Talk:Annie on My Mind

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Excerpts

Since Zotdragon removed a link to a page with excerpts relevant to the very reason the book is challenged, I'll add the excerpts here from http://www.operationinformation.com/books/Annieonmymind.html: --SafeLibraries 17:42, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

She is walking with her brother and thinking about A. Her brother teases her: “L.s in love, L.’s in love… Funny that he said that (17).”

The next few chapters are about the time they spent together – still reflecting. Since we know from the opening of the book that this is about lesbians, the reflection on their meetings in the first half of the book are about “getting to know each other” and flirting with each other.

A. talking about her neighborhood: “You know what goes on in those buildings, the ones no one lives in? Kids shoot up, drunks finish off their bottles and then throw up all over the sidewalk, muggers jump out at you…(73).”

“I thought [A. is] magical, too… ‘Oh, Liza’ A. said, in a way I was beginning to expect and hope for (76).”

“…shoulders touching…we didn’t move away from each other…if we had, that would have been an acknowledgment that we were touching in the first place…she closed her hand on mine…[pointing at stars]…‘L. and A., suspended in between’ (77-78).”

A. talks about her childhood friend to L.: “…little girl named B. and told me about how they used to go for walks on the beach…how they used to sleep over at each other’s houses, usually in the same bed, and how they giggled and talked…sometimes kissed each other – ‘the way little girls sometimes do’…(87).”

L. is now remembering a time on the beach with A.: “A shivered. Without thinking, I put my arm across her shoulders…our arms were around each other and A.’s soft and gentle mouth was kissing mine… ‘It’s all right with me…if it is with you’…a war inside me…[one side] said ‘No, this is wrong; you know it’s wrong and bad and sinful,’ and there was another side that said, ‘Nothing has ever felt so right and natural and true and good’...just wanted to stop thinking altogether and fling my arms around A. and hold her forever…I had at least been confused (93).”

“A. pulled her collar up around her throat…I wanted to touch her skin where the collar met it…I’d always wanted to touch her there… ‘It’s my fault,’ A. said… ‘…sometimes, even before I met you…I [thought I] might be gay.’ ‘…I—like you so much…you make me feel---real…more alive…’ ‘Better than all those white birds?’ I said… ‘because you’re better than anything or anyone for me, too, A. …A., I think I love you’ (94).”

At present, the girls are no longer together. L. starts to write A. a letter: “…remembering Thanksgiving vacation and the beach…A., it makes me ache for you…(95).”

They hug: “…feeling of her heartbeat against my breasts (103).”

A. wrote L. a letter (still reflecting): “…I knew at that point that I loved you…I’ve wondered for a long time if I was gay…tried to prove I wasn’t , last summer with a boy…you said on the beach that you think you love me…(104).”

“…I was jealous of the boy A.’d mentioned…Could I even begin an experiment…I’d never consciously thought about being gay…in the last two or three years, I’d wondered why I’d rather go to the movies with S. or some other girl…when I imagined living with someone someday…that person was always a female (105).”

“…I held out my hand…she took my hand, and then she touched my face. ‘I still don’t want to rush you,’ she said... ‘Right now I just want to feel you close to me,’ I said...in a few minutes we were lying down on A.’s bed, holding each other and sometimes kissing…just being happy (106).”

“…A. filled my mind. Songs I heard on the radio suddenly seemed to fit A. and me; poems I read seemed written especially for us – we began sending each other poems… ‘L., I’d like to make a date with you for dinner…’ …time with A. was real time stopped…C. kept kidding me that I was in love…Soon it wasn’t hard any more to say it—to myself…as well as over and over again to A.—and to accept her saying it to me. We touched each other more easily…kissed or held hands or hugged each other…didn’t really talk much about being gay…I looked around…kissed the end of her nose… ‘Open your present’ [A. told L.]…(107-111).” They exchanged Christmas presents – rings (111).

“…A. flung her arms around my neck and kissed me… ‘If you don’t put that ring on this minute… ‘Buon Natale,” she whispered ‘amore mio.’ ‘Merry Christmas, my love,’ I answered (112).”

“…something Plato wrote – about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person…people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole…all people were really pairs of people…some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman…some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male…I loved that story when I first heard it…the more A. and I learned about each other, the more I felt she was the other half of me. …We were in A.’s room…my head was in A.’s lap and her hand was on my hair, moving softly to my throat, then to my breast…I put my arms around her from behind and held her body so close to mine…I wasn’t sure whose pulse I felt…I leaned over and kissed A….(115-117).”

“…L., I don’t want to be afraid of this, of – of the physical part of loving you…’ ‘No – not dirty, A. …I was praying that I could ignore it if you wanted me to – not the love, but the physical part… ‘It scares me, too, A.’ … ‘but not because I think it’s wrong…mostly because it’s so strong, the love and the friendship…’ ‘Right now I don’t think I could stop anything from happening that started.’ …a few minutes later my father’s key turned in the lock and we both jumped…there was really no place where we could be alone (121-122).”

L. is lying in bed and cannot sleep: “…thinking about her [A.]…something suddenly exploded inside me, as if she were really right there…a person could feel that kind of sexual explosion from just thinking…You’re in love with another girl, L., and you know that means you’re probably gay…(143).”

“[L.] went downstairs…looked up HOMOSEXUALITY [in the encyclopedia]…didn’t tell me much about any of the things I felt… ‘love’ wasn’t used even once [in the definition]…made me mad…whoever wrote the article didn’t know that gay people actually love each other…writers ought to talk to me…A. put her arms around me and kissed me…I read the book [A. gave her on lesbians]…and we bought…a couple of gay magazines and newspapers. I felt as if I were meeting parts of myself in the gay people I read about...I began to feel calmer…sure of myself. L. agreed to watch her professor’s house while they were away: …we [she and A.] did have a place to go after all (143- 144).”

L. shows A. around the house she agreed to take care of: “I went over and put my arms around her and kissed her, and it became a different kind of kiss from any between us before…I remember so much about that first time with A. that I am numb with it…breathless…feel her softness under my hands…I can close my eyes…feel every motion of A.’s body and my own…the wonder of the closeness…we are two people…we can almost be like one…the same delight in each other’s uniqueness (145-146).”

“She kissed me…I caught her mid-bow and kissed her again…(147-148).”

“It was new every time we touched each other, looked at each other, held each other close…as if we had found a whole new country in each other…exploring it together…the best thing…no one could disturb us (150).”

The female professor, Ms. S., whose house L. is taking care of, lives with another professor, Ms. W. A. snoops through a bedroom and calls L. to come and look: “ ‘Oh, my God…they’re gay! …they’re like us…’ I opened the glass doors and read off some of the titles [of books]: Female Homosexuality…Sappho Was a Right-On Woman…Patience and Sarah…The Well of Loneliness…Ms. S. and Ms. W. never gave any hint of being gay…Ms. S. got mad when a kid made a crummy anti-gay remark… ‘I don’t want to hide…the best part of my life, of myself.’ I pulled her to me… ‘A., A..’ …smoothing her hair…to sooth her… ‘…take it easy, love; I don’t want to hide either…’ ‘We can’t close ourselves in behind doors the way these books are closed in. …we should be together all the time…I want to run away with you, to elope, dammit…’ We pulled ourselves out of that room…went into the other bedroom…it [the bedroom] was just for show (152-155).”

“…it would have been wonderful, too, to have a whole night with A. in a real bedroom…to wake up with her…(157).”

They do go into the professors’ bedroom: “A. put her hand behind my head and kissed me…wasn’t sure which was my pulse, my heartbeat, and which were hers…I heard a knock…downstairs…(159-160).”

L. is writing a letter to A.: “…love is good…honest…unselfish…people’s biological sex doesn’t matter when it comes to love…there have always been gay people…even some gay animals…many bisexual ones…other societies have accepted and do accept gays…our society is backward (161).”

Now she is talking about getting caught in the professors’ house: “…I kissed A…and reached for my clothes…on the steps was Ms. B., and behind her staring…at my not-very-well-buttoned shirt, was S. …Ms. B. reached the stares…S. pointed to the head of the stairs...looked up and A., white-faced, bare-legged and barefoot in just her lumber jacket…A. came downstairs and stood next to me, slipping her hand into mine…[S. is talking]: ‘you and she, you were – weren’t you?’ [L. talks back]: ‘A lesbian?...So what?’ Ms. S. and Ms. W. show up…: …I was starting to say I hadn’t known Ms. S. and Ms. W. were gay…(163-169).”

Ms. S. understanding “just how hard it is to be seventeen and in love, especially when you’re gay…Ms. W. and I might very well have done the same thing when we were seventeen (176).”

“ …You’re my lover, for God’s sake…A. – I love you…I do love you.’ ‘That ‘s the second time…you called me your lover…the third time in two days. I like it (179).’” “Most people nowadays are fairly enlightened about homosexuality…(210).”

“S., I’d have been gay anyway…I was gay before I knew anything about them…I was probably always gay…It’s not a problem…It’s not negative…that it’s love you’re talking about…how I feel about another human being and how she feels about me...not about some kind of disease (222).”

L. is recalling Ms. W.’s words to her: “that it wasn’t my fault—that it wasn’t my homosexuality that had gotten [Ms. S.] discharged, it was what people wrongly made of it. ‘Don’t – don’t punish yourselves for people’s ignorant reactions to what we all are (231-232).”

The book ends with the girls both talking about being free and saying ‘I love you’ to each other (233).

It's tempting to do some censorship back and forth on this issue, but it's pointless. This is simply a matter of POV. I've searched long and hard and have never been able to find anything in any library I've ever visited that would not make that place "safe" for anyone. The above quotes, while accurate, have nothing in the way of context. I'll just shoot out a couple of hackneyed statements just to cover all the bases.

"Libraries should be places to find books that are interesting, challenging, and presenting ideas and realities children and adults might already be finding in their lives."

"The only good library is an uncensored library."

"If you don't want your kids to read such material, that's fine. Don't take it away from everyone else."

"The most insidious censor is the one who pushes their agenda in the name of protecting the supposed innocent."

There's really no point to debate this issue; either you believe libraries should have material that will corrupt the morals of the young, or you don't.

Zotdragon 18:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Exsqueeze me? Zotdragon, I made no POV statments at all. Merely linked to the excerpts because the main wiki page raised the issue. It was YOU who introduced POV by removing the link claiming it was "anti-library." Who cares? Irrelevant? Where else would I get the excerpts? The point was to link to proof of the matter asserted, already in existence before I even added the link. It's YOUR POV that did what you did in removing the link and characterizing it as you did. YOUR POV that motivated you to come here to claim what you did. I hope you see that, ZotDragon, and don't keep battling people over issues like this. --SafeLibraries 18:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

As as I already stated, a pointless discussion, but lets go. Inserting a link to a website that clearly wants the removal off all materials in libraries that the website owner's find offensive is a POV. The link and above text isn't informational, it's pushing an agenda that is the censorship of public libraries--which runs counter to Wikipedia because Wikipedia isn't censored. I'm sure there are those who would argue that inserting such a link isn't censorship or advocation of a POV; I argue it is, subtle, yes, but cut from the same cloth. Adding the link wasn't done to show why the novel has been targeted by censors, it was done to promote the Operation Information website. If you truly wanted to show the parts of the text that were, in that website's opinion, were offensive, you simply could have cited the text directly, no need to link to another site at all. Zotdragon 19:03, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Wrong. I sense your interest in being a part of the wiki community and following its rules is minimal, so my interest in responding to you further is minimal. --SafeLibraries 20:32, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Come to think of it, given Zotdragon's attitude and non-wiki behaviour, perhaps I should add back the link Zotdragon removed. What do others think? --SafeLibraries 01:36, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Zotdragon, someone censored you out!!! I added you back in all fairness. --SafeLibraries 01:23, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I thank you for posting this...preview, I appreciate it, makes me want to get it... --Blackguards_Light (talk) 14:55, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

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