{"id":20669,"date":"2013-11-19T10:00:12","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T15:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=20669"},"modified":"2013-11-19T13:03:44","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T18:03:44","slug":"author-sherman-alexie-talks-young-adult-fiction-and-banned-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/11\/19\/author-sherman-alexie-talks-young-adult-fiction-and-banned-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Sherman Alexie Talks Young Adult Fiction And Banned Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sherman<\/a>

Chase Jarvis \/ Grove Atlantic<\/p>

<\/p><\/div>\n

When Sherman\u00a0Alexie\u00a0comes to a book fair, he enjoys the communal storytelling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the notion of all that energy surrounding books,\u201d says Alexie.<\/p>\n

Alexie\u00a0is the author<\/a>\u00a0of award-winning novels, poetry and short story collections about Indian characters living on and off modern-day reservations. His protagonists frequently share a deep, obsessive love of books and basketball.<\/p>\n

Alexie\u00a0returns to the Miami Book Fair<\/a>\u00a0Tuesday night at 8:00 for a much-anticipated author talk\u2014his last appearance at the fair in 2009 was a wildly engaging performance of his stories with a heavy dose of stand-up.<\/p>\n

Alexie\u00a0joined us from a studio in Seattle for a conversation on why, in an age of e-readers, books\u2014and book fairs\u2014matter. \u00a0You can listen to that interview here:<\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2013\/11\/AlexieMBFI_TW_Mack_web.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Alexie\u00a0also talked about his young adult audience\u2014and what it means to author a banned book.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Q:<\/span> How is writing fiction for young adults different than the kinds of stories you wrote before\u00a0Flight<\/a>\u00a0and before\u00a0The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A:<\/span> I didn\u2019t write Flight for teens. It just worked out that way. I still don\u2019t think it\u2019s for \u00a0teens necessarily. It\u2019s a book that contains a\u00a012-yr-old\u00a0girl genitally mutilating a Cavalry soldier. I don\u2019t remember that in the last Harry Potter novel.<\/p>\n

I think the fact that Flight does get taught is great. But I never meant it to be that.<\/p>\n

In writing True Diary, I didn\u2019t necessarily think of it that way either.<\/p>\n

Teens, young readers, are going to sniff condescension right away. So I always go by the definition my editor has for young adult literature: young adult literature is whatever a young adult happens to be reading at that moment.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Talking about The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian\u2014it deals with some real, often rough subject matter. Alcoholism, domestic violence, poverty, teenage boy sexual frustration. They\u2019re subjects that you\u2019ve tackled in other works. What does having a teenage protagonist allow you to do in that kind of story that you haven\u2019t done before?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A: <\/span>I don\u2019t think I talked about masturbation in my work as much as I did in True Diary. He mentions it three times. He mentions it three times; he doesn\u2019t do it. And that\u2019s enough to get it banned in some schools.<\/p>\n

I think those sort of teenage obsessions are something I get to write about because I\u2019m writing about a teen, but it\u2019s also fun.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>It\u2019s a New York Times bestseller, it won a National Book Award, and like you mentioned, it\u2019s also been banned in a few places. What does that tell you?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>That I wrote a great book. I wrote the book that needs to be read.<\/p>\n

Percival Everett, the writer, always says that if you\u2019re getting banned then you\u2019re offending the right monsters.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Which monsters are those?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Repressive, conservative religious freaks who want to control everybody\u2019s reading material, not just their children\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>What are the stories that you read as a kid that have stuck with you?<\/p>\n

\u00a0A: <\/span>Oh my gosh. Stephen King, who was always writing about underdogs, and bullied kids, and kids fighting back against overwhelming, often supernatural forces. The world aligned against them.<\/p>\n

As an Indian boy growing up on a reservation, I always identified with his protagonists. Stephen King, fighting the monsters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Q: <\/span>You have children of your own, right?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Yup. Two boys, 16 and 12.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>What are the books that you\u2019ve handed them?<\/p>\n

\u00a0A: <\/span>Those days are long over. They are free agents in the reading world. Their recommendations now come from their peers.<\/p>\n

I know my younger son has really been getting into\u00a0John Green<\/a>, which is great. John Green is awesome.<\/p>\n

And my older son is very much a World War II and John F. Kennedy assassination buff right now. He goes on the Internet to look for what he should be reading and then he asks me if I have that book. I end up being a resource, a lending library rather than the librarian.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Sherman\u00a0Alexie\u00a0comes to a book fair, he enjoys the communal storytelling. \u201cI like the notion of all that energy surrounding books,\u201d says Alexie. Alexie\u00a0is the author\u00a0of award-winning novels, poetry and short story collections about Indian characters living on and off modern-day reservations. His protagonists frequently share a deep, obsessive love of books and basketball. Alexie\u00a0returns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[879,889],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20669"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20674,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20669\/revisions\/20674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}