Just a few of the things I found online today, clicking around:
NPR News: African American female celebrities are often able to talk about sexual abuse — interestingly enough, the topic, when male celebrities talk about it, is generally used as comedy, or played off as “this is how it was.” The word abuse isn’t used.
According to the National Child Abuse and Data System in 2007 there were some 14K incidents of boys being abused, while there were 25K girls who reported. During the broadcast, an African American comedian discusses his first sexual experience, which happened at the age of eleven with a much older teen girl. The audience chuckles.
…it occurred to the NPR commentator to wonder why it is rightly considered abuse, when it happens to an eleven-year-old girl, and why it is a “thumbs up” type of thing, when it happens to an eleven-year-old boy.
What’s up with the double standard?
This isn’t an easy conversation, yet it’s an important one, for African American boys, and all boys. Is it something which should be addressed more in YA fiction?
(Tell Me More, on NPR News (Behind Closed Doors).)
Author Carleen Brice, who blogs at White Readers Meet Black Authors, is interviewed about bridging the gap between readers and writers in terms of literature written by African Americans, and talks about the racial divide in publishing.
And in all seriousness… Quirk Publishing strikes again. Remember the whole Pride and Prejudice… and Zombies thing?
Take a gander at this.
The first story you mentioned made me think about the mixed reception for Barry Lyga's Boy Toy–which I think is a truly important story to tell, because as a society we seem unable to face, for some reason, the idea of young boys being abused, instead deflecting it with joking or displacing outrage onto the messenger. It's an issue that transcends race, though the important fact the NPR piece brings to light is that it IS worse in some groups.
I don't know about the responsibility of YA writers to address it, but I do think YA writers are uniquely placed to have a positive effect.