You don’t know what she said verbatim. You know two lines that the author of the story chose to crop out of what she said for use in a puff piece that was going to run in a small town newspaper. For that, this woman has tons of people insulting her, cursing at her, and making threats of violence against her and…

We have really twisted notions of what censorship is when denial of an accolade is considered an instance thereof. 

From the original article:

I see where you’re coming from. There is a tradition of dismissing women’s writing as frivolous. But both things can be true: There can be a history of gendered criticism of women’s writing while a certain works or types of writing (like YA novels geared toward middle school girls) may not be well suited for contexts…

Yeah I just looked through them and they’re almost uniformly a mess. Like, I’m sure it didn’t feel good for Dessen to see that, but the hundreds of “that’s such a horrible and cruel thing to say” like get a grip, y’all. That comment was... pretty mild. 

I mean I’d generally not expect to be assigned a ‘YA’ novel at a university level, unless somehow it was relevant to the program. It’s just logical?

“It’s hard to know what’s sadder: that Brooke Nelson has internalized misogyny to the extent that she can see nothing of worth in books beloved by “teen girls” but is presumably impressed with the merits of a book centered around video game culture that is beloved by teenage boy”

(SO MUCH EYEROLLING.)

Ready Player…

There’s a lot of White Feminism TM going on in there about “I experience 1 form of oppression, therefore EVERYTHING I DO IS OPPRESSED” as well as some serious Choice Feminism, i.e. “I demand that because I am a woman and I chose to read this that I be considered an empowered feminist because I made a choice”.

I’m with you—it’s really surprising that people don’t seem to be okay with her books being acknowledged as for younger readers and a bit fluffy. It’s totally fine for books to be those two things! I definitely read things in those two categories because they’re fun! But just because something is fun to read doesn’t…

“A bad and stupid thing happened once, therefore bad and stupid things should keep happening” is a weird take.

This college should be absolutely horrifically and horribly ashamed of itself for using Ready Player One as it’s Common Read book. Demanding they repeat that mistake with a similar book strikes me as a…

So a female college student attempted to raise the level of discourse on her campus by removing books written for young teens from the recommended reading list. Seems like a good thing. It is infantilizing for the college students to have children’s books recommended for them. Sure it might be enjoyable to read these…

Comments like this one backing up Dessen’s position are missing the point so completely, it’s mind boggling:

My guess is that a Sarah Dessen book (or something similar) had been chosen before, prompting this student to join the committee to ensure that something like this didn’t happen again. Same for your AP Lit teacher—I bet someone (or possibly multiple people) wanted to do their paper on Harry Potter or some other…

Holy fuck, that was one of the most embarrassing things I’ve read recently.

it seems like an odd stance to take -or at least, incredible that she cared enough to actively try to block it - but I sort of get it, especially because I HATED the common book they picked for us and felt quite passionately about it after.

Are Sarah Dessen’s books written for teen readers? If so, they may well not be at the level one would want for the edification of college readers. It seemed to me that was Ms. Nelson’s point. Some/many of the responses to Ms. Nelson seemed to be saying that she was saying that stories about girls aren’t worthwhile. I…

Well I for one am shocked that Jennifer Weiner would overreact and then play the victim rather than actually defending the substance of something. 

Yeah, idk, I’m kind of annoyed at everyone in this situation. Like, on the one hand, if you’re a public figure, you’ve got to deal with some criticism. On the other hand, I’m also puzzled as to why that college student was so afraid that one of Sarah Dessen’s books would get picked? Like, I feel like most people would…

She is extremely YA.

I’m with the student. YA books are fine, and I don’t care if other adults like them, but I applaud college students seeking more challenging material. Caveat: I have never read (or heard of) Dessen before this, so I don’t know if she’s actually YA.