Sunday, April 12, 2009

For the May Queen nixed from Amazon's ratings

When I read in the L.A. Times that Amazon has removed sales rankings of books that have been determined to have "adult" (read: queer) content, I checked out Amazon to see if my novel, For the May Queen, has lost its Amazon rating...and sure enough, when you look under "Product Details" you can see that it has.

So have my other two books: Negotiating the Self (a study of lesbian and gay teachers) and Like All We Love (my poetry collection).

The irony is that For the May Queen is a novel with very little queer content. The protangonist narrator is a straight woman. I found that The Hours has not lost its rating...and neither has the nudie pictorial Playboy: Redheads.

The L.A. Times piece points out the hypocrisy of this move that's clearly intended to censor queer content by equating it--and not straight sexuality--as "adult."

*

UPDATE: Sign a petition against Amazon's censorship here.

*

UPDATE #2: When you search Amazon for "homosexuality" the first book that pops up is A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.

4 comments:

Kelly Harrison said...

This is so ridiculous. Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer has a sales ranking and one of the key words for this book is "rich cunt".

Even though I rarely shop there, I'm boycotting Amazon.

Joanna@BooneDocksWilcox said...

why does Amazon want the added labor of keeping up with all that?

Collin Kelley said...

I just signed the petition, Facebooked it and I'm about to blog it! Thanks for the heads up on this!

Holli said...

I signed it too and passed it along to others. This is ridiculous....I won't be shopping Amazon until this ban is lifted and maybe not even then.