By Robin Stewart
Western Sun staff writer
In Australian Aboriginal communities, a boy’s rite of passage consists of beating his genitals with a large rock and having his incisor teeth knocked out with sharp rocks. I’m not even going to start on what they do to girls.
Rites of passage typically involve evoking fear and pain in the young person achieving adulthood, often with a sexual component. This stuff is meant to test the child for the realities of adulthood.
Here in the OC, however, we not only have the luxury of shielding our children from the ugly realities out there, we work to keep them as ignorant as possible.
Former Westminster School District Trustee Judy Ahrens went before Huntington Beach’s City Council to ban Maya Angelou’s memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” from school libraries. Ahrens bases her case on Angelou’s candid account of being raped as a child by her stepfather.
Rape isn’t a topic or book I would approach with an entire class. Students who haven’t been taught how to deal with pain can make the classroom incredibly awkward.
However, it’s for precisely that reason the book should be accessible to students through libraries. It’s a way for students to get help without letting the entire world know. Two people know the book has been checked out and only one knows the reason why.
Angelou’s account reveals first hand the myriad ways a child’s heart is lacerated when a trusted individual violate them. For rape victims, Angelou’s account reveals they’re not alone as they struggle with shame, guilt, coping mechanisms, confusion and emotional needs, to list a few.
To cope, Maya tries to disappear in plain sight by closing both her ears and mouth, much like Melinda from Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak”. There is immense shelter in the fact that while this experience does tear them up inside, it is normal, and more importantly, it is okay to feel that way.
Maya also experiences the healing power of literacy and imagination, and the grounding sophistication of authentic education.
A victim of assault, battery, and rape who had read the book insisted, “The book itself is about developing coping skills and using them to function and remain grounded in reality.”
A student who has been abused can use this book and in trying to vindicate and save Maya, vindicate and save themselves. A student who struggles with the same feelings as Maya experiences will have words to express them.
Taking this book away from students is taking a lifeline away from students. It also sets a scary precedent for books such as “Speak”, “The Color Purple”, “Julie of the Wolves”, and “The Kite Runner”. At the very, very least, this book helps students mature in understanding the complexity and depth of a rape victim’s pain.
That is, however, if you want your kids to have complexity and depth. It’s okay if you want to stick your head in the sand like a “book-burning-ostrich”, (an epitaph my source assigns to Ahrens), but don’t force it on the rest of us.
