While the Free For All is a fairly new outlet that expresses love of literature of all kinds, including diverse literature, banned books and literature that doesn’t necessarily share a viewpoint with us, Banned Books Week has been pushing diversity in literature and fighting challenges to books for the past 34 years. Initially started by the ALA, it was celebrated almost exclusively by libraries and bookstores displaying books on their shelves that have been banned. Chris Fineran, director of the American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE) stated in an article in blog favorite LitHub: “Those displays were enormously effective communication tools… because people would wander over and find out that the books they love had been challenged. Suddenly they understood that censorship isn’t just about fringe literature.” This is a tradition that the library is upholding. The South Branch has had a banned books display up all month long and, as Fineran says, it’s very important for people to recognize that banning books isn’t something that just happens to what other people read. Among the books on display are seemingly innocuous titles like The Lorax or Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Books have been banned for over a hundred, here in the US and abroad. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is often cited as the first book in the US to be banned. It was banned by the Confederacy during the civil war because of the overtly pro-abolitionist stance (obviously) but it was also banned because people started talking and debating about slavery. Let’s take a moment to push the pause button here: a book started a dialog between opposing viewpoints. Isn’t that what good books are supposed to do? Yes, yes it is. And yet, a group of people got together not just because they didn’t like what other people were saying, but also because they didn’t like people talking about the subject at all. That right there is quintessential violation of free speech and also prevents the moving beyond circumscribed viewpoints. How are people going to be able to move beyond or come to some semblance of an agreement about an issue if they can’t even talk about it?
The LitHub article also mentions that, while in the US at least book banning rarely happens in the federal court level, local banning is still surprisingly common. The ABFE is currently protesting the Chesterfield County Public Schools in Virginia which it trying to ban certain titles on the elected reading list. You read that right, they’re challenging books that kids aren’t even required to read, which, essentially is not only a challenge to free speech, it’s a challenge to free thought as well. When we begin trying to police what people want to read in their free time, we’re limiting access not only to, as the article notes: “books that might broaden [kids’] understanding of the world,” but it also limits access to what they might enjoy. It’s an affront on pleasure reading, the discovery of characters with which a reader can identify and what people can do to do in their free time. The issue clearly extends to more than just what people read and is precisely why we spend so much time on this blog celebrating Banned Books Week and speaking out against censorship in its many varieties.
It’s not just librarians who speak out against censorship and banning. Authors, many of whom have had their work challenged frequently speak out on the rights of people to have freedom of expression and the freedom to read what they choose. Earlier this week our blogger-in-residence Arabella posted John Irving’s response to a book of his being banned. So to close out banned books week, I thought it would be best to let those who are intimately acquainted with the issue speak for themselves. Here are just a few quotes about censorship published earlier this week by Bustle. You can read all of the quotes (and I highly recommend that you do) here.
Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.
– Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower – Banned)
What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses – Banned)
Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.
– Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Banned)
Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous – they contain ideas.
– Pete Hautman (Godless – Banned)