2023 Reprise

Image by Robert Anasch @diesektion

A statement that will surprise no one who knows me:
I am not in favor of banning books.

As a bibliophile whose (mostly solitary) childhood was enriched beyond measure by books, and as a writer who spends every spare minute (and even some minutes I really can’t spare) immersed in the wonderful world of words, I cannot conceive of a life without books.

Or a life in which books are withheld because, in the estimation of some, those books espouse “the wrong” philosophy.

A statement that may be surprising:
I don’t think the issue is as simple or straightforward as some people claim.

In fact, I can think of a few books I would want immediately and forever removed from all library shelves, if that was in my power.

This is a reprise of a post I’ve shared before, originally titled: “To ban, or not to ban? That is the question.” The original question posed by Hamlet (“To be, or not to be?”) is binary: live, or die? There’s no possibility of middle ground, no hope for a “Yes, and . . .” solution.

I chose the paraphrased Hamlet quote
because many are discussing book-banning
as if it is an either/or question:
ban books, or
allow all books in all places at all times.

And to be clear, if the question really is binary—
ban books or don’t—
I choose the latter.

Every single time.

The problem is that, like so many things, I think the question is nonbinary.

(Yep, that was a not-so-subtle call to embrace the concept of gender non-binary because that is us.)

I’ve seen many memes opposing book-banning, and though I agree with some of them, they are often snarky and sarcastic, and I’ve never yet seen the problem that could be solved by sarcasm. More to the point, they present a simple either/or philosophy. That is understandable, unfortunately—social media lends itself to simple solutions, divisive rhetoric, and most of all, binary language: you’re-either-for-us-or-against-us . . .

 . . . which makes it challenging to write about complex concepts on social media.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what I hope to do here.

To be clear, I don’t have the answer. All I can do is share my experiences, and hope that this post supports the ongoing conversation about how we navigate these issues.

So here goes.

I was reading voraciously by the time I went to kindergarten, and I occasionally read something that was decidedly not age-appropriate. (The scene in the Movie Captain Fantastic where the little girl reads The Joy of Sex was practically autobiographical for me, including her reaction.)

I’m not sure I would change one iota—or one page—of that history, even if I could.

One example among many: an all time favorite book is T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. This version of the King Arthur story is “an extended political allegory” against fascism and for pacifism.[i] There is sex, murder, and much more. In one scene there is a detailed description of what “hamstrung” meant in the fourteenth century. (If you don’t know, all I will say here is that it’s horrifying.) I first read the book when I was eight years old. And I still avoid using the word “hamstrung.” In other words, I have experience reading something as a child that left a scar on my psyche.

Author Viet Thanh Nguyen shares in a New York Times guest essay: “When I was 12 or 13 years old, I was not prepared for the racism, the brutality or the sexual assault in Larry Heinemann’s 1974 novel, ‘Close Quarters.’ . . . Books can indeed be dangerous. . . . I was driven to become a writer because of the complex power of stories. They are not inert tools of pedagogy. They are mind-changing, world-changing.”[ii]  

Nguyen goes on to say: “But those who seek to ban books are wrong no matter how dangerous books can be. Books are inseparable from ideas, and this is really what is at stake: the struggle over what a child, a reader and a society are allowed to think, to know and to question.” [id.]

To Nguyen’s thoughts, I would add this: counterbalanced against the scars books can inflict are the windows books can open in the heart. Sometimes the same books that left the scars. Another example from my own life: from The Once and Future King I learned that most bullying and violence stems from ignorance and, perversely, a desire to be seen and loved. And I learned that choices make a hero, not fate (or a cape, or a spider mask, for that matter).

What I’m getting at is this: from my own experience and from reading about others’ experiences, I know that literature can be uplifting, and I know it can also be devastating.

But “devastating” is not, by itself, a justification for banning a book. The reality is that sometimes devastated is the appropriate response. To those who advocate for banning books that describe trauma, I ask: How can we as a society ever hope to address a problem that we don’t acknowledge exists, that we’ve sanitized from our bookshelves and libraries lest someone be upset by reading about the situation? We’re supposed to be upset about these things, so we can re-commit to stopping them.

Ultimately, I think everyone should read about this crazy, sometimes-horrible, sometimes-wonderful, confusing world we live in, and the panoply of experiences that make up humanity.

However...

At the beginning of this post, I said I don’t believe the issue of book-banning is as simple and straightforward as some have asserted.

So here are my Howevers, my ongoing internal ponderings on the topic of book-banning.

First things first, in spite of book-banning efforts, we are blessed with greater inclusivity than ever before, in both representation and content (two separate issues). In 2023, we have more (not less) literature that delves into the experience of being Black, Latinx, Indigenous, immigrant, gay, trans, queer, other-abled, or any other “otherness” that has been the basis of book-banning. And most of our libraries and bookstores carry more (not fewer) authors of every color, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, and philosophy. Much has been written about the importance - especially but not only for children - of being able to see oneself reflected in literature, and I applaud those efforts and have nothing useful to add. [iv]

In short, our world is a rainbow of different colors, shapes, sizes, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, and philosophies, and literature should reflect that, in both content and authorship. [iii]

So what’s my However?

There are books that have no redeeming value, not educational, not even as entertainment. Contrast books that explore the experience of and impact of violence and oppression, that may open the reader’s eyes to a new perspective, with books that celebrate violence and oppression. If I were queen of the universe, I’d be tempted to ban the latter. Before you object, ask yourself what you would do with racist manifestos, if you had the power to remove them? And what about books advocating misogyny and violence against women? Books trumpeting abuse and neglect as parental “discipline”? Even if you left them alone in libraries open to the general public, wouldn’t you be tempted, at the very least, to make sure they don’t end up in school libraries, where they might poison young minds with hate?

But therein lies the rub (to quote Shakespeare again—and if you want to talk about content which might be deemed inappropriate for youth, but which is presented to pretty much every student as the pinnacle of literature, look no further than the Bard himself).

If book-banning is ever appropriate,
if we as a society decide some books should be banned,
the question will always be:
Who gets to decide what stays and what goes?

Do I and like-minded people get to decide, based on our desire to avoid indoctrinization and radicalization by extremists? How is that any better than the desire of to avoid (what others view as) indoctrinization by progressives? Aren’t both simply two sides of the same coin, an effort to limit what people think?

Another However: As a former teacher, mother, and now grandmother, I understand the desire to shield kids from trauma. (Though I have to say “traditional” stories do a terrible job of that. Consider that the queen in Snow White, in a fit of jealousy, instructs her henchman to cut out Snow White’s heart . . . Just sayin’). To return to the examples at the beginning of this post: Wouldn’t I have wanted to shield my younger self from ever knowing what “hamstrung” meant? Does Viet Thanh Nguyen wish he could have protected his twelve-year-old self from exposure to the “racism, brutality, and sexual assault” he references, maybe even just for a few years?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who longs for children to be able to hold onto innocence for as long as possible. But that, too, begs the question: what is “as long as possible”?

If the idea is that certain books should be off limits until kids are developmentally ready to handle the content, there would have to be a line in the sand, a before and after. Certainly parents may have a sense of what their children are ready for (though we parents can make mistakes!), but I can’t imagine how an objective boundary could be established. Do we assume middle school students can’t handle certain literature, but the day they turn fourteen and go to high school that magically changes? (Or, as much of the book-banning proposals seem to posit, do we assume they can’t handle the truth right up until they turn eighteen? Or ever?)

In pondering these questions, I am reminded that we live in a country where Black parents have to have “the talk” with their children at a very young age. As Kenya Young, Executive Producer of NPR’s Morning Edition, told Sam Sanders, host of It’s Been A Minute: “I remember the kids asking to go to the park and the laundry list of what I had to tell them: ‘Don’t wear your hood. Don’t put your hands in your pocket. If you get stopped, don’t run. Put your hands up. Don’t make a lot of moves. Tell them your mother works for NPR.’” [v]

How can we seriously contemplate banning books on the basis that their truths are too harsh for kids when Black children have to hear about the dangers of racism before they even set foot in school for the first time?

Ultimately, until we can protect children – all children – from actual trauma, we should not be so focused on protecting them from reading about trauma.

To come full circle, as I said early in this post, I don’t have the answers. I suspect there may be others who, like me, find themselves grappling with the question of whether there are some books that should be available only to children after they reach adolescence, which (in my opinion) is not the same as suggesting the books should be banned altogether.

If it comes down to it,
if to-ban-or-not-to-ban are the only options open to us,
I believe the harm that comes from book-banning
far outweighs any potential harm that comes from
throwing wide the doors to everything ever written.

And yet, I wonder: are those really the only options? Or is it still possible, in this polarized, us vs. them world, to have a meaningful conversation focused on what is available to children? Can we talk about whether and how to develop guidelines for introducing potentially traumatic information in age-appropriate ways, while making sure all children have access to the beautiful rainbow of human experience?

I’ll end with this: book-banning often has the opposite of its intended effect, as many respond to book-banning by working to ensure banned books are widely available in the communities where the books have been banned, and banned titles are instantly popularized by the very act of banning. [vi] How fortunate we are to live in a free society, where we who disagree with book-banning can respond with our own impassioned efforts to preserve the “Freedom to Read.” [vii] I hope we will continually re-commit to protecting those freedoms, and I hope that will include dialogue - not lines in the sand, not either/or, not “to ban or not to ban” - but actual conversations about what freedom means, and what it requires of us.

Citations

[i] The quote is Constance Grady’s description in a May 18, 2017 Vox article “Why The Once and Future King is still the best King Arthur story out there.” Read the article here.

[ii] “My Young Mind Was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen, New York Times 1/29/2022. Available here.

[iii] Two articles among many listing banned titles: “16 books removed from Polk County school libraries after objection from conservative group,” by Staci DaSilva, January 28, 2022, News Channel 8, available here; “Book Banning Fever Heats Up In Red States,” by Jon Skolnik, January 26, 2022, Salon, available here. Many of the lists read like a Who’s Who of seminal literature about the experience of being “other,” and/or titles by authors who are POC, LGBTQia+ - including authors like Sherman Alexie, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Angie Thomas, and other authors whose works exemplify the best that literature has to offer.

[iv] A shout out for the series A Kids Book About . . . a marvelous option for younger kids.

[v] “A Black Mother Reflects on Giving Her Three Sons The Talk, Again and Again,” NPR June 28, 2020, available here

[vi] One instance among many: “Why a school board’s ban on ‘Maus’ may put the book in the hands of more readers,” by Rachel Treisman, 1/31/2022 NPR.

[vii] For more on the Freedom to Read, check out the American Library Association Bill of Rights here.

[viii] Important note: although I am a trustee of a library board, the thoughts in this post are entirely my own - I am not authorized to speak for, and am not speaking for, any library or library board.

Additional thoughts:

I think this 2022 article raised some interesting points: “Washington school district votes to remove 'To Kill a Mockingbird' from required reading,” by Jackie Kent, KOMO News, 1/29/2022, available here.

In the article, Kamiak High School Junior Esaw Adhana said that “he remembers uncomfortable moments in school when reading Harper Lee’s 1961 Pulitzer Prize novel two years ago. ‘It's not just language [referring to the use of racial epithets in the book], but it’s also, like, the sort of white savior complex. . . . I think the lessons and ideas of racial injustice are super important, TKAM, at least how we teach it, is not the best sample. The way we teach it now is just really uncomfortable and almost invasive.’

‘How do we bring curriculum into those classes in ways that reflect the values of our diversity?’ WEA Director of the Center for Racial Social and Economic Justice Michael Pena said.

. . . University of Washington teaching professor and associate director of writing programs Michelle Liu [responded]: ‘I think it is still possible to teach this book to forge a conversation about, ‘How do we talk about racial and class and gender differences?’ But, I think it would need to be taught very different than how it has traditionally been taught as an example of ‘Atticus Finch is the greatest man on the face of this planet.’”

 For me, that’s the key: if we are going to refrain from banning books, especially books with critical acclaim for tackling mature subjects, we need to make sure we are simultaneously inviting conversation. Far better, in my mind, to have a difficult book that sparks deep consideration, than avoid potential upset feelings by banning a book altogether.

Image by Lino Ogenio @ogeniofilms