Week 14 Prompt - Urban Lit and LGBTQ Lit

Should we have separate sections for Urban Lit & LGBTQ Lit?

Like many of my classmates my knee jerk reaction to this question is no. I will give my reasons with one caveat. I am not part of either of these communities and ultimately I think these communities should be consulted before a final decision is made about or for them by collection development personnel. That being said here are my reasons for saying no:

1) As has been mentioned by many of classmates separating out these collections feels like a kind of segregation. I remember when marriage equality was coming to head seeing many members of LGBTQ community being upset with references to gay marriage. They would say it's not gay marriage it's just marriage that happens to involve two gay persons. We don't call it straight marriage do we? So I have to wonder does this same logic apply to books? We don't call it straight fiction, straight romance, straight sci-fi/fantasy, etc... So is it fair to use LGBTQ romance, LGBTQ sci-fi, LGBTQ horror, etc..to single out these books? This a question that only the LGBTQ community can answer. 

2) Again many of classmates have brought up the issue of safety. I also worry about safety of both the books being singled out and the people browsing them. Along the same lines what about a patron's right to privacy? We have a lot of rules in place to ensure patron privacy regarding both their personal information as well as what they check out. Having all the LGBTQ materials in a separate space seems to fly in the face of privacy rules. If a patron is in that section everyone in the library who sees them their automatically knows what kind of literature they're looking at. As for the books/resources themselves it seems like collecting them all in one place makes that much easier for vandals to target those materials. They can destroy them all with one fell swoop. Kind of like putting all of you eggs in one basket it you will. It would also make it easier for all of the people wanting to ban LGBTQ and anti-racist books. It's like handing them all the books they want to get rid of on a silver platter. We've only had a couple of books questioned so far, but if those books had been in a section surrounded by a bunch of others of same ilk I hate think how many more questioned books we'd have at this point. This might sound crazy, but never underestimate the laziness of the American public.

3) My third reason is that creating separate sections for these two "genres" seems like a slippery slope. When you start separating out sections where does it stop? Are we going to separate out all the "erotica", put it behind a curtain and slap an age limit on it? What about separate sections for western romances, southern romances, city romances, cozy mysteries, who-dun-nit mysteries, dark mysteries? My point is there are soooo many sub-genres so when you start separating books by collections where does it stop?

4) I also agree with others that separating out collections keeps people from expanding their horizons. You can't happen upon a new book, a new genre, a new author if you only stick to on separated out section. Mixing everything together exposes the patrons to so many more options. 

5) I haven't specifically addressed Urban Lit, though I think many of the same principles apply. However, I will let an African American author address this more specifically. Author N.K. Jemison has a post on her blog called "Don't Put My Book in the African American Section." In this post she says "I hate the “African American Fiction” section. HATE. IT. I hate that it exists. I hate that it was ever deemed necessary. I hate why it was deemed necessary, and I don’t agree that it is. I hated it as a reader, long before I ever got published. And now that I’m a writer, I don’t ever want to see my books there — unless a venue has multiple copies and they’re also in the Fantasy or General Fiction section." The author goes on to say "Any bookstore or library which shelves my stuff in AAF has assumed that my work is automatically of interest to black readers — and only black readers — because I’m black. It further assumes that black readers don’t care about the book’s actual content; they’ll just read anything by a black author. Yet further this practice assumes that white readers are too xenophobic to consider reading a book written by someone of another race, so such books shouldn’t even be allowed into their sight." (2010) She has many other salient points about why there shouldn't be separate sections. It's an excellent read that I highly recommend!

I could list more reasons, but I'll leave it there for now. I am not in collection development so none of this my call, but I think it's important the however we choose to arrange and/or display our materials that we are doing our best to live up to the ideals set forth in the ALA Guidelines and Library Bill of Rights. And always always involve those who are going to be impacted the most in our decision making process, whatever that may look like.

References:

Jemisin, NK. “Don't Put My Book in the African American Section.” Nkjemisin.com, NK Jemisin, 26 May 2010, https://nkjemisin.com/2010/05/dont-put-my-book-in-the-african-american-section/.