This letter was originally published in today's issue of the Verona Cedar Grove Times.
An Open Letter to the Parents of Sophomores at
Verona High School:
Dear Parents:
I
have heard that there has been some controversy surrounding the inclusion of
John Green’s Printz-award winning first novel Looking for Alaska on the summer reading curriculum. I would like to
point out that this controversy is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
There
is a lot to say on the topic of book banning and censorship and why these are
never a good idea. I could discuss how, in his YouTube video “I Am Not a
Pornographer,” John Green explains the existence of the controversial sexual
portion of his novel.
“There is one very frank sex scene. It is
awkward, unfun, disastrous, and wholly unerotic… the whole reason that scene in
question exists in Looking for Alaska is
because I wanted to draw a contrast between that scene, when there’s a lot of
physical intimacy but is ultimately very emotionally empty, and the scene that
immediately follows it, when there’s not a serious physical interaction, but
there’s this intense emotional connection… it doesn’t take a deeply critical
understanding of literature to realize that Looking
for Alaska is arguing against vapid physical interactions, not for them.”
Novelists write the scenes they write for a
reason. In this case, the sexual content of Looking
for Alaska exists to showcase something much more valuable: emotional
intimacy. It is not there for shock value, or for the purpose of corrupting its
teenaged readers. It exists for the same reason that everything in literature
exists: to further the themes and the plot of the work in question.
The author’s own words
aside, there are a great many more arguments in favor of Green’s book. I could
argue that it is absurd to hold more recent literature under such censorship
and scrutiny, when students have been learning about Shakespeare’s dirty jokes
for centuries. I could argue that hiding these things from your children will
not keep them innocent, but rather leave them to face the world unprepared and
perhaps more likely to make the dangerous decisions you don’t want them to have
to face. I could argue that banning a book, or even removing it from the
curriculum, might just have the opposite effect to the one that was intended
and send teenagers to the library in droves.
But
the argument that is most important, in this context, is one of empathy.
Looking for Alaska is a novel about
Miles Halter, a boy who is obsessed with the last words of famous people and
who decides to attend a boarding school one state away from his hometown.
There, he meets Alaska Young, a beautiful, fascinating girl who lives next door
to him and about whom he knows absolutely nothing. Miles spends the rest of the
novel trying to understand Alaska, to really know her, but all he can see is his
idea of her (except, perhaps, in the scene following the sex scene in
question). He cannot fully comprehend her as the complex, problematic person
she truly is, instead seeing her as the wonderful, perfect girl he wants her to
be. It isn’t until the novel’s tragic ending that he even begins to understand
his mistakes.
Miles
learns to be empathetic throughout the course of Looking for Alaska. He learns that people are not what he makes of
them, that the world is not only what he sees through his own narrow
perspective.
Verona
is a town of tradition. It is a small town where nothing has changed in years
and where half the people, if not more, that you see walking down the street
are people you know. It is a perfectly nice town, and I am happy that I grew up
there.
But
it is also a town that can, very easily, provide a child growing up there with
nothing but a very narrow perspective on the world. Things don’t change in
Verona. People grow up and come back instead of moving on.
Literature
is one of the best ways to learn to be empathetic. When we read, we are being
asked to connect intimately with the novel’s characters, to care about their
lives and their problems as though they were our friends. Literature asks us to
see beyond our own narrow perspectives, to understand other people as they
really are, rather than how we want to see them. A novel like Looking for Alaska is perfect for
students at Verona High School. It is a novel that has empathy as its central
theme, that expresses the idea that imagining other people complexly is perhaps
the most important and kindest thing that we as humans can do.
I
would like to ask you, parents, to imagine things more complexly.
Imagine
Looking for Alaska not as a novel
with a Controversial Sex Scene, but as a novel that realistically portrays
teenaged life with all its pitfalls and mistakes and bad ideas and wonderful
friendships and exciting adventures.
Imagine
your children not as innocents who need to be locked away in the tower of
Verona to protect them from the outside world, but as people capable of reading
critically and understanding the themes of the books they read in class.
I
am trying to imagine you complexly. I know that you are reasonable people; I
know that I did not grow up in a town of evildoers happy to throw controversial
books on a pyre in the town square, and I know that is not what you are
suggesting. I know that you are merely concerned about the things your children
are reading, and whether or not the material is appropriate for them.
Allow
me to leave you with this advice: do not ask the school board if the material
is appropriate. Ask your children. Talk to them about the things they read, the
things they see on television or at school. Discuss your concerns, and see if
they are shared. The world is indeed a scary place, with a great many things we
want to keep our loved ones safe from. But some monsters are only shadows on
the wall, and the only way to find out the truth is to communicate.
Imagine
your children complexly. And keep Looking
for Alaska on the syllabus.
