When I first fell in love with reading, I fell in love with the characters and the stories. An added bonus, I soon realized, was the shared camaraderie between readers. Much like the way Marvel fans buzz after a movie release or Game of Thrones fans gossip about the final season, readers have their own secret language and groups for the seemingly infinite fictional and non-fictional worlds and their characters.
As I got older (and reading became more popular across social media platforms), the once incredibly accepting reading community shifted to something much darker. Perhaps the reading community was always this way, but before I was too young to really pay any attention to it. After being shut out of the “normal” crowd for so long (on account of reading being considered boring and nerdy for a really long time), readers began turning on each other, dictating what other readers can and can’t read. Suddenly, I was returning to the part of my life where I was embarrassed to tell others about my favorite books. At a certain age, reading Young Adult (YA) novels becomes shameful and classics transform into the only valid source of literature, as claimed by “elite” and “more experienced” readers. Even among the community of those who prefer YA, readers scrutinize one another, dictating which books are worth reading and humiliating those who prefer “a lesser than” series or novel.
To the readers that are gatekeeping our community: What are you aiming to get out of this other than the further division of a community that thrives off of acceptance and inclusion? In a group where its members have been commonly chastised for their love of literature, gatekeeping should not and will not be tolerated.
And yes, I still read Harry Potter (JK Rowling) at eighteen.