Posts tagged Canada

Oh boy, I just read a column by Canadian author Cory Doctorow. He got a shitstorm of anger from teachers, students, parents, and librarians because he dared to write about a 17 year old boy having sex and drinking a beer. I really should know better by now but still… the fact how things like this are handled in North America never fails to amaze me. I know half of you guys stop reading here because you know what awaits you but that’s ok. Yes, I’m a smug eurofag and no, I can’t stop bashing North American countries for being so hypocritical, unprogressive and fucked up. So let’s make it short here: I know there are many people living in the US and Canada who are upset about this stuff just like I am. So if you’re a teenager and can’t stand the Christian censor machine who’s trying to control what you can read and think: Go and get some Youth lit from Europe. No matter if it’s Swedish, French, Dutch or German, many (sadly not all) of the great coming of age books released here are getting translated sooner or later and I never stumbled upon one that doesn’t have sex scenes ;)

My first young adult novel, Little Brother, tells the story of a kid named Marcus Yallow who forms a guerilla army of young people dedicated to the reformation of the US government by any means necessary. He and his friends use cryptography and other technology to subvert security measures, to distribute revolutionary literature, to liberate and publish secret governmental memoes, and humiliate government officials. Every chapter includes some kind of how-to guide for accomplishing this kind of thing on your own, from tips on disabling radio-frequency ID tags to beating biometric identity system to defeating the censorware used by your school network to control what kind of things you can and can’t see on the Internet. The book is a long hymn to personal liberty, free speech, the people’s right to question and even overthrow their government, even during wartime.

Marcus is 17, and the book is intended to be read by young teens or even precocious tweens (as well as adults). Naturally, I anticipated that some of the politics and technology in the story would upset my readers. And it’s true, a few of the reviewers were critical of this stuff. But not many, not overly so. What I didn’t expect was that I would receive a torrent of correspondence and entreaties from teachers, students, parents, and librarians who were angry, worried, or upset that Marcus loses his virginity about two-thirds of the way through the book (secondarily, some of them were also offended by the fact that Marcus drinks a beer at one point, and a smaller minority wanted to know why and how Marcus could get away with talking back to his elders).

read, read, read!

because they fear nothing more than a freethinking youth