A bit about censorship for Banned Book Week.

I realized on Monday that it was Banned Book Week, and, given the nature of my work, I decided that I really should put something out into the world related to censorship.

This realization was repeated on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and this morning. So it should be apparent what kind of week this was. And, I suppose, what kind of summer it's been. So before I procrastinate myself into next month, I'm going to say a few words on Textbook Content Guidelines.

To reduce the past year's research into a few bullet points:

1. Textbooks must conform to certain sets of content guidelines if they are going to be printed or bought by schools.

2. Some of the guidelines are written by school boards, others are written by the textbook publishers for internal use.

3. Though the impulse directing most of the guidelines is usually noble, the results are often ridiculous.

Not surprisingly, lists of guidelines tend to be a bit difficult to track down, especially the ones used by publishers to pick through their own textbooks before release. But the ones that I have tracked down, besides being key to my thesis, tend to make an amusing read when I can suppress the knowledge that they're shaping the education of U.S. children and teenagers.

So, with just a bit of commentary, here are some real textbook guidelines that have made my supervisor laugh with disbelief:

Topics to avoid on tests, because they might upset or distract the student:

Yachting

Witchcraft and witches, except in historical context in Massachusetts. (Because the Salem Witches were the only real witches, I suppose?)

Vacations in faraway places, ski trips, and other expensive items beyond the reach of all. (guess that means healthcare in the States is out.)

Unhealthy foods (because if they don't mention it, kids will stop eating cookies.)

Typhoons

Transportation

Thanksgiving

Sports

Serious car accidents (implying that funny car accidents are a-ok.)

Rock and roll music

Rats, mice, roaches, snakes, lice

Pumpkins

Native American religious references

Movies

Life on other planets, aliens and flying saucers

Brand-name products or corporate logos (would a band-aid, by any other name, still fall off in the bath?)

Aspirin or any other drug 

Birthday celebrations

Blizzards

Getting more specific, Foods to avoid in textbooks:

Bacon or salt pork

Butter, margarine, or lard

Coffee

Dougnuts

Gravy

Cakes, including Birthday cakes, or pies

Candy

Jams, Jellies, Preserves

Pickles

Salt

Sugar

Tea

Which, I suppose, rules out all of the dinner table scenes from the Little House on the Prarie books that are most of what I remember from being read them before bed when I was little. 

Moving right along, Topics to avoid in Textbooks:

Anthropomorphism in nonfiction

Conflict with authority (because if we don’t give students the idea, they’ll never find out that teenage rebellion is an option)

Controvercial people, such as Malcolm X (Along with all the other historical figures worth writing about)

Creation myths that present alternatives to Biblical creation 

Dialect (Everyone speaks the same, don't they?)

Ethnic groups in desperate situations 

Poor nutrition and eating habits

Stories about slavery

Unpunished transgression (life is always fair!)

Winter holidays

Under normal circumstances, I'd properly cite all of these, but their authors (the publishers) have made it clear that they do not want to be associated with the guidelines. That and all of my critical notes are up in Norwich and I'm down in Reading.

And since it's also roughly related to banned books: One-Star Book Reviews has spent the week posting the covers of banned books accompanied by the most outrageous challenges made to them. Check it out.

And now, kindly excuse me while I go spoon my hot water bottle and will my cold away.

Recalled to Life

Summer is a lot like a teenage boy asking you on a date: it inevitably promises more than it can deliver. At the start of the season I just knew that, with all of the distractions of the academic year and being freezing all the time out of the way, I would finally get around to writing some short fiction, that I'd get to do some serious digging in the British Library, that I'd probably fit in a few day trips, track down the rest of my primary sources, and maybe even finish a draft of the PhD novel.

It probably surprises no one but me that none of that happened.

Most of what happened was drafting for both sides of my degree and discovering that sources exist that I have to have but absolutely cannot find, sporadically interspersed with making a wedding happen. And then when it absolutely could not get any messier or any more hopeless, I flew back to the states to visit my family.

During undergrad, when I went home, it was clear that the timeline had progressed while I was elsewhere. Now, not so much. I return, now, to the same spot where I left off, to a moment or two after hugging my parents goodbye at the airport. Like stepping in and out of Narnia. My trips to the States stitch themselves together in a not unpleasant way - and since they are so short (and possibly also because I'm not allowed to drive over there any more) it feels like I haven't aged when I'm there, like I'm still nineteen and walk the beach every morning at sunrise with my dad.

This trip, I overheard my mom explaining to one of our relatives something that I've tried to explain to her a few times but never thought had stuck: why it is that I am so much more comfortable in the UK than in the US. She emigrated from Sicily when she was a child, so even though she's never had an accent there are still ways in which she doesn't fit, culturally speaking, times when she has to remind people that they will have to explain to her something that they think is a given because, no matter how she sounds, she's still a foreigner. And even though I was born in the US, while I was there I had the same problem: because I don't sound different people often never realized that I don't have the same cultural context that they do. Now that I am somewhere that every word I say is a reminder that I am Not From These Parts, I don't have to explain that I was homeschooled, that I'm from an immigrant family, that my background is very different from that of whomever I'm speaking to. And after years of explaining, it is a relief to be able to hide under the label that my accent gives me.

In about a month, a fair subset of my family is going to be coming across for the wedding, most of them for the first time - my siblings have been shipped over to visit, but my dad has never left America before. And while I'm excited about the wedding, I'm perhaps even more excited to see how they react to where I live now, to see what they think of over here in contrast with over there.

And maybe just a little bit I'm hoping it will put an end to all of the ridiculous questions. While I was home, my cousin (the lawyer) asked if England had any beaches, and if we could all go to the beach while they were visiting. In October.