A seventh grade boy came up to me during reading class the other day, stepping away from his browsing on Goodreads for his next book.
He said after reading a review about one book, “This one reviewer said he fell into a deep depression after reading a book. Should I take that to be a warning that I should not read it?”
Now this boy typically does not talk to me privately; he prefers his group of guys in class for jokes. I started to answer, and then noticed I was towering over him by over a foot, so I pulled over a couple chairs so we could be eye to eye and said, “Well, it does sound like a warning, doesn’t it? I just finished this book, Girl in Pieces, and thought for most of the book about students I know who have self-harmed and grappled with depression and trauma. I wondered how this book might trigger their trauma again or give them unhealthy ideas of coping with stress. Triggering means to set off old memories or even bring to the surface emotions that we push down. Books can be powerful in that way.”
The boy was listening so carefully and nodding, so I continued, “This book made me sad and uncomfortable, but at no point did this book make me want to hurt myself. It wasn’t a trigger for me. It helped me understand another way of being in the world. But a friend sort of warned me about it, so I was on alert. I was very aware of my reactions as I read.”
I realized I was lecturing now, but I had just finished the book and hadn’t talked about the experience yet. I needed this conversation perhaps more than my student did, but I try to make visible my life as a reader for students and he was a good (willing? captive?) listener, so I continued.
“Readers do have to be quite honest with themselves when they dive into an unfamiliar genre or subject–about what they can handle and how they might work through discomfort or confusing parts. Thanks for listening to me talk about the book. Does this help answer your question at all?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Are you considering doing a book study about depression?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
This quarter students are reading three books within a subject or genre to do a study of how different authors represent that genre or subject. This boy was searching teen novels about depression on Goodreads.
After talking about his book study plan, I continued my mini-lecture: “Books can be too close to home;they can help us make sense of our own lives, and they can help us be more compassionate toward others. Think about what this book study might be for you. Let’s talk about that tomorrow, okay?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You may try reading with extra attention toward how you are responding. You can abandon the book at any time if you’re uncomfortable , but you may find that, like me, you’ll want to talk about the book as a way of making sense of what’s going on in the story and with you.”
The bell rang, and the boy left the classroom.
Girl in Pieces: A Mini Review
A lot was going on with me when I read Girl in Pieces. I struggled with the beginning, not wanting to be in Charlie’s world, in the treatment center. I was relieved when the setting shifted. I appreciated the story-line extending beyond the treatment center because recovery is anything but linear. As a former social worker, I witnessed clients struggle to find shelter, jobs, and hobbies after treatment. I witnessed relapse after relapse when old friends would come around or when whispers of shame would turn to screams. I witnessed how families with the best intentions enabled and how lives with “friends” or “loves” became so enmeshed that the self was indistinguishable from the other. This book captured all of that without giving up hope.
Girl in Pieces read almost like a verse novel, which makes sense given the title and the narrator’s process of assembling her pieces to recognize her always wholeness. So it reads fractured and abrupt and even distorted at times, which seems purposeful and even helpful in representing the partiality of any one story of trauma.
There is profanity. Living among teens and considering the worlds of the characters, that also seems appropriate. The more YA I read, the more I am desensitized to the language. This is not to say that I don’t notice it, but I recognize the word choice as the author’s deliberate attempt–successful or not–to represent the character in her time and place. Desensitized or not, I still have to keep profanity in mind when I am book talking or recommending books to teens. I typically say, “I don’t know your family values or what you are comfortable with, but there is some profanity in this story.” I may follow up with whether or not it is mature in context or intended as humorous or if it’s rather excessive or intermittent.
The School Library Journal shared the results of a study conducted in 2008 of the profanity in 40 YA books on The New York Times Best Seller Lists:
While there’s no denying that profanity exists in YA novels, many authors says it’s an integral part today’s teen culture and to exclude it would offer young readers a sanitized version of the real world that many couldn’t relate to.
Profanity in YA literature exists and is, perhaps, an integral part of teen culture, but that does not alleviate the pressure teachers feel to respect students’ and parents’ preferences and wishes in books.
Teaching or Censoring
Thinking back to my conversation with my student, clearly I recognize that our “conversation” was very one-sided. Did I warn or inform? Did I censor the subject in some way? Did I trigger a memory or emotion for the student?
I think what I did might be teaching in some informing-lecturing-advising form. I think I talked like a reader–a more experienced reader–who was in a position to advise another reader. I also think that I somehow distorted, shaped, colored, altered the student’s thinking about reading, books, reviews, depression–just not sure how.
I checked in with my good listener the next day to see if he was worried about anything in particular or wanted to talk to a social worker. He said he was just curious about that review and never thought about a book as a trigger or making people emotional. Still, I’m going to probe a bit more as his subject/novel study gets underway.
I am in a position of power, so I have to think about the implications of my words. Reflecting on this short exchange, what is illuminated for me is the very real ethical implications of recommending books that unveil the present and past of trauma. I think teachers and friends should 1) read the book before recommending it, 2) know the potential reader before recommending it, and 3) if possible, support the reader during the experience by checking in and being available to talk about the book and emotional responses.
Considering Girl in Pieces as a book to recommend to teens, I definitely want to be sure I know as much as I can about the reader’s emotional stability and history. I might start by asking the student to read this author’s note to start a conversation about both the author’s purpose of making visible the often hidden scars of trauma and the student’s interest in the subject matter. I already have a group of students who want to read this, so we will read the author’s note together and meet regularly. One student sees our school social worker, so I plan to talk to the social worker before putting this book in her hands. It might be just what she needs to reflect on her experience, but it might be a trigger, and I don’t want to make that call.
I have a lot of books in my classroom library and encourage students to make choices that stretch their experience of the world, so I can’t always make a personal introduction to a book for a student, nor do I think I should. Some might suggest, then, that I put warning labels on the books.
There has been some debate at the university level about trigger warning labels, statements, and even excluding certain texts because of traumatic content. The American Association of University Professors published a statement on trigger warnings. Here is an excerpt:
Some discomfort is inevitable in classrooms if the goal is to expose students to new ideas, have them question beliefs they have taken for granted, grapple with ethical problems they have never considered, and, more generally, expand their horizons so as to become informed and responsible democratic citizens. Trigger warnings suggest that classrooms should offer protection and comfort rather than an intellectually challenging education. They reduce students to vulnerable victims rather than full participants in the intellectual process of education. The effect is to stifle thought on the part of both teachers and students who fear to raise questions that might make others “uncomfortable.”
Labels or statements do conflate and do interfere with literary experiences, which are unique to each reader. Still, when facing a traumatic event or image whole class, it makes sense to prepare students by contextualizing the content and making space to avert one’s gaze, to process, to react, to reflect. For personal reading and study, however, I am not a fan of such labels and statements for the reasons stated in excerpt and because as such they are insufficient. In my view, nothing replaces conversation with students, and even those are insufficient and have implications.
“Warning” students about triggers and profanity may be one way of talking about student-book matching with regard to more sensitive topics in young adult literature. Warning may lead to censoring. An informing or advising stance is better–just be careful not to talk too much.