Let’s Challenge Erasure
Stop censoring empathy in the school library
I haven’t written about weird and wonderful books yet. I planned to this week, but I saw so many book banning articles that I decided to go all in. Here’s an article I had published in So Cal newspapers. Lots of censorship news links follow it.
Recent History of YA Book Debates
Back in 2011, writing for the Wall Street Journal, Meghan Cox Guerdon began a heated debate over whether young adult literature was too dark and explicit. Seen simplistically, YA fiction represented either a bastion against censorship or a destroyer of adolescents, who could otherwise avoid foul language, absent parents, molestation, or suicide.
Today’s Censorship Erases Reality
That debate was a tiff compared to today’s battle over teen books, with book censorship having reached the national stage. While earlier censors may have feared the violence of The Hunger Games, today’s censors want to erase reality. Sexuality, sexual abuse, STDs, race, oppression, and slavery are verboten. Parents can search school library catalogs for words such as ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ (as one Spotsylvania County parent did), and demand removal of titles they are completely unfamiliar with.
As a former high school teacher librarian, I find this brave new world alarming. Speaking to the Tennessee House of Representatives, country music star John Rich compared school librarians to pedophiles for including “obscene books” in their collections. The state of Virginia encourages informants to call a tip line to report teachers whose materials are “divisive.” Texas, under the supervision of state Rep. Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth), chairman of the House General Investigating Committee, has created a list of over 800 suspect books.
How to Erase Reality
The Washington Post finds the Texas list “anything but painstakingly curated. It’s as if someone typed in the keywords ‘Black,’ ‘racism,’ ‘LGBT,’ ‘gender’ and ‘transgender’ and simply poured the results into a spreadsheet.” I’m guessing “sex” was included in the keywords since Everything You Need to Know about Going to the Gynecologist is on the list. In fact, many Need to Know books are suspect: About Teen Pregnancy, About Teen Motherhood, About Growing Up Male or Female.
And yet, the Everything You Need to Know series is widely available in middle and high school libraries. Teacher librarians purchase these titles because they are ‘hi-low.’ Highly informative and engaging, but written at a level that almost all students will comprehend.
Erasing the “Other”
Book censorship is far more threatening than it was ten years ago because it erases anyone who doesn’t look or think like the censor. Right now many teens who are stigmatized won’t find books validating their experiences. This matters. As the character of C.S. Lewis says in William Nicholson’s “Shadowlands,” “We read to know we are not alone.” Silencing diverse stories segues into an effort to protect teens from uncomfortable narratives. A parent’s objection to the assignment of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in an AP literature class made me wonder: When should students study difficult subjects? The goal of AP classes, after all, is to earn college credit.
A Random Look at My Recent Reading
I recently tried a random experiment using two YA novels I’d read this summer, books I recommend to teens. Do they offend the censors? Are they on the suspect book list? They are certainly in school libraries. Teacher librarians seek recommendations from professional review journals such as Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal prior to making purchases. Both books were positively reviewed. (Despite hysterical accusations, there’s little chance of actual obscene materials landing in the collection.)
The End of Our Story by Meg Haston deals with the break up of a first love. But it also delves into family secrets, domestic violence, teen sexuality and profanity. The Endgenerates lots of discomfort. It also creates empathy, an understanding that anyone may be fighting a secret, difficult battle.
Published in 2017, The End deals with topics censors now rally against. Yet I didn’t find it on Texas’ list of suspect books. I’m guessing that’s because it can’t be found in a search using the keywords listed above. Significantly, the characters are White.
Kirkus, a well-regarded review journal, called Bitter (2022) by Akwaeke Emezi “A compact, urgent, and divine novel.” The protagonist studies at a school for creatives. Through her artwork, she joins students from a nearby school to protest social injustice. In doing so, she unleashes an avenging angel who causes damage and death.
The characters in Bitter are, generally, Black and queer. Their desire for social justice serves as an entry to discussion about the subject. Bitter also engenders conversation about the role of creatives and their contributions to society, a discussion that is anathema to censors. It would be a great teen book club choice. It’s a recently published prequel to Pet, which is on Texas’ list of suspect books. If the list is updated in the future, I know where Bitter will land.
Why We Need Books that Challenge Us
Access to such novels provides teens the opportunity to develop a trifecta of life skills: compassion, imaginative thinking, and the ability to analyze and evaluate ideas. As Barbara Kingsolver noted, “Fiction has a unique capacity to bring difficult issues to a broad readership . . ., creating empathy in a reader’s heart for the theoretical stranger. Its capacity for invoking moral and social responsibility is enormous.”
A vocal minority can keep marginalized students from books that validate their lives. The same minority can keep all teens from accessing works that empathize with historically underrepresented people. As a parent who raised thoughtful readers, I can’t imagine allowing other parents to make that choice.
Anti-censorship parent groups are forming, a positive development. Yet, as if it were a meaningful way to fight back, many people have taken to their social media accounts to make two suggestions: take the books that are removed from school libraries and put them in the public library; and build a little box library in your yard and stock it with forbidden books. Neither of these is a good solution.
Many students, particularly those with few resources, can’t get to their public library, which may not be within walking distance of their home. The school library meets its patrons where they’re at. And little yard libraries, while often very cute, quickly become tiny storage facilities for neighborhood book discards. The school library has thousands of books on hundreds of subjects, and is regularly weeded and updated. It also has, importantly, one or more employees who are dedicated to providing service to the school population. If equity matters to you, fight like hell for the school library and its staff.
A Challenge for You
Encourage any teens you know to read widely. To read wildly! Tell them to introduce themselves to their school librarians. Teacher librarians are a great resource for readers’ advisory. They welcome all and relish getting the right book into the right hands at the right time.
A very specific story about a book challenge I had is here.
Book Titles
Thanks for the help with a book title. I like “Turn the Page,” which, not surprisingly, is the title of a Bob Seager biography. I also like “Turning Pages” For now I’ll stick with “Promiscuous Reading” while I’m working on edits. If you are mulling over titles, this post from a few years ago, from Isidra Mencos on Jane Friedman’s blog might help.
Choose the Perfect Title for Your Book: Seven Authors Offer Tips
Library News Book Censorship News
Some Good News
Khaled Hosseini Shares Heartfelt Letter to Book Banners
I mentioned this in a previous post, but now it’s the law. Illinois becomes first state to prohibit funding for libraries with book bans
Queer Louisianans Are Fighting Book Bans—And Winning
“They say their goal is just to get rid of pornographic books, but in no place has it ever stopped there.”
A secret shelf of banned books thrives in a Texas school, under the nose of censors
Some Bad News
Proposed bill would force libraries' closure
“Basically, every library will need a large room to house all the “objectionable works and authors” only accessible to those over 18. Meaning essentially every school library, and most community libraries, will need to shut down because they are only one room, or do not have a separate room or multiple staff to police access to the “objectionable” room.”
A Brief History of the Grand Old American Tradition of Banning Books
What I’m Reading
Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide for Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book by
While much of this advice is for authors who get a big enough book deal to have an in-house publicist and marketing, there’s still much that emerging writers and those making indie/small press deals can use.
“Book One: Before the Book Deal” the psychology of getting writing done and setting goals to what type of job a writer should have to pay the bills and whether an MFA matters. It moves to queries and rejections, representation by an agent, and what top expect from the book deal.
“Book Two: After the Book Deal” is divided into prepublication, publication, and postpublication. There’s advice on how to work with the team assigned to your book’s promotion, how to ask for blurbs and much more on readying the manuscript. Things to do outside the publishing house including creating an author website, bio, and getting an author photo. There’s more advice on the psychological state of the author. One important topic that recurs is envy of more successful authors. There’s much about the let down of limited sales, dismal attendance at book signing and events, and more. There's also the worry that the second book won’t do as well as the first, but as Jane Friedman says in a recent Sunday Business Sermon, this is, perhaps, a downstream problem—if you don’t yet have any published books, don’t worry about it. It might not be an issue for many years. (Digression: this webinar was on author branding, which is part of what the author does prepublication. It has a lot of good advice.)
Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy I loved so much about this book in both the writing and the story. The multiple close third-person POVs, the community, long harboring underlying racism which breaks into the sunlight after a Confederate statue is vandalized, the always existing underlying threats to the Black community that break into violence and tragedy. I had one issue and that is with the end. This is a murder (and attempted murder) mystery. I was shocked that three important POV characters ended up in the situations they did. At the same time this was very realistic to me in the way that fiction sometimes is afraid to be. But ultimately, I didn’t believe the end of the book—that is, I didn’t believe that one of the criminals (a murderer) would have done what they did based on their reasoning for doing it. I just didn’t. But this book is one of Vanity Fair’s favorites of 2023. So—maybe my thinking on these things diverts from the norm.
I listened to The Maid by Nita Prose on audiobook because it’s the book club choice for one of the libraries I belong to (patronize?). Lots of fun. POV cleverness in a way that sets up the entire drama. Fun twists as the book closes.
I previously mentioned that I enjoyed The Wager. If you like deep dives into books, you will enjoy this post on The Wager from
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this is so important. books provide such a rich ground for learning, understanding, and building a pipeline to critical thinking, empathy, and imagination.
Thank you for this!