Every time the censorship debate rears its head, I remember my own childhood reading experiences. I spent most of my home time reading, or trying to read, every book my dad brought home. Whether he bought it or checked it out of the library, if it was in the house, it was fair game. And he never cared about our reading habits unless he hadn't yet had a chance to read the book or we damaged it.
Not everyone felt that way. Our public library, like many libraries, had an adult section and a children's section. One of the librarians was a tyrant of a woman who refused to let children into the adult section (anyone under 13 was considered a child to her, despite the dearth of books for the preteen audience). She chased us off if we even took two steps toward the adult section. I'm not talking erotica or pornography adult books, here. I'm talking about the history shelves, the science books, the regular science fiction and fantasy section. Even the romance and westerns were off limits according to her. But whenever my father took us to the library, we could follow him into the adult section. She would never say a thing. I guess she expected that he was policing our reading material appropriately.
Little did she know.
My best "forbidden book" memory starts in junior high. I was a rather unimpressive member of the school, popular only with the bullies (if you know what I mean). No one hung out with me or wanted anything to do with me until a few weeks after Judy Blume published a scandalous novel called "Forever." I remember so clearly how everyone was buzzing about the book and how they desperately wanted to read it, but their parents wouldn't let them. The popular kids schemed every which way to get a hold of a copy, their schemes falling short of the reality that they could not go into the bookstore to buy a copy and the local library did not have a copy. The parental concerns could be summed up in one word: sex.
According to the rumors, this book had very explicit sex scenes in it. So of course the entire school (or at least the female population) wanted to read it. Two weeks after the feeding frenzy started, my mom and I were in a bookstore. I saw the book on a shelf, picked it up and asked her if she would buy it for me.
Mom looked at the back blurb and replied, "This looks interesting. Mind if I read it after you're finished?"
So I went home the proud owner of the most scandalous forbidden book in history and took it to school with me to read it during lunch … well, okay. I was showing off a little. The popular kids noticed it first, laying atop my stack of books and I was instantly (and briefly) the most popular girl at school. They wanted to know how I'd sneaked the book into my house. They wouldn't believe me when I said my mom bought it. Then when they did believe me, they didn't believe she knew about the sex things. (She did. I told her about it and the whole junior high rumor mill before I asked her to buy it.) Unable to believe my answers, they resorted to the Important Matter at Hand: Asking to borrow The Book. I agreed to the requests, saying they'd get it after my mom and I finished it. Convinced they'd never see the book again (it would be confiscated when Mom saw the sex), they backed off. Then were utterly surprised when I brought it back in and fulfilled lending requests. Popularity spiked again. Briefly.
What really surprised me about the book, though, was how unimpressive the sex scenes were. I'd half-expected them to leap out of the pages with steam and sensuality, to feel my ears get hot and my face go red while I read the scenes. Yet the steamy parts all felt very deliberate and oddly clinical. I could not figure out why this was supposed to be a banned book.
Then again, my parents never made a big deal out of forbidden fruit. If I couldn't have something, they explained to me why. If I wasn't allowed to do something, they sat me down to discuss the issue. Most of the time, for things like books, there just wasn't anything forbidden. And if I had questions on stuff like this, I was supposed to talk to them.
It was this attitude that enabled me to tell Mom about the book before we bought it. It was this attitude that didn't make me ashamed to give her the book when I finished with it. It was this attitude that gave me a healthy sense of the difference between fiction and reality. Yeah, the book had sex in it. And? Looking back, I think my story "Silk and Steam" has a much more erotic sex scene than "Forever" did. And I didn't come close to being as explicit as Blume.
If my parents had made a big deal out of the "Thou Shalt Not" moments, I may have been with the rest of the crowd, drooling over every description as if it were water in the middle of the desert. But my parents weren't like that. After Mom read the book, she even sat me down and asked me if I had any questions about how it works in real life. True Fact: That moment was more embarrassing (and horrifying) than anything I'd actually read.
So that leads to the questions: Are forbidden books more entertaining to read than allowed books? And why?
Something to think about.
