I recently noticed a flurry of blog posts about Orson Scott Card, who received YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association)'s Margaret A. Edwards Award on January 14th. He's best known for his young adult science fiction, such as Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow. The reason this has gotten so much attention is due to Card's controversial, outspoken anti-gay beliefs.
K.G. Schneider at the Free Range Librarian certainly makes her point clear in a post entitled "Orson Scott Card is a Big Fat Homophobe", claiming that giving Card the award is "like the Anti-Defamation League giving Bobby Fisher a lifetime achievement award."
Debra Lau Whelan's article for the School Library Journal states the question succinctly: "If a well-known author writes and speaks about gays and lesbians in a way that many interpret to be anti-gay, should he be given an award that honors his outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens?"
The Annoyed Librarian's humorous spin on the situation includes this remark: "The question comes down to this: should an award honoring an author's work instead be based on the author's politics? That's what YALSA's critics seem to think. Ignore the actual works and instead judge authors by what they do and say outside their fiction."
My head has been spinning from so many different points of view, all of them making persuasive arguments. On one hand, I think that an author's work should be viewed impartially, regardless of their personal views, especially if these views are not explicitly contained in their work. On the other hand, his views could certainly be viewed as damaging to gay teens. The problem is, every author (and every person!) has views that someone, somewhere will find offensive, or even reprehensible. Most people keep those thoughts and beliefs more privately than Card. Should YALSA have chosen someone with a less controversial backstory? I think they made a challenging, courageous decision, even if I don't entirely agree with it.
A brief aside...I wonder how the controversy would change if the situation were different: if the author were gay, or an outspoken Christian, or a hard-line Muslim? There's probably too many variables to know for sure.
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3 comments:
I'm not familiar with this writer or his works..do his anti-gay beliefs show in his writing? Does he really write in a way that is anti-gay? If not, is it possible that most teens are not even aware of his stance on the topic? I'm curious to learn more about him and how he voices his beliefs. My first instinct is to feel that the YALSA did the right thing and awarded him based on his writing not on his politics. But I need to find more information about him before I actually take that stance.
P.S--Your posts are always quite fun to read!
I think that YALSA was brave for awarding this author even if the author writes with anti-gay themes. I think the author's personal viewpoints should be kept out when we critique a work. Even though an author's opinion will seep into the work (that's just human nature), it is foolish to think that a work is entirely comprised of the author's actual feelings, life events, etc. Writers write and they do have the power of invention or bullshit. We must separate the author from the work. When I majored in creative writing as an undergrad, this was the first rule beat into our heads.
I feel your pain with this. What an interesting case. It makes me wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the award committee meetings. I, too, had never heard about the author before this and don't know what form his anti-gay beliefs take.
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