Lorne Gunter: Schools have a duty to remove, or strictly control, sexually graphic content in books
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The four in question are Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Blankets by Craig Thompson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Flamer by Mike Curato.
Before you make up you mind about whether these are appropriate for school kids, check out their contents on the website set up by the Alberta government. (20250526-school-library-materials-FINAL.pdf)
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Edmonton Journal
07-06-2025
- Edmonton Journal
Lorne Gunter: Schools have a duty to remove, or strictly control, sexually graphic content in books
Article content The four in question are Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Blankets by Craig Thompson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Flamer by Mike Curato. Before you make up you mind about whether these are appropriate for school kids, check out their contents on the website set up by the Alberta government. (
CBC
04-06-2025
- CBC
How characters from Alison Bechdel's past shook her out of her memoir-writing kick
Nearly 20 years after her breakout memoir, Fun Home, American cartoonist Alison Bechdel is still unearthing new truths about that period of her life. But this time, she's taking a look at her personal story through fiction, with her new comic novel, Spent. In Spent, she explores the life of a cartoonist, also named Alison Bechdel, who grapples with her complicated relationship with capitalism, community and activism after the success of her memoir and its subsequent TV adaptation. "When I was younger, I did lead a more communal life," Bechdel said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. "I lived in a communal house. I went out and did political activities and was involved in my community. Over time, I really stopped doing that — and it's a bunch of factors. Part of it's getting older, part of it is being in a relationship, but a big part of it was that I was living very much on the edge until I was in my 40s, until Fun Home came out, and slowly saved my financial bacon." "Then I started making a lot of money, which was a very weird experience for someone who had formed their sense of self as an outsider and especially as a poor outsider." Bechdel, who is also known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For and books Are You My Mother? and The Secret to Superhuman Strength, joined Roach to revisit her debut memoir and how it shaped her return to fiction. Mattea Roach: You published your memoir, Fun Home, almost 20 years ago when you were 45. Now you're in your 60s. How has your relationship with the text evolved over the past nearly two decades? Alison Bechdel: It's funny to have this thing, this record of my life that is unchanging, like it's cast in stone. Even though I have found out lots of interesting information about various people or scenes in the book that would change the story if I were to write it now, it's done. This is the record and it's very odd to have to be constantly talking about it. The book was published almost 20 years ago, but I'm still talking about it as if it's a new thing to people. So that's a funny activity to get one's head around. How did it come about that you learned new information about some of the stuff that's depicted in the book? Was it a situation where people you knew read the book and said that's not actually how it was? I'll tell you one example of that, which is that I learned from my mother's best friend, that on the day that my father died, she had decided to not divorce him. Wow. Your dad died when he was hit by a truck and that was two weeks after your mom had asked for a divorce. And then there's some significant suggestion that it might have actually been intentional on his part. In this tumultuous time around between when I came out to my parents and when he died, which was just a couple of months, my mother had asked him for a divorce. And now I find out that she had been going to call that off. It just just casts her whole story into this really different light. It was already quite a tragic story, but now it's even worse, you know? Fun Home was made into this Broadway musical in 2015 and it won five Tonys. It's a very different work despite being adapted from your memoir. How did it feel to hand over a project that was so personal to be adopted for another medium? I didn't really know what I was doing. I knew I had sort of sidestepped an offer to option it for a film by asking for more money than they were willing to pay me. Which was a great relief. But then this offer came up for a musical and I didn't really have a connection to musicals. I've seen musicals, but I'm not like a big musical person. Somehow it seemed like it was different enough that I wouldn't mind if someone made a really bad musical out of my book — and the way that I would mind if it were a really bad film adaptation. I don't know what I was thinking now, but fortunately, that didn't happen. The people who made it did a very good job. It's a really good adaptation, but I always sort of think, "Wow, that was lucky." In my new book Spent, I explore what it would be like to really lose control of a creative project. Why did you want to explore this alternate path that you're grateful, in your real life, to not have gone down? Well, partly because once you become a writer in this world, everyone expects you to then somehow do something for TV or the great triumph is to get your book turned into a TV show and that just always strikes me as funny. Why can't we just make comic books that are comic books? I guess, obviously, because you make more money, but it's also just a cultural phenomenon. You know that if you're a writer, you have to grapple with this. Why did you want to revisit these characters from your weekly comic strips Dykes to Watch Out For who are now in late middle-age but are still living together in a communal housing situation? This book, Spent, was going to be another memoir. That's what I started doing after my comic strip. I retired the comic strip and began writing books about my life. And I thought that's what I was going to do forever because I really liked writing about actual life. Occasionally, someone would ask me, do you ever think you'll do fiction again? And I would just go blank. Fiction? How do you do that? And I couldn't even remember that I had actually done this fictional comic strip. But I realized early on in the work for this book that doing it as a memoir was going to be really boring. I just somehow didn't want to write about my actual life or actually read Marx or all the things I would have to do to intelligently discuss money or capitalism. In the moment that I threw that idea away, this other idea came in. What would really be funny is if I wrote about a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel who was trying to write a book about money and then it just all sort of sprang to life — and in that new vision, there were my old comic strip characters who were going to be my friends. It just was one of those lovely moments when something just comes into your mind fully formed, which hardly ever happens to me.
Winnipeg Free Press
22-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
A wave of new owners brings fresh energy to independent bookselling
NEW YORK (AP) — Amber Salazar is the kind of idealist you just knew would end up running a bookstore — a lifelong reader who felt angered 'to the core' as she learned of book bans around the country. A resident of Colorado Springs, Colorado, Salazar last year opened Banned Wagon Books, a pop-up store she sets up everywhere from wineries to coffee shops, featuring such frequently censored works as Maia Kobabe's 'Gender Queer,' Angie Thomas' 'The Hate U Give' and Toni Morrison's 'Beloved.' 'I decided that no matter what it looked like, I was going to open a bookstore so that I could contribute in some small way and stand up for intellectual freedom in the U.S.,' explains Salazar, 33, who donates 5% of her profits to the American Library Association and other organizations opposing bans. 'Since we were coming out of the pandemic at that time, I started thinking about ways to combine my love of literature and passion for intellectual freedom with my appreciation for the small businesses in my city who weathered some difficult storms through shutdowns and supply chain concerns.' Salazar is among a wave of new — and, often, younger — owners who have helped the independent book community dramatically expand, intensify and diversify. Independent bookselling is not a field for fortune seekers: Most local stores, whether run by retirees, bookworms or those switching careers in middle age, have some sense of higher purpose. But for many who opened in recent years, it's an especially critical mission. Narrative in Somerville, Massachusetts, identifies as 'proudly immigrant-woman owned & operated, with an emphasis on amplifying marginalized voices & experiences.' In Chicago, Call & Response places 'the voices of Black and other authors of color at the center of our work.' Independent stores will likely never recover their power of 50 years ago, before the rise of Barnes & Noble superstores and the online giant But the days of industry predictions of their demise seem well behind. In 2016, there were 1,244 members in the American Booksellers Association trade group, at 1,749 locations. As of this month, the ABA has 2,863 individual members, at 3,281 locations. And more than 200 stores are in the process of opening. 'It's incredible, this kind of energy,' says association CEO Allison Hill, remembering how, during the pandemic, she feared that the ABA could lose up to a quarter of its membership. 'I don't think any of us would have predicted this a few years ago.' Hill and others acknowledge that even during an era of growth, booksellers remain vulnerable to political and economic challenges. Costs of supplies remain high and could grow higher because of President Donald Trump's tariffs. ABA President Cynthia Compton, who runs two stores in the Indianapolis area, says that sales to schools are down because censorship laws have made educators more cautious about what they purchase. The ABA's own website advises: 'Passion and knowledge have to be combined with business acumen if your bookstore is to succeed.' Salazar herself is part of an Instagram chat group, Bookstores Helping Bookstores, with such like-minded sellers as the owners of The Crafty Bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana, 'specializing in Indie books & custom bookish accessories,' and the Florida-based Chapter Bound, an online store with a calling 'to connect great books with great people — at prices everyone can afford.' Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. 'In the age of social media, people are craving genuine connection and community,' Salazar says. 'And books often provide a catalyst to that feeling of community.' Stephen Sparks, who is 47 and since 2017 has owned Point Reyes Books northwest of San Francisco, believes that the pandemic gave sellers of all ages a heightened sense of their role in the community and that the return of Trump to the White House added new urgency. Sales are up 20% this year, he says, if only because 'during tough times, people come to bookstores.' The younger owners bring with them a wide range of prior experience. Salazar had worked in retail management for nine years, switched to property and casualty insurance sales 'in search of advancement opportunity' and, right before she launched her store, was a business process owner, 'a blend of project management, customer and employee experience management.' Courtney Bledsoe, owner of Call & Response, had been a corporate attorney before undertaking a 'full career shift' and risking a substantial drop in income. The 30-year-old held no illusions that owning a store meant 'pouring a cup of coffee and reading all day.' Calling herself 'risk averse,' she researched the book retail business as if preparing for a trial, before committing herself and launching Call & Response in May 2024. 'This endeavor is probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life,' she says, acknowledging it could take a couple of years before she can even pay herself a salary. 'We're just doing this to serve the community, doing something we love to do, providing people with great events, great reading. It's been a real joy.'
