Writer’s Block: Forbidden Reading
a book circulating among teens… Ok, I suppose that will be doujinshi for me! Those are technically books and it sort of irks a bit whenever I find 11 or 12 year old brats boasting about how they read NC-17 materials and feel, don’t know, very mature because of that.
Back to the question. You all know I love doujinshi, but I’ve never really had to hide my collection from my parents, or anybody for that reason. If my DJs are all piled up on top of the highest shelf at my bedroom, that’s because one of my nieces love reading manga and, in spite of her being 12 years old already (and intelligent and pretty aware of what homosexual relationships are, as far as I know), I don’t entertain the idea of the little girl reading my NC-17 and very smutty yaoi.
Regarding my parents, well, that’s another story. They both like reading and are pretty untidy people when it comes to certain things (guess it’s a genetic trait, then), so their books just lay scattered all over the place. That’s how I found their Harold Robbins collection, a rather well-known author whose stories used to feature lots of graphic sex as a general rule. I was like 11 when I first read Robbins – but at 10, I remember reading La Ciudad Y Los Perros by Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. Not that explicit of a book, but it surely has some disturbing elements, such as young men in a military school raping other boys or having sexual intercourse with animals. Some of the passages are so veiled, in fact, that I had to explain them to a couple of friends who had to prepare a paper on that book at the university; they were surprised when they learned what the book was actually about, and very shocked to know about the bestiality part.
I’m beginning to dawdle. I wanted to mean that I’ve never really had to hide any book from my parents because, as you can see, they care very little about what their children are reading, for good or for bad. Personally, I think it’s been for good: since they have never put restrictions on us, we’ve been able to read more and as much as we’d liked it than other people. By the way, I was browsing through other LJ users’ answers; one mentioned that his (or her) parents didn’t want him/her to read the Harry Potter books because of religious reasons, I think. Well, after we moved to town my father still spent most of the day at our old house (since he had to take care of our farmlands); it seems he was so bored because there were no tv sets or radios at home, that we found him reading a Harry Potter book once. In fact, he finished the first three books and read at least half of the fourth; I don’t know if he ever finished it. Apparently, he searched through our book collection for a read; guess he also wanted to give that series a try since it’s this popular and everyone talks about it, blah blah blah.
Also… I must confess I don’t know about the authors the Writer’s Block prompt mentions. I don’t know about most contemporary American or English authors, actually… Most of what I read nowadays are Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, and I don’t particularly enjoy YA literature (though I love fantasy stories). When I was a teen, I read Vargas Llosa, García Márquez, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, and other Peruvian authors such as a Bryce Echenique, Ciro Alegría and José María Arguedas. Now… It’s Pratchett, a bit of Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy; I’m yet to finish his trilogy of… like 5 books), and fanfiction. See how time changes your tastes in literature, ahem.
Before I go, here’s a zip file with the first 26 Discworld books, if anyone is interested. It’s not that random of an upload; I told a certain person in my f-list (ahem again) that I’ll try to share the books with her. The only problem will be that you need Microsoft Reader in order to open the files, but the software is free (you can download it here, at Microsoft website), light, and easy to install and to use.
…I’ll be back sometime later, with a fandomish entry about (take a wild guess at it) doujinshi and pairings in old and new fandoms I’d previously overlooked. Well, maybe. If my latest order arrives on time – it’s due tomorrow, but I’m not trusting the post office to be that punctual. And it’s that time of the month again, for the latest Fräulein Revoltech figure in my brother’s collection should be arriving tomorrow as well. Surely you can imagine how anxious he gets on these days…
Comentarios
Lucky you, it seems your parents really encouraged you to read (which is awesome).
I don’t know how to answer that question, on the first place because a)what I used to read as a teenager wasn’t what you could consider as a “book circulating among teens”, and b)my parents didn’t really payed that much attention on what was I reading. That was a good thing, I guess: one of the books I read then was “The Madonna of the Seven Hills” by Jane Plaidy, an historic novel about the Borgia family that had a lot of murders, and a lot of sex, mind you. It was funny when my mom started reading it recently and got shocked: “THIS is what you were reading at 13?!” In my defense, I didn’t know it had those things when I bought it, although I did feel kind of edgy reading things way above my age… Nevertheless, I did got a lot of crap from other relatives just for reading books when I was a kid/teen; I still remember one of my aunts telling my father how he and my mother should have prohibited me reading because “girls are supposed to be in the kitchen learning how to be good housewives.” Yeah, good times. *eyeroll*
Oh, don’t feel bad, I don’t know anything about those authors myself, and I work in a frigging library! ;P
[Cmnt]
Yes, I owe my parents that… Even if most of their “encouragement” was laying books all over the place and not caring/minding/worrying about what we read. It’s sort of funny, then, because my sister read The Lord of The Rings when she was 10 (she got interested on it after I told her about the plot) and she was also the person who gave me my very first yaoi fanfic to read (when she was 12 or 13) as I was learning how to surf in the net, but as she wanted to read Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at 15 more or less, my mother asked me if that was a suitable book for her. So… upon hearing that, I supposed it was a very bad idea to tell her my sister was actually writing her first yaoi fanfics at the time.
My relatives also told my mother I shouldn’t read that much when I was a teen. But not because “reading wasn’t a proper activity for girls”, but rather because they were afraid I could develop “dangerous ideas”. They never elaborated as to what kind of “dangerous ideas” they were referring, though, but I found this silly, especially because one of the people telling this to my mother was a school teacher. At that time, I mostly read Latin American classics (Vargas Llosa and García Márquez were my favorites; other Peruvian authors I read wrote about social problems), encyclopedias and even the Bible, but just I liked the long descriptions about wars and conflicts. Did that person mean I should be reading romantic novellas, comics books, teen magazines and the sort, because “more substantial content” could be dangerous? Or, at the very least, that person could first find out what I was actually reading before making any comments.
Sorry for the long rant. It surely brought back some memories from my school years…
[Cmnt]
Nothing to be sorry about, je,je.
Umm, you know, I don’t really think “dangerous ideas” differ that much of “girls shouldn’t read”. They could both mean that women shouldn’t think beyond of what they are supposed to. How can you be a good, obedient pasive wife if you actually know better? But then, “dangerous ideas” could also mean that you shouldn’t work, or study or just be independent… Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but these ideas makes me angry (and it doesn’t help many of my family think like her). Funny thing, my aunt was also a school teacher, which only adds more WTF levels to her comment, although now that I think of it she was also a nun, wich probably explains a lot too… Anyway, I don’t think your relatives meant that you should have read different content, but rather that you should have read less, but I could be wrong, I suppose…
[Cmnt]
No… Since I think I know the person who made that comment (know how she thinks, that’s it), I’m sure she meant something more in the lines of “subversion”. Back then it was the worst years of terrorism in our country and people was deeply marked by it, and the ignorance of the masses was more than not misguiding. For instance, I remember my teachers being scandalized because some students drew the old Soviet Union’s flag – and the coat of arms (the sickle and the hammer) was the same used by the terrorist group.
Of course, I’m sure this person didn’t mean I was going to become a revolutionary/terrorist by reading all kinds of books, but she might have feared it wasn’t proper for a teen to read material intended for adults. After all (and maybe I should’ve said this earlier), this person (who’s actually a political relative) comes from a well-educated family, and even one of his great-uncles was president of the republic. I don’t think, can’t think, she’d have such old-fashioned, obsolete and reactionary ideas such as women’s proper place being that of a submissive, ignorant wife.
Edited just because I’m threatening to reach my teachers’ ignorance levels on some things. The Soviet Union’s flag depicts a hammer and a sickle; guess I was thinking of blacksmiths instead of communism.
[Cmnt]