Week 14 Prompt Response - Shelving Street Lit and GLBTQ

Prompt:
Consider yourself part of the collection management committee of your local library, or a library at which you world lFiction from the general collection to its own special place.  Some patrons have requested this, yet many staff are uncomfortable with the idea - saying it promotes segregation and disrupts serendipitous discovery of an author who might be different fro the reader.  Do you separate them?  Why or why not?  You must provide at least 2 reasons for or against your decision.  Feel free to use outside sources - this is a weighty question that is answered differently in a lot of different libraries.  

As far as separating African American Fiction - I would not recommend it.  I read several blogs by African American authors.  The authors and those who responded were universally against being shelved in a separate section.  Coe Booth says, "I'm here to tell you, when it comes to books, segregation is alive and well in America." (Booth, 2012)  She also mentioned that while she had reluctantly come to accept the ter, "street lit", and "urban lit" and the fact that her books would be shelved there, she was very frustrated when her books were shelved only there where their intended YA audience might not discover them.  She felt that her books were YA, not urban lit, but were shelved there because there are young black people on the covers.  Fantasy author, Nora K. Jemisin says, "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" and later pleads,  "booksellers and librarians: Please don't put anything I write in the AAF section."(Jemisin, 2012)  So, I would not recommend an African American fiction section, as that stereotypes both authors and readers, and discourages that serendipitous discovery.

Having said that, however, I would shelve street lit together, as it is a sub-genre, based on specific element of appeal, such as subject matter, language, tone, etc.  "So, what is street lit?  In a nutshell, street lit is a fiction subgenre that spectacularly portrays many issues and situations that people living in an inner city deal with on a daily basis."(Welch, 2010)   According to Megan Honig, "In the past 15 years, the resurgence of gritty, action-packed stories of street life and survival has rocked the literary landscape."(Honig, 2010)  This is popular and should be made available to our patrons..  I work in an inner city library and we have our street lit collection shelved as "Urban Fiction."  There is a definite demand for this genre.  New books usually have several holds before they even hit the shelves.  We also have patrons who read exclusively from this section.  Because we have them shelved together, these patrons know right where to go to get what they're looking for.  Because we have this collection, they are also comfortable asking for new titles.  A problem we've experienced is buying a print title that is the beginning of a series, only to have the remaining books in the series come out in ebook only.  Not every patron who reads urban fiction has (or wants) a device for reading ebooks, and they are not happy when they like a book and we cannot get the remaining titles in the series for them.  This is very frustrating for the selector.

While GLBTQ fiction is also important for the library to collect, I would not recommend shelving it separately.  There are several reasons for this.  "The library can be an amazing resource for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning youth."(Farrelly, 2007)  However, these youth, particularly those who are questioning, may not be comfortable browsing a GLBTQ section. "Second, for every (GLBTQ) reader seeking a complex literary novel, there is another who wants a sexy beach read, and a third who wants a cozy mystery."(Devon, 2007)  Suzanne Brockman writes romance and romantic suspense novels, many of which feature gay and lesbian characters.  If we have a separate GLBTQ section, do we include these and others like them?  If not, readers might not discover books with strong gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning characters because they are not the main focus of the book.  "That is where we want to see the gay book going.  Readers need to see the gay character as part of the community.  That is getting to be the more realistic place."(Camacho, 2011)  I believe it is important for GLBTQ youths to see themselves in mainstream fiction.  So, instead of creating a separate collection, we need to provide discovery tools that are out where they can be seen - reading lists, bookmarks, and displays.  This opens the door for RA opportunities and lets patrons know we welcome these questions and want to help them find what they're looking for.

References

Booth, C. (2012, September 7). Separate, Not Equal; An It's Compllicated! - Book Covers guest post. Retrieved from CBC Diversity: http://cbcdiversity.blogspot.com/2012/09/separate-not-equal.html

Camacho, H. (2011). Where GLBT Literature is Going and Why it Matters. Voice of Youth Advocates, 138-139.

Devon, T. (2007). A Place on the Shelves. Library Journal, 40-43.

Farrelly, M. G. (2007). More on Serving Gay Youth. Public Libraries, 38-39.

Honig, M. (2010). Introduction. In Urban Grit: A Guide to Street Lit. Libraries Unlimited.

Jemisin, N. K. (2012, May 26). Don't put my Book in the African American Section. Retrieved from N. K. Jemisin: http://nkjemisin.com/2010/05/dont-put-my-book-in-the-african-american-section/

Welch, R. (2010). Everything Street Lit. In Integrated Advisory Service (pp. 259-286). Denver: Libraries Unlimited.