I would not separate either GBLTQ or African-American
fiction from other types of fictional reads.
I think they need to be segregated by their particular genre (suspense,
historical fiction, etc.), but not separated out because the characters are gay
or African-American. First of all, I
feel that this is discriminatory and is setting our culture back decades by doing
this. Yes we still have a mess of race
and gay issues of discrimination in this country. Why? I
don’t know, and I think other countries are wondering why we do as well. I find
it extremely disheartening, but the last place that this needs to occur is in
the local library. The library should be
a safe haven for all walks of life.
Secondly, I would feel that gays and African-Americans would also feel
discriminated against. I’m neither
African-American nor gay, but if I put myself in their shoes, I wouldn’t want
to be in a library that practiced this sort of filing system. Thirdly, if a library is going to do this for
these two classifications of individuals, then it would only be appropriate for
them to be doing it for all races, ethnicities, and cultures in order to have
some sort of fairness. Boy wouldn’t that
be a cataloging mess? There could be
shelves of African-American fictional literature, but maybe only a small segment
of books that featured Muslim characters or Asian characters. Then should the Asian character based books
be segregated even more by Chinese and East Indian or maybe even more
segregation than that? It seems like a
nightmare. Keep the library integrated
please.
About Me
About Me
When I was teen, I was on a heavy Stephen King and Peter Straub reading jag. I couldn’t get enough of these authors. Today I still have my collection of these books residing on a shelf of my bookcase. Sometime in my early twenties I became less enamored with King’s readings. I don’t know if my taste just changed or I had burned out on his style. I have to say though that The Shining by King was the first novel I read of his and my favorite out of all his books.
I then started leaning more toward suspense and thrillers and less of horror. Some of the authors I followed were Mary Higgins Clark and James Patterson. My favorite Patterson novels were The Beach House and When the Wind Blows. They were other suspense authors peppered into the mix, but this is the one genre where I mostly stuck to favorite authors.
When my children were in grade school, the Harry Potter craze was all the rage, and I was just as engrossed in reading the books as they were. I found out at that time how much I enjoyed fantasy and many young adult novels. It seemed that YA authors were more creative in many ways than most adult novel authors. My sister-in-law is a YA librarian at a high school, so she would advise or buy certain books for me to read. For young adult reads I didn’t really stick to one author, but would go off recommendations and reviews for great YA books. Yes I devoured the Twilight series, but I can’t say this was my favorite YA read. The best young adult novels I have read are Jellico Road by Melina Marchetta and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.
I still enjoy reading suspense and thrillers as well as many young adult books, but in the last few years, I have also started reading many gentle reads that pull at the heart strings. Again there is no specific author that I stick to, but mostly go off recommendations and reviews to select reads from this genre. Some of my favorites in this category are: Firefly Lane by Kristen Hannah, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards.
I am not much of a non-fiction reader unless I’m forced to read it. In addition, I a little romance goes a long way in a book, so I’m not a big romance novel reader.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
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I thought I had commented before but it's not appearing. I just said that I agree that if you do it for one ethnicity, then it can snowball into all ethnicities being segregated. And to segregate out base on sexual orientation seems a bit too biased. Shelving by certain aspect of a person's make up of who they are seems odd.
ReplyDeleteIt's critically important not to discriminate against people based on race or sexual orientation. I am 100% behind your reasoning on that front; however, what is your response to patrons requesting that these titles be given their own section. Do you think that this could ever be a positive thing?
ReplyDeleteI would still have to stick to my guns even if a patron requested this. It is simply a matter of "if I did this for one group of people, then I would have to do it for all groups", and this would be a very arduous tasks.
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