Teen Literature
It seems that time has zoomed me by and I am going to have a teenager in the house soon. While it has been a breeze finding books for Ihsan when he was younger, it had been getting more challenging to do so this past few years as he grows older to find books that reflected values that we held on to as a family.
We had had to put a stop to comics that depicted female characters unfavourably, books that had unacceptable language, books that idolised magic and books that promoted negative values, among others. I soon felt like the censorship board and I have to admit that I have been slacking had it not been for the occasional check by my husband.
Ihsan has also taken to reading series for girls as he said he could not find books for boys much and those that were around has already been read. "Write your own stories then!" came my big idea. Ihsan looked at me with a "there she goes again look" and moaned about how he'd much rather read than write.
Compared to when I was growing up, I feel that teenagers now face even greater challenges to traditional, Islamic, values; of the many series on TV now how many can you name that had these values?
Popular English fiction written by 'Muslim' writers are not any better. Most of them are usually the later generations of those who immigrated to Western countries or were educated there. These might have greatly influenced their writings which can range from trying to find their place in the continuum of Muslim and Western ideals to outright rebellion against the tenets of the religion, and I'd say even a sense of pride in doing so. I'm not much of a reader but so far I have only read one novel by a Muslim writer that had not crossed the line of Muslim living.
What's a mum to do? I figured that instead of trying to scour the literary world for new fiction that my son can enjoy without denting his value system, I can instead go back to the classics where good old values still mattered. I realise that this would have been easier has it been for my daughter; I would have loved to introduce her to the books I read growing up. Ihsan would have not enjoyed reading about girls dressing up and going to balls after all.
He has recently expressed interest in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and that gave me an idea to look at other 20th century writers like Orwell and O Henry.
I do realise however that he would want to look at more contemporary works and I would need to scour those shelves after all.
We had had to put a stop to comics that depicted female characters unfavourably, books that had unacceptable language, books that idolised magic and books that promoted negative values, among others. I soon felt like the censorship board and I have to admit that I have been slacking had it not been for the occasional check by my husband.
Ihsan has also taken to reading series for girls as he said he could not find books for boys much and those that were around has already been read. "Write your own stories then!" came my big idea. Ihsan looked at me with a "there she goes again look" and moaned about how he'd much rather read than write.
Compared to when I was growing up, I feel that teenagers now face even greater challenges to traditional, Islamic, values; of the many series on TV now how many can you name that had these values?
Popular English fiction written by 'Muslim' writers are not any better. Most of them are usually the later generations of those who immigrated to Western countries or were educated there. These might have greatly influenced their writings which can range from trying to find their place in the continuum of Muslim and Western ideals to outright rebellion against the tenets of the religion, and I'd say even a sense of pride in doing so. I'm not much of a reader but so far I have only read one novel by a Muslim writer that had not crossed the line of Muslim living.
What's a mum to do? I figured that instead of trying to scour the literary world for new fiction that my son can enjoy without denting his value system, I can instead go back to the classics where good old values still mattered. I realise that this would have been easier has it been for my daughter; I would have loved to introduce her to the books I read growing up. Ihsan would have not enjoyed reading about girls dressing up and going to balls after all.
He has recently expressed interest in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and that gave me an idea to look at other 20th century writers like Orwell and O Henry.
I do realise however that he would want to look at more contemporary works and I would need to scour those shelves after all.
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