In Which Kelly Does Not Post About The Thing She Was Going To Post About

Or something.

Look, I had it all planned out: my son and I have been reading the Code of the Jedi before bed as a guide to Good Behavior for High Spirited Kindergarten Boys. And it's been effective. And I was all set to do a post on the problems of passion for the budding young Jedi and how that relates to fiction.

But you know what? I'm not gonna.

Because sometimes our brains and hearts get sidetracked on something so huge that it leaks everywhere - into our fiction, into our blogs, into perfectly ordinary conversations with sweet little old neighbor ladies named Eunice who had thought that we were just going to be chatting about the weather.

But I didn't want to chat about the weather. Or passion. Or the Jedi Code. What I want to talk about today is the sex trafficking industry and its exploitation of homeless kids.

I know. Heavy. But bear with me.

A few years ago, I took a job working as a GED teacher at a drop-in center for homeless youth in Minneapolis. It was a ridiculously cool job. I got to hang out with teens who were really in a tough spot in their lives - I wrote with them, played pool with them, recommended books, watched their kids, and helped to fill in the gaps in their education so they could earn their equivalency degree. I was a sounding board for a lot of kids. I listened. A lot. They yelled at me, and confided in me, and cried with me, and told me jokes.  For many of my students, I also helped them navigate through the labyrinth of community college applications and financial aid. It was a tough job, frustrating at times, and I worried day and night for my students.

These kids slept in a different place every night. Because we didn't require them to be under the care of social services (we preferred the 'gentle nudge' approach) we had a lot of kids who came for meals, and came for the safety, but still didn't know where they were going to sleep that night. They slept in abandoned houses, or a friend's couch, or in the park. And by doing so, they were terribly terribly at risk - not for violence or for accidental death (though those certainly happened) but many, many of them fell victim to sex traffickers.

He're the ugly numbers. In the state of Minnesota, there are 20,000 kids under eighteen who are currently homeless. I'm just gonna let that sink in. That's ten high schools full of kids, all without a safe place to sleep. Most homeless youth (we're talking in the range of 90%) are approached for sex-for-hire within 48 hours of becoming homeless (this according to an attorney general report in Minnesota). Nationwide, the average age (average) for entrance into prostitution is 13. And lastly, and most upsettingly, in our country, there are 300,000 boys and girls under the age of 18 who are currently working as prostitutes.

Now, I bring this up for two reasons. First of all, I'm sure all of you have been following the resultant campaign in response to a rather misguided idiot who wanted to ban Laurie Halse Anderson's magnificent book Speak. What I found so compelling, so heartening about what came out of that was the resounding voice of a broad reading public who all agreed that there is a place for advocacy in fiction. Speak is an important book, not only because it is well written and a stark, clear-eyed view into a teenager's life, but because it forces the reader to feel the consequences of sexual violence. Because the reader empathizes with that level of pain, violation and humiliation, we come away from that book feeling that this must not happen.

This must not happen!

And then we act.

I recently read a book called Dirty Work, and another called Chloe Doe, and another called Sold  all three of which deal explicitly with the reality of both teen prostitution and sexual slavery, both alas, alive and well throughout the world. These books crawl into your skin. They do not let you look away. Because it would be way too easy to look away. And then we must act.

In my city, some friends of mine have started acting. The recession, they say, usually results in a spike in exploited kids, so they are attacking the problem by creating safe and loving spaces for kids who need a way out. An organization called the Source is raising money to buy a building to use as a transitional housing for young adults who have been victims of sex trafficking. They're doing good work and important work and I'm as proud as can be of all of them.

The point is this: books have tremendous power to give voice to those who have been silenced and to give hope to those whose spirits are crushed. Books force us to experience the pain of those at the margins of our culture. They force us to see that which we'd rather be blind to. I think that's the reason why small groups of small-minded individuals seek to ban books - not to protect children, but to protect themselves.


But here's my question for you, dear readers: What book inspired your "road to Damascus" moment? What book forced the blinders off, pulled the scales from your eyes, and made you realize that you needed to stand up, you needed to take action, and you needed to shout as if your life depended on it:

This must not happen!


And again, louder.

THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN!

What are YOU doing to celebrate Banned Books Week?

You may have heard that I am up to my EARS in Banned Books Week celebrations. All month, at my main blog, I've asked readers to send in photos of themselves reading banned books. (Keep 'em coming! I'm accepting submissions through the end of Banned Books Week!) In return, I've been sending readers some fabulous buttons to declare their own banned book-reading awesomocity. Here are the buttons:



And this week, for every single day of Banned Books Week (which started on Saturday, the 25th, btw), I've got an interview with a banned author of SCANDALOUS books. So I hope y'all will check that out and leave these authors some love!

In any case, I wanted to show y'all what I'M reading in celebration of Banned Books Week, since everyone has been so forthcoming in sharing their own favorite banned books.

When I was about ten (that's me in 4th grade, right there), I was pretty busy tearing through all the Judy Blume I could get my hands on. I had always been an advanced reader, and my mom was pretty good about letting me read what I wanted. (I remember picking up Patricia Cornwall and John Grisham from my dad's bookshelf when I was in 7th grade. I eventually got bored and traded them for some Piers Anthony Dad and I found at the bookstore.)And , at the time, ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET. was like my Bible.

One night my dad took me to get a new book and I came home with FOREVER..., one of Judy Blume's most famous books. I was so psyched to read it and I showed my mom but she did not share my enthusiasm Actually, she sort of panicked. She took it and hid it away and told me that it wasn't appropriate reading for me. I was like what the heck, mom? It's by JUDY BLUME. How could anything Judy Blume wrote be scandalous?

(This goes to show that my pre-pubescent self hadn't quite picked up on the sexual subtleties of TIGER EYES and DEENIE, which remain some of my faves.)

Anyway, I never wound up reading FOREVER.... But as an adult I have not one but TWO copies of Blume's most banned book. And, putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak, I figured I'd get my read on with the one book I was personally forbidden to read.

And I loved it.

I'm not going to go into a detailed review, because I'm probably the one person on the planet over the age of 18 who hasn't read FOREVER.... But I loved this book for its sensitive but uninhibited explorations of sexuality. I loved that the characters in the book were real teens that I related to as a kid who grew up in the 90s, even though they were written in the 70s. And I think that their experiences carry over in a way that remains real and relatable for today's teens.

Part of me remains surprised that this book was written in the 70s. It's pretty explicit, and I have to commend Judy Blume (or, THE JUDY, as I think of her) for not pulling any punches. Authors like Laurie Halse Anderson and Ellen Hopkins, who are writing contemporary YA and selling jillions of copies, still get challenged every year for being too racy. And I'm really glad that they -- and other authors, myself included -- have THE JUDY to fall back on. She paved the road for writers who want to keep it real, and that's freaking awesome. So if you, like me, never got around to reading FOREVER... as a teen, I hope you'll go pick up a copy soon.

And, for the record, I hereby forgive my mother for not letting me read FOREVER... as a kid. I wasn't ready for it. Though, I'm pretty sure I would have been so scandalized by the first sentence of the book that I would have hid it from myself in the closet and forgotten about it until I was ready.