Showing posts with label Banned Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Banned Books. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Seeing My Son Read is a Bittersweet Joy

Viet Than Nguyen. Seeing My Son Read is a Bittersweet Joy. New York Times, August 5, 2018. p.4SR.
Books were not a priority for my parents, so we never had them in the house. I would go to the public library every week and stuff my backpack full of books, which were barely enough for a week. I never owned my own until high school. My son has a bigger library than I ever had.  While my parents showed me they loved me by making sure that I always had enough to eat, I show my love for my son by making sure that he always has enough to read (as well as to eat). For me, the library was a second home, and I want my son to have his own home
By 11 or 12, I knew how to get to my second home by myself, on foot or on the bus.  But in remembering that childhood library, what I also know is that libraries are potentially dangerous places because there are no borders. There are countries called children’s literature and young adult literature and adult fiction, but no border guards, or in my case, parents to police the borders and protect me. A reader could go wherever he or she wanted. So, at 12 or 13 I read Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” and Larry Heinemann’s “Close Quarters."
COMMENT

     We may not normally think of letting kids get inappropriate books as a desirable function of the library, but considering how often reading the “wrong” book influences the course of someone's life it strikes me as a particularly valuable service. There is a kind of coming-of-age that happens when a child starts reading books that reveal  truly shocking adult knowledge. Reading these books becomes a formative experience precisely because the reader was so ill prepared. Some kids can find such transformational books on their parents’ shelves, but Nguyen’s refugee parents didn’t have any books at all. The library had to facilitate his coming-of-age.  Luckily, the librarians provided guidance for curious kids by dividing books into shelves for children, young adults and adults. Any child who wanted to sneak a peek at adult secrets would know exactly where to look. Nguyen, now a protective parent himself, is absolutely right that by learning to read his son is “one step further on his own road to independence, to being a border-crosser, someone who makes his own decisions, including about what he reads and what he believes.” I like to think that Banned Books Week helps this coming-of-age process along.