Rainbow Party - by Paul Ruditis
First of all, this is the most controversial book in young adult literature right now. Bookstores have opted to only sell it through their online businesses, and there is not a library shelved copy in the entire state of Massachusetts (the one I read came from CWMARS, not from a specific library in my system). For those of you who are wondering why is it so controversial, please see this definition from the Urban Dictionary.
There is a great deal of debate as to wheather the term 'rainbow party' existed before Oprah's October 2003 show "Is Your Child Living a Double Life?". Personally, I have never heard the term before, and my very thorough dictionaries of sexual terms, The Big Book of Filth and The Bald Headed Hermit and the Artichoke, have no entries even hinting at such a thing (and I would like to point out that the BBoF, first released in 1999, has entries like "Russian salad party [1950s-60s] an orgy in which everyone is drenched in baby oil". Somehow, I think that if 'rainbow party' had been a real term, they would have included it.)
Anywho...
As far as the book is concerned many folks are deciding that its poor quality of writing is enough of an excuse to not include in aquisitions or make it worth defending. While I agree that the writing is quite simplistic and honestly not very good, I have read MUCH WORSE and I don't see this as a good enough reason. The authors insistance of naming all the character after colors was rather annoying though.
Now we get to the content of the book. It's about teens having sex. Plain and simple. There are no two ways around it. This is enough to get a lot of folks in a tizzy. It's not actually about a 'rainbow party' happening, but the planning of one, and how it causes several teens to examine their own sexual choices. It actually brings up many really good issues including, abstinance, love, reciprocation, STD's, reputation, pregnancy, is oral cheating, and a few others. I think this book could easily be used as a jumping off point for a very good and very frank discussion of sex and its role in relationships. And I felt this way until I got to the end of the book. And then I slept on it. The next morning a rage of monumental proportions decended upon me when the full message of the book hit me.
EVERY CHARACTER WHO HAD SEX IN THIS BOOK WAS PUNISHED IN SOME FORM.
I think that bears repeating. Every character who had sex in this book was punished, with STD's, unfaithful partners, or unplanned pregnancy. Even one of the character's ADULT sister did not escape this. Admittedly, most of these characters had unsafe sex, and the message of sex needs to be safe is important, but there where still NO positive examples of relationships with sex included in this story. The characters who had good relationships, of course abstained from sex and therefore were rewarded. I take issue with this message. I also take issue with the semi-abusive relationship involving a closeted gay male that was not resolved, he was simply punished with the rest of the degenerates. This is reason enough for me to not defend this book. I could forgive the heavy handed handling of the material, but I cannot forgive the "sex is bad, will always be bad, and if you have it something really horrible will happen to you" message. I don't like scare tactics, and I found them very unnecessary in a book that has all appearances of a very open and candid discussion of sex and teenagers.
There is a great deal of debate as to wheather the term 'rainbow party' existed before Oprah's October 2003 show "Is Your Child Living a Double Life?". Personally, I have never heard the term before, and my very thorough dictionaries of sexual terms, The Big Book of Filth and The Bald Headed Hermit and the Artichoke, have no entries even hinting at such a thing (and I would like to point out that the BBoF, first released in 1999, has entries like "Russian salad party [1950s-60s] an orgy in which everyone is drenched in baby oil". Somehow, I think that if 'rainbow party' had been a real term, they would have included it.)
Anywho...
As far as the book is concerned many folks are deciding that its poor quality of writing is enough of an excuse to not include in aquisitions or make it worth defending. While I agree that the writing is quite simplistic and honestly not very good, I have read MUCH WORSE and I don't see this as a good enough reason. The authors insistance of naming all the character after colors was rather annoying though.
Now we get to the content of the book. It's about teens having sex. Plain and simple. There are no two ways around it. This is enough to get a lot of folks in a tizzy. It's not actually about a 'rainbow party' happening, but the planning of one, and how it causes several teens to examine their own sexual choices. It actually brings up many really good issues including, abstinance, love, reciprocation, STD's, reputation, pregnancy, is oral cheating, and a few others. I think this book could easily be used as a jumping off point for a very good and very frank discussion of sex and its role in relationships. And I felt this way until I got to the end of the book. And then I slept on it. The next morning a rage of monumental proportions decended upon me when the full message of the book hit me.
EVERY CHARACTER WHO HAD SEX IN THIS BOOK WAS PUNISHED IN SOME FORM.
I think that bears repeating. Every character who had sex in this book was punished, with STD's, unfaithful partners, or unplanned pregnancy. Even one of the character's ADULT sister did not escape this. Admittedly, most of these characters had unsafe sex, and the message of sex needs to be safe is important, but there where still NO positive examples of relationships with sex included in this story. The characters who had good relationships, of course abstained from sex and therefore were rewarded. I take issue with this message. I also take issue with the semi-abusive relationship involving a closeted gay male that was not resolved, he was simply punished with the rest of the degenerates. This is reason enough for me to not defend this book. I could forgive the heavy handed handling of the material, but I cannot forgive the "sex is bad, will always be bad, and if you have it something really horrible will happen to you" message. I don't like scare tactics, and I found them very unnecessary in a book that has all appearances of a very open and candid discussion of sex and teenagers.
posted by Chrissy at 8/25/2005 11:53:00 AM
1 Comments:
Fair enough. I'm totally with you on the closeted kid--I was mad that that story wasn't really resolved.
Didn't Jade (or whoever the Fiesta-ware-liking girl with the pregnant older sister was) end up having sex with her boyfriend? After the prom or something? I kind of got that impression. But she was such a periphery character that he storyline doesn't really provide much of an argument.
Of course, there were so many characters that they were all kind of on the periphery.
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