{"id":164737,"date":"2022-04-21T17:35:31","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T06:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/?p=164737"},"modified":"2022-04-21T17:35:32","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T06:35:32","slug":"i-didnt-write-for-the-pearl-clutchers-ya-author-allayne-webster-on-banned-books-and-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2022\/04\/21\/i-didnt-write-for-the-pearl-clutchers-ya-author-allayne-webster-on-banned-books-and-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I didn\u2019t write for the pearl clutchers.’: YA author Allayne Webster on banned books and literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Allayne<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Allayne L. Webster is an internationally published Children’s and Young Adult author. She also plays guitar, sings and sometimes she illustrates. Paper Planes (Scholastic) was a 2016 CBCA Notable, shortlisted for the Adelaide Festival Awards, and has recently been included in the Australian Heritage Literary Project Untapped Collection. A Cardboard Palace (MidnightSun Publishing) was a 2018 CBCA Notable, published in Sweden. Our Little Secret (Scholastic) was listed for the Golden Inkys, and The Centre of My Everything (Penguin RandomHouse) was listed in the 2019 Davitt Awards and shortlisted in the 2020 Adelaide Festival Awards. Sensitive (UQP) is published in Russia and was shortlisted in the 2020 Australian Speech Pathology Awards.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Thing I Did<\/a><\/strong> (Wakefield Press) – is Allayne’s ninth publication. In it, five misfits hit the road in a haunted hearse, on a madcap road-trip from their prison-bordering suburb behind the ‘Mullet-Proof Fence’ to small-town Mount Gambier. Today, Allayne L. Webster is on the blog to talk about her new novel and how censorship sometimes makes it difficult for challenging books to be put into young readers’ hands. Read on … <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n
\"Allayne<\/a>

Allayne L. Webster<\/p><\/div>\n

Several years ago, I was invited to run a writing workshop for Year 9\/10 students at an Adelaide public high school. Prior to the gig, my host teacher was apologetic: It\u2019s a low socio-economic area, students are disengaged, literacy low, truancy high, behavioural issues rife, particularly the boys.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n

Upon pulling into the carpark, my welcome mat was two teenagers going for it in the playground. Really going for it<\/em>. Pashing like the world was about to end, a tangle of limbs and hot desire. It wasn\u2019t even lunch break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I headed for the office where I was met by my apologetic host. She took me to the classroom, all the while explaining how hard it was to engage these kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a cramped and tired teaching space, I was greeted by boys slouched over desks and girls glaring me down. A mop-haired surfy kid grinned\u2014ah, the class clown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I opened: I\u2019m a writer and I get it if you think that\u2019s boring. You\u2019ve been dragged here and told to listen. You don\u2019t have a choice. I remember what that was like.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They stared at me like I\u2019d broken an unwritten rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told them we\u2019d have a conversation. (No actual writing? Hell yeah! Bludge lesson!<\/em>) I asked them to tell me about their favourite stories\u2014books, film, video games. Unsurprisingly they discussed graphic horror movies and\/or television and gaming with adult classification ratings. I said that when I was at school I loved Judy Blume novels because my mother hated the content. We passed Forever <\/em>under the table and it was never actually checked into the library; everyone wanted to know what it was like to do the deed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Surfy Joker couldn\u2019t hide his enthusiasm. His classmates followed suit. The questions about writing came thick and fast. When I provided examples of published kids their age and younger? Total investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My host teacher beamed. I\u2019ve never seen them act like that!<\/em> Later, the SA Premier\u2019s Reading Challenge coordinator said, You put the power in their hands.<\/em> My teacher-best friend said wistfully, You\u2019re not hamstrung by parents and reporting outcomes like me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always written with my young audience front of mind, but with my latest YA, That Thing I Did<\/em>, I\u2019ve written with the knowledge the content will raise eyebrows. That\u2019s fine\u2014I didn\u2019t write for the pearl clutchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long after I published my debut Our Little Secret<\/em> (Scholastic, 2007), I received an email from a renegade librarian: Your book is on an underground censorship list shared between schools<\/em>. I scoured the list she\u2019d secretly forwarded and there was my book about rape\u2014a book I\u2019d written years before the #MeToo movement. I\u2019ve since visited schools and been told, Perhaps don\u2019t discuss that one.<\/em> (*Now in 2022, the government wants the curriculum to include teaching consent. I was fifteen years too early.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘If the goal is to improve literacy, surely whatever sparks that flame is what we should harness?’<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, I wrote again about sexual assault in The Centre of My Everything<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (Penguin Random House). By then the conversation had changed and yet still a teacher told me my novel was kept in a filing cabinet\/students had to request it. I\u2019m especially grateful to that teacher. I\u2019ve portrayed such a scenario in That Thing I Did<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Challenging\u2019 books are published because they\u2019re considered important to the kids who need them (read: kids who\u2019ve experienced trauma). By placing them in the library, we hope they\u2019ll make their way into the right hands. But we don\u2019t necessarily centralise these books, study them or normalise them. It\u2019s been suggested that it\u2019s because teachers are often the victims of trauma and the conversation is too triggering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That? That I understand. That I totally sympathise with. But keep a book under lock and key? Refrain from purchasing it? Exclude it from the marketing guide? How do you build empathy and understanding in kids who don\u2019t have firsthand experience with trauma? (Sidenote: thank goodness they don\u2019t.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In That Thing I Did<\/em>, I\u2019ve tipped the consent narrative on its head. I\u2019ve explored sex via a comedic lens, also broaching suicide, abusive relationships and the pressures of social media. Will this book land on an underground blacklist or be kept in a filing cabinet? In the era of wildly popular TV series like Sex Education<\/em> I\u2019d hope not, but then again that series was given an adult classification rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teenagers are exposed to a plethora of content via music, movies, television and online. They\u2019re doing it in playgrounds<\/em>. Granted, not every teen wants or needs something gruelling and confronting. But some do. Some view reading as a pointless exercise unless it truly speaks to them. I know because I was one of those kids. If the goal is to improve literacy, surely whatever sparks that flame is what we should harness?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teenage Allayne would like to thank Judy Blume, Robin Klein, V. C. Andrews, Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette\u2014authors who spawned my lifelong love affair with the written word. I progressed to literary texts and then to writing them. I\u2019ve written educational books like Paper Planes<\/em> (Scholastic) and A Cardboard Palace<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (MidnightSun) and I\u2019ve written #ownvoices like Sensitive<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>(UQP) about chronic illness. I can wear that hat, I can wear this one. They\u2019re not mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a teen I loved reading because I was in the driver\u2019s seat. My rural school library served as the town\u2019s public library. If I couldn\u2019t check a book out<\/em>, I could certainly sit there and read it. In retrospect, my parents didn\u2019t curate what I read\u2014and to my benefit. The problem isn\u2019t content\u2014it\u2019s context, a lack of opportunity to ask questions thereafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was privileged to have fantastic teachers at my little country school. I remember their smirks, their twinkling eyes, their amusement at my enthusiasm for Flowers in the Attic<\/em>. I remember my teacher, Mr Vaughan, thrilled with my Year 12 exam result. How did you write like that under those conditions?<\/em> Teenage Me answered arrogantly: Before the exam I rode around town on my bike and I wrote the essay in my head. Easy-as when you read as much as I do.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost thirty years later, that conversation and <\/em>his reaction are as powerful as ever. What I didn\u2019t say to him, and with the benefit of hindsight I should have said was: I wrote like that because I had a teacher like you who let me read exactly what turned me on<\/em>. Recently when I queried a private school librarian about what she would do if That Thing I Did<\/em> received complaints, she said with a wicked smile, Don\u2019t you worry, Honey. I drown the complainant in paperwork. They quickly back down when they realise the work involved in banning a book.<\/em> That librarian? She\u2019s my hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014That Thing I Did<\/a><\/em> by Allayne L. Webster (Wakefield Press) is out now.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hear from the author of the new YA novel, That Thing I Did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":164744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[8016,14734,14737,2303,14735,13471,6644,11510],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/AllayneWebster-Social.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164737"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164769,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164737\/revisions\/164769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}