics, practitioners, doctoral students and authors met in Southport, on the northwest English coast, to discuss censorship and book banning at the Forbidden Fruit conference. Underpinning the two-day conference was an understanding of the deep and complicated relationship between readers and their books, as well as a shared sense of frustration that all too many texts for youth could never reach their intended audience, as authors and the publishing world are constrained by expectations of the marketplace. From the excisions of Australian culture in texts translated into French to the warnings about strong language on the first books from the young adult genre published in the Maltese language, often the omissions, as with our library collections, proved as important as what remains.

Children and young adult titles continue to dominate the most challenged lists. This makes the provision of developmentally appropriate materials an ongoing concern in a range of library settings, as demonstrated by more than a dozen speakers and librarians who came to negotiate a shared understanding of what makes some literature for young people objectionable. Discussions about shelving strategies, access, labeling, and other pragmatics demonstrated how some librarians seek to diffuse the impact of content that can seem more shocking in isolation.

The conference discussions moved back-and-forth from matters of theory, such as the nature of the impulses to protect young people, to more qualitative measures, including attempts to gauge the range of selection as censorship by using metrics such as rates of holdings of material identified as controversial.

GLBT Literature

The provision of GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender) literature for young people was a topic of central interest over the two days. John Harer, from East Carolina University, opened the conference with his discussion on defending gay positive literature in the 21st century, what he called the era of gay assimilation. Harer updated and expanded Christine Jenkins' (1998) work, which, in its examination of gay themes in literature for young people published between 1969 and 1997, found that gay characters were often not the protagonist and often met negative endings. Harer highlighted the recent changes in American popular culture and the increasing acceptance of homosexual lifestyles among many religious denominations internationally. Harer believes that it will be foremost the increasingly personal connections to the GLBT population that will result in attitudinal shifts, even among fundamentalists opposed to homosexuality on the basis of religious doctrine. Harer promoted the inclusion of literature with gay themes as fundamental to safe school environments.

The University of South Carolina's Jennifer Arns used Lambda award-winning fiction as her benchmark for inclusion of gay-themed materials in public library collections. Using her background knowledge of government data sources, Arns searched for characteristics of libraries that held the 34 Lambda titles on the rationale that those titles were the GLBT materials most likely to have been collected. For her sample, Arns looked at all of the public libraries that contribute holdings information to OCLC's WorldCat. She found that the average public library in her sample held just fewer than four-percent of the award-winning books, with 55.6% of the libraries holding none of the titles at all. Hypothesizing that rural and poor libraries were less likely to own the Lambda titles, Arns used regression analysis to look for correlations between the collection size and size of the service population, but found no strong relationships. There was, however, a regional discrepancy in the holdings, with midwestern libraries more likely to hold the books than other areas of the United States.

Liz Chapman, of the Enfield Libraries (UK), presented her master's dissertation work on the provision of GLBT materials for young people in UK public and school libraries in tandem with that of her colleague Caroline Wright. Her focus groups found that attitudes of the library professionals did not support censorship by omission but warned that response bias probably determined the library practitioners who chose to participate in her research.

Chapman found shelving and promotion, in particular, of these materials was problematic for even those librarians who advocated the inclusion of GLBT titles in the collection. These materials, she said, could be isolated in a parenting section that would not draw young people. Chapman also highlighted the need for GLBT materials in a variety of non-print formats.

Teen Sexuality

The texts Young Mother and Forever provided case studies for Newcastle University doctoral student Lucy Pearson's examination of shifting attitudes towards teen sexuality between the 1960s and 1970s. "People write within what they perceive to be the boundaries," said Pearson. "It is easy to see the parameters of those standards when you look at published works."

Josephine Kamm's 1965 novel Young Mother, praised in its day by Aidan Chambers for its appeal to reluctant readers, took a punitive approach to teen sexuality, seeming to struggle not to glamorize the plight of the unwed and underage girl who is the title character.

While Kamm's protagonist conceives as a result of coerced intercourse, in opposition to which, only a decade later, Judy Blume depicts eighteen-year-old Catherine as a willing participant whose decision to engage in sexual activity within a relationship is well-considered.     

Pearson suggests that despite its enduring and popular appeal, Forever is in fact a didactic novel. She points to Blume's forward to newer editions of the novel that addresses the need for safe sex without changing the original provision of birth control pills in the original text. The contrast between Catherine's positive future and that of her friends who took a more casual attitude towards sex is another caveat reinforcing the need for responsibility and maturity with regard to sexual relationships. Pearson contends that Forever remains unique in that its healthy and positive message about Catherine's own pleasure is "not something that has survived in books about teen sexuality."

Authors Barry Lyra and David Belbin discussed the negotiation of norms during the writing and editorial process. Belbin, a prolific British writer with more than thirty titles for young people who also teaches creative writing at Nottingham Trent University, spoke about having strategic expletives softened before publication without his consent. He discussed the authorial impulse towards self-censorship, and the recent move, sparked by UK grocery store chains and other general retailers, towards "age-banding," or the designation of appropriate audience age ranges on books.

Barry Lyra, best known for his debut The Amazing Adventure of Fanboy and Goth Girl, described the author as picking his story, but not his reader. Lyra argued, "Shouldn't parents have to shoulder the load and not authors and publishers?" In response to his second novel, Boy Toy, Lyra shared feedback from student readers who had been able to use that literature to relate to friends and said his own work attempts to reflect the sometime unfortunate realities of life for children. For those who are abused, Lyra said, "no one's book will ever make it any better or any worse."

Lyra described a range of challenges to critically acclaimed young adult literature, including the restriction of Carolyn Mackler's The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things to high school libraries in the district where he had gone to school. He suggested that the increasing emphasis on warnings about movie content could establish a culture of labeling for any anticipated objection, however integral to the overall plot. "We must accept books in toto," he said, "They are more than the sum of their parts."

Cultural Norms and Translations

Cherie Givens, a doctoral student from the University of British Columbia, presented her research among Canadian authors for young people, hypothesizing that censorship at the pre-publication phase effectively stifles creative output as it attempts "pleasing both the right and the left."

Many editorial revisions highlighted in her interviews were predictable nods to political correctness, such as avoiding the use of metaphorical darkness to represent evil. But Givens found writers and illustrators are urged to embed messages about child safety by never depicting children outside the presence of an adult and by eliminating depictions of adult behavior that can be perceived as negative.

Givens also reported authors are urged by increasingly multinational publishing groups to Americanize spellings, place names, and Canadian identifiers, essentially disavowing their national heritage and identity. "It has moved to a level where we are re-writing history," said Givens.

Givens also discussed the increasing phenomena of copyrighting landmarks and the trademark restrictions imposed by the Canadian legal system prohibiting unauthorized use of designated phrases in anticipation of the Olympic games at Whistler and the effect on works already within the editorial pipeline.

Helen Frank examined the reductive tendencies and cultural norms that influence translation as censorship. By using Australian titles selected for French language publication as a body of evidence, Frank, who is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne, described the linguistic and stylistic constraints in the persistence of images of Australians as sporting, fit, and great swimmers in the French popular imagination. Frank said the works translated to the French were conspicuously conservative in nature, many dating from the 1950s and 1960s instead of more contemporary works.

Frank discussed several aspects of translation, including the presentation of aboriginal populations, Australian fauna, the body, and societal understandings of vulgarity. Works with aboriginal themes were found problematic and thus less likely to be chosen for translation, noting that when translated the negative epithets and designations which existed to describe native populations in the Australian original were often obscured by more general vocabulary. Frank found that stories involving Australian animals were among the most faithful of the translations.

Norms of politeness, ideals of child rearing and behavior were adjusted for the French readerships. For instance, insults towards adults tended to be removed wholesale. Overall, Frank argued that the anarchic nature of Australian culture, which can appear vulgar and brash to outsiders, is often downplayed in these translations. "The French must purify [works] to appeal to their own market."

The Publishers View

The publisher's perspective was represented by Chris Gruppetta, whose Merlin Publishing group has introduced the concept of fiction for young adults in the Maltese language over the last two years. Malta, a nation of half a million people which Grupetta described as having a traditional, conservative, and Catholic bent, has a tradition of importing English language literature.

Gruppetta quoted Trevor Zahra, an established Maltese children's author whom he commissioned to write for older readers, as saying, "We still laugh, cry, and swear in our own language." While Gruppetta said that his titles dealing with social and family realities are "completely innocent" next to edgy British works like Melvin Burgess's Doing It, the covers carried warnings about strong language, which he described as being more shocking in Maltese than in translation.

In introducing problem fiction for older readers, Gruppetta bucked a tradition where teen tales were more thematically similar to children's adventure literature, but with older protagonists, replacing the existing titles that "lacked street cred." Though successfully challenging the tradition where every book contains a moral lesson, Gruppetta reported that the thousand-copy print runs of his young adult titles found more readership among adults than children, which he attributes to the nature of Maltese society.

Perceptions of Young Adults

I presented my own findings from my student population at Buckhorn High School in New Market, Alabama, using student's own written reflection as a basis for thematic analysis. The 12th graders responding to a unit of study focused on censorship revealed that the overwhelming majority of students were not aware that book banning existed either in contemporary society or for students their own age. Many said they had believed censorship to affect only other media, such as film or popular music. The students expressed anger about what they perceived to be manipulation on the part of the church and government policy makers. Overall, the high school seniors tended to support limitations on content only for the youngest children. The students also reinforced the bibliotherapeutic aspects of literature, reinforcing Amy Pattee's (2006) theories of fiction as a valuable information source for young people.

Paul Laughton from the University of Johannesburg spoke about his research among students regarding filtering of digital content on hand-held portable devices. These handsets have become a ubiquitous ways of accessing the Internet in South Africa, where mobile Internet penetration is double the rate of access via telephone landlines among his study group. He found many students reported accessing adult content inadvertently on their mobiles and discussed the limitations of mobile filtering for devices registered to under-15s.

Two Greek scholars closed the conference. Moula Evangelia discussed the recent trend towards expurgation of classical Greek texts in versions for young people, resulting in loss of the fundamental understanding of the canonical myths so central to the culture. Ionna Laiakatsou write about how erotic themes can be stigmatized by holding the same expectations for young adult literature as that for children. Laiakatsou described the strongly negative vocabulary and metaphor associated with homosexuality, which she described as often treated as a temporary aberration en route to heterosexual orientation.

The Forbidden Fruit conference was convened by Sarah McNicol, a former school librarian most recently affiliated with the University of Central England, who has studied the attitudes of young people towards censorship in libraries. Her recent publication on mixed-use libraries highlights the optimization of resources for a maximum range of users. McNichol plans to publish the Forbidden Fruit conference proceedings.

Works Cited

Jenkins, C. A. (1998). From queer to gay and back again: young adult novels with gay/lesbian/queer content, 1969-1997. Library Quarterly, 68, 298-334.

Pattee, A. (2006). The secret source: sexually explicit young adult literature as an information source. Young Adult Library Services, 4(2), 30-38.

    Wendy Steadman Stephens is the Librarian at Buckhorn High School in New Market, Alabama, where she was 2005-06 Teacher of the Year and sponsors Buckhorn's Computer Club. She was chosen as one of ten Alabama Best Practices Center 21st Century Fellows for her work with wikis and podcasting. She is also a doctoral student in information science at the University of North Texas. Her research interests include children's literature, the history of school libraries, online information seeking, and cultural aspects of emerging technologies."