stet.

life unedited

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I think keeping information from kids, and writing books that are only drab for kids and won’t startle them, is a dangerous thing. Books, clearly, are a way for kids to learn about the world they are going to enter, the adult world, which is filled with terrible things. Reading is a safe way to approach a dangerous world alone. I think to try and prevent kids from doing that is actually more dangerous than having them read books that might be troubling.

Lois Lowry

Bookish sat down with YA author (and my personal hero) Lois Lowry to talk about her new novel, the fourth and last in The Giver series. The author told us all about the inspiration for her new book, and why censoring stories is a dangerous proposition.

Needless to say, her thought make us want to throw a fist in the air like Judd Nelson at the end of “The Breakfast Club.”

(via bookish)

(via bookish)

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'The Baseline Is, You Suck': Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women

The Atlantic:
It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a write—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Junot Diaz:
I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.

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