On Banning Books
Books are still being banned in “the land of the free” in the year 2022. This is one of the top news stories in the literary world of late because on January 10th, a school board in Tennessee voted to remove “Maus” from their eighth-grade curriculum. “Maus” is a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust. Ironically, banning books is often associated with fascism. According to various news sites, the ban had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Instead, it was banned because of the profanity, nudity, and depictions of violence and suicide within the book. Siiiiiiiiiiiiigh
As many journalists and others have pointed out, you can’t teach a beautified version of the Holocaust. There is no PG rating for history. Kids will eventually learn about these things. To quote Margaret Renkl’s opinion piece in the New York Times, “a gifted teacher can help [kids] recognize the atrocities that human beings are capable of without succumbing to existential despair themselves.” It’s incredible that parents and school boards can get so caught up in the idea of “cancelling” books, they forget that most 8th graders these days have access to the internet. Every form of human depravity is available at their fingertips.
A good book can challenge your beliefs and worldview, make you think about life’s big questions, ponder political structures and systems of oppression, and expand your mind. If a student reads a concerning or challenging book, that’s a good thing. It means they’re growing. They should feel welcome talking about those thoughts and feelings in the classroom and with their peers to contextualize it. Our freedom of speech should include our freedom of thought, and that means anyone, anywhere, should be able to read whatever they damn well please, kid or no.
I remember reading Roots by Alex Haley in the sixth grade (I was a very advanced reader). In the story, the narrator describes having a wet dream. As an (admittedly naïve) eleven-year-old girl, I did not understand what was being described, and the internet wasn’t prevalent enough at that point to be an option. I remember taking it to my mom and asking her what it meant. Luckily, my mom is an avid reader, too. She may have raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t take the book away or tell me to read something else. Doing so would have only made me feel shameful and rebellious, and would not have prepared me for the world of puberty and middle school humor I was on the cusp of entering.
Some people like to jump on banning books and point out its positive impacts: banned books often have increased sales, it makes kids want to read it, and so on. Let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees. Books are ideas. Let’s not defend the thought police, yeah? Didn’t George Orwell warn us about this? Restricting books anywhere is an affront to civil society everywhere.
It’s easy to get lost in the doom and gloom of such stories. But there’s always balance. The other big story in the literary world this year has been about a 2nd-grader from Idaho named Dillon who wrote a book and then snuck it onto his local library’s shelf because he wanted other people to read it. It’s 81 illustrated pages about a boy who gets transported back in time, and it’s gone viral. At end of January, it was the most sought-after book in the library. The waiting list had 56 people on it. Dillon has inspired kids across the country to write their own books, and many libraries are now hosting children’s writing workshops because of it. That’s the heart-warming content I need more of this winter. More kids writing means more kids reading, and hopefully those kids will grow into conscientious citizens who will remember that books are meant to be read, not burned.
