HARLEQUIN's DOUBLE STANDARDS

I'm about to wear out capslocks. I warn you now.

So apparently, Ehalequin.com holding a backlist for Kimani Tru books means that Harlequin Books holds Kimani as an IMPRINT. I checked Wikipedia. It seems true.

Which means Harlequin Books.... Thinks Little Black Girls/Teenagers Should/Can READ BOOKS ABOUT ORAL SEX WITH TEACHERS, RAPE, MOLESTATION, PHYSICAL ABUSE & DRUG USE - ALL IN GRAPHIC DETAIL.

KIMANI TRU billed itself as: The ultimate destination for entertaining fiction for African-American teens. Friendship. Love. Family. School. Life. Drama. We have it all covered from the city to the suburbs and everywhere in between. Reflecting your dreams. Your issues. In your voice.

The Edification of Sonya Crane, the book from the Kimani Tru imprint I read - disgusted me. Absolutely, disgusted me. It's the 'Penis Veins' book in my head. The book that was not about a young white girl, finding herself thought mixed and getting a unique perspective on herself, race relations and highschool life. That was the book I wanted. That was not the book I got.

Instead I got a book about a girl forced to give head to her mother's drug supplying boyfriend. A girl who only stopped the bullying of another highschool student when she caught said student giving head to a teacher under the bleachers - with mentions of glistening shaft, and penis veins. A book that had a teenage girl walking in on her mother passed out on the living room sofa and getting molested by her boyfriend, who doesn't stop when the teenager walks in and minutes later, goes upstairs to interfere with said teenager. A book about a white girl drowning herself in black identity and getting into trouble and 'becoming a problem' as she 'embraces blackness'.

A book that I could not finish and had to flip through to see if it was really continuing to go where it seemed to be headed. It was. It did.

A book that disgusted me.

To find out that Harlequin is responsible for that book. That Harlequin is pushing this ghetto lit as YOUNG ADULT AFRICIAN AMERICAN FICTION - brings me to tears AND makes me nauseated.

It's not that I never suspected Harlequin of having/harbouring racist tendencies. But this...

White teenagers? Every time you turn around someone's complaining about a book because they're not meant to be exposed to gay people, sex, drugs, anything turbulent.

But apparently black teenagers - well, girls using their bodies giving sex for love and acceptance and good grades, pimps and drugs, prisons and ex-cons, mothers being casually raped, teenage girls being casually raped, that's all good when it's lit for black youth.

THIS IS POISON.

Straight. Up. Poison.

{eta: I'm going to give away or throw away every last LUNA book I own. Including the Mercedes Lackey stuff)