I got hold of a part of USA Today last weekend, which featured a large and ever-growing number of books that someone or other has decided needs to leave shelves because they threaten--well, you'd have to ask them. Some of these titles astonish me:
The Odyssey
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
A Light in the Attic
Maus
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Animal Farm
The Catcher in the Rye
The Things They Carried
Beloved
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Outsiders
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1984
The Hunger Games
The Handmaid's Tale
The Color Purple
A Separate Peace
Born A Crime
The entire Harry Potter series
There were several others, but I gather that you've heard of the above.
Yes. Cancelled. Forbidden. I can't even.
Granted, I haven't read all of these, but I've read enough to understand that banning them, even calling them into question, violates any decent sensibilities and reflects a staggering paranoia that, while it could be called natural because of the current regressive state of things, calls thinking into question.
To these people, thinking must be dangerous--thinking that isn't pre-conditioned, I suppose. Except nobody can do that. Nobody can tell anyone what to think and then guarantee that that thinking will be all the thinking that people do. It's not only arrogant and slavish, it's downright stupid.
Plus what are people going to do--cancel, or force to cancel, cable television? When adaptations to To Kill a Mockingbird or Animal Farm or Of Mice and Men or The Hunger Games or Animal Farm are shown, will they put out notice and warn parents of the awfulness of those films?
Here's the ultimate irony of book banning: 1984. I book about control of thinking banned by people who want to control thinking. A book about the manipulation of language brought by those who supported the man who told them not to believe what their eyes were telling them--and meant it.
Maus? Really? An allegory about the Nazis abusing and killing the Jews? What are the banners doing, joining the Holocaust deniers? Or is it that they just don't like rats? If not, avoid All Quiet on the Western Front, too (which, by the way, has also been banned), because there are plenty of rats and the atrocities they commit (or merely following up on ongoing atrocities, take your pick) in that work.
Is this a drilling down on Black Lives Matter? On critical race theory, which is a concoction of graduate school thinking which, until a radically conservative conjurist introduced, had never been in any mainstream conversation in any school, public or private?
Or is it just that someone thinks that kids can't read about bad things at all? Things like:
- Gayness (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, A Separate Peace)
- Bullying (Blubber)
- Racism (The Hate U Give, Eleanor & Park, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter)
- School shootings (Nineteen Minutes)
- Atheism (The Golden Compass)
- Colonialism (The God of Small Things)
You know, stuff like that. If anything, I now want to read these books and discover what someone had a problem with. The fact that there are many best-sellers among these is, what, evidence of the damage in our culture? With our sinfulness? With our lack-of-straightness?
And do people think the assigning of these books, with their tax dollars (and how much money per person in any jurisdiction covers the cost of a copy or two of any book?), represents a betrayal of their values? That whatever school libraries and teachers assign must align with their thinking, however ill-informed it may be? That because they think a certain way, everybody else's thinking is not only bad, not only wrong, but is to be prevented somehow?
So much of this is about race and gender. People have never stopped being afraid of a lack of whiteness. They have never stopped being put off by gay people acting in loving ways in public. The thoroughly neanderthal candidate for Wisconsin governor has said as much: no public displays of gay affection. Keep that in your closet. (Would he introduce legislation preventing it? If elected, don't put it past him.)
Reducing information feels comforting. But it builds walls. It encourages the same behavior everywhere. And it never, ever works.
Of course, not all school libraries are banning all of the above books. To compile lists in such a big nation as ours leaves one with the impression that all books are under examination and that we are all being whitewashed, excuse the pun. But it is bad enough.
This is what happens when minds are stifled and paralyzed, when negative possibilities overwhelm the positive, always easier to do. When panic meets exaggeration. It is a human element that we do not prefer and that we too often ignore.
What to do? Talk up the problem. It is not true that where it does not now exist, it won't or can't. That will become true especially where Republicans seize power, where it becomes popular to bring out phraseology such as "woke," to confirm that whatever a particular book contains cannot be good for kids.
No. Do not wait. Don't assume rationality surrounds you. There are ways to fight this, and fight this we must.
Talk about it openly, logically, and especially calmly. Ideas, by themselves, are just that--ideas. They can cultivate minds and often do, not poison them.
And do not accept the cherry-picking that reactionaries insist upon to justify their inclinations to take books off shelves. Use the word context often and with effect. Ask those who would censor, "Have you actually read the whole book? Is it utterly without merit or importance?"
Staying calm and speaking out is not walking away. Staying calm and speaking out is being an advocate for reading, for intellectual curiosity, for thinking, for kids. Kids are wiser than we think. But they also need guidance now, more than we think. The world is a different place, yes, but not one that we can hide them from. We must stay rational and keep the lines of communication not only open, but inviting.
Banning the above mentioned books, though, robs young people of important opportunities to know things about the world that they will need to know once they emerge into it as adults. Fear cannot overtake it. It won't. Reading these books under guiding hands is the answer, not preventing any challenges whatsoever.
They're smarter than us, anyhow. They'll find a way around it this plague, as contagious as the viral one we've endured. Ask yourselves this: Is this more dangerous than having guns?
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment