Good Intentions and the Pathway to Hell, Part 1: Book Bans
By David Corbett | April 14, 2023 |
One of the more helpful remarks I’ve read recently in the ever-escalating rhetoric of the culture wars came from historian Thomas Zimmerman:
There is indeed something going on in America, and it does make a lot of people…really uncomfortable. We are in the midst of a profound renegotiation of speech norms and of who gets to define them. And that can be a messy process at times. But it’s not “cancel culture.” From a democratic perspective, it is necessary, and it is progress.
Professor Zimmerman made those remarks in a two-part substack series: Part I: On “Cancel Culture” and Part II: The “Free Speech Crisis” Is Not a Crisis. It Is Progress.
In those essays, he argues that much of the criticism focused on student pushback against speakers and material they deem objectionable largely comes from those invested in the (white male) status quo.
And however disagreeable student actions may be, they are not attempts to use government power to deprive anyone of their free speech rights, which definitely is occurring in multiple locales across the country (more on that below).
Nevertheless, the turmoil generated at Stanford Law School recently, when students heckled and jeered a conservative jurist into silence—only to have a campus administrator, in an attempt to restore order, also attack the speaker and side with the students—has brought the issue of a “free speech crisis” back into the national spotlight. (Unsurprisingly, the situation was far more nuanced than one might be led to believe given the hair-on-fire reactions, as recently reported by Vimar Patel, higher education reporter for the New York Times.)
Heckling, jeering, and outrage are hardly the only examples of the “messiness” Professor Zimmerman is referring to in the quote I cited above. All too often the benign-sounding “negotiation of speech terms” translates into,
Over the next few months I intend to explore multiple ways that speech norms are being “negotiated”—especially as they affect writers of fiction, including:
- Book Bans (today’s topic)
- Sensitivity Readers
- Trigger Warnings
- Equitable Language Guides
Each of these reflect the efforts of a certain group or groups to establish—and enforce—guidelines for what can be said or written, by whom, and how.
Put differently, they seek to determine who deserves protection from what is being said or written, by whom, and/or how? At its worst, this becomes: “My moral superiority means I not only don’t need to listen to you, I have the right to silence you.”
All of them are restrictive rather than expansive—i.e., they seek to constrain rather than add to what can be read or expressed. It may seem odd to think of book banning as an attempt to negotiate anything, but the other examples I’ve given also reflect attempts by a relative minority to restrict what can be expressed in accordance with its own moral sensibility.
Everyone in this effort claims to have a laudable purpose in mind: the protection of a group they consider vulnerable (children, families, trauma victims, minorities) from demeaning, shaming, or immoral content; from unpleasant emotions or experiences; or even from discomfort or distress.
As Zimmerman implies, however, given the cultural shift that’s taking place, avoiding distress or discomfort is not just misguided, it’s impossible.
It might instead be better to accustom ourselves to the unpleasant—to value resilience and forbearance over safety and indignation. As Kafka put it, “A book should be an ax to break the ice inside us.” Art in all its forms seeks not to reassure but to question accepted forms of perception, thinking, feeling. The fact that the entire culture appears engaged in a similar effort on multiple levels only underscores the validity of that questioning.
This is not to justify purposefully cruel, demeaning, bigoted or otherwise objectionable statements. It is just to recognize that we are all trying to navigate a meaningful way forward through a chaotic time.
Observing the principle of charity—assume good intentions until evidence presents itself to the contrary—might be the best guidance to follow.
Otherwise, despite everyone’s good intentions, the “messiness” of the transition becomes a paving exercise for the pathway to hell, full of name-calling, blaming and shaming, even death threats and real violence, as we’ll see below.
[NOTE: Back in January, Jamie Beck made an excellent argument both for and against trigger warnings here at Writer Unboxed (“To Warn or not to Warn: The Controversy Around Trigger Warnings in Literature”), and another excellent WU post concerning the renegotiation of speech norms was Marcie Geffner’s “Why We Don’t Need Heroines”.]
Book Bans
The vast majority of efforts to remove books (hundreds of titles) from public school libraries in 2022 occurred in Texas (on grounds of “pornography”), Florida (citing racial issues), and Tennessee.
However, even Pennsylvania, where the state government has made no effort to ban books, has experienced a rising number of book bans (450 titles as of 2022) at the county level. Another seven states, from Wisconsin to Georgia, have banned between 23 and 43 titles.
CBS compiled a list of the 50 titles most frequently banned books, the great majority of which either deal with racial or LGBTQIA+ issues, or address other topical issues such as Islam, 9/11, school shootings, or misogyny:
- Jonathan Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (#30)
- Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes (#25)
- Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (#22)
- Toni Morrison’s Beloved (#17) and The Bluest Eye (#4)
- Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner (#11)
According to the American Library Association (ALA), as reported by Writer Unboxed’s own Porter Anderson, in 2022:
- A record 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship, constituting a major, 38-percent jump in such activity over that seen in 2021.
- Some 58 percent of those reported book challenges were made to books and materials in school libraries, classroom libraries, or school curricula.
- Prior to 2021, “the vast majority of challenges to library resources only sought to remove or restrict access to a single book.” Now, organized censorship groups are creating lists of books they want to see banned, accounting for 90 percent of challenges:
- 12 percent were in cases involving two to nine books
- 38 percent were in cases involving 10 to 99 books
- 40 percent were in cases involving 100 or more books
- The aim of these groups “is to suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation’s conversations, such as people in the LGBTQIA+ community or people of color,” per the ALA’s director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, Deborah Caldwell-Stone.
- ALA president president Lessa Lanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada added, “Many library workers face threats to their employment, their personal safety, and in some cases, threats of prosecution for providing books to youth they and their parents want to read.”
- Finally (and most importantly for the conversation here today at WU), per José Borghino, Secretary General of the International Publishers Association, “[T]he freedom to publish as such is not under threat, but our main concern is the risk of self-censorship, which can affect everyone involved in bringing books to readers—authors, publishers, booksellers, and libraries. (Emphasis added.)
The fact that organized groups, in the name of concerned parents, rather than state entities have been behind many of these bans complicates the First Amendment issues behind them. The fact these groups are well-funded and part of a nationwide movement, however, also indicates that power, money, and influence are hardly irrelevant to the discussion.
The two sides to the book banning debate get a fair hearing from Britannica’s ProCon.Org, under the title “Banned Books – The Top 3 Pros and Cons”:
Pro 1: Parents have the right to decide what material their children are exposed to and when.
Con 1: Parents may control what their own children read, but don’t have a right to restrict what books are available to other people.
Pro 2: Children should not be exposed to sex, violence, drug use, or other inappropriate topics in school or public libraries
Con 2: Many frequently challenged books help people get a better idea of the world and their place in it.
Pro 3: Keeping books with innapropriate content out of libraries protects kids, but doesn’t stop people from reading thos books or prevent writers from writing them.
Con 3: Books are a portal to different life experiences and reading encourages empathy and social-emotional development.
The final “pro” argument touches on a point made above by José Borghino of the International Publishers Association, who is not so sanguine on the prospect of book bans having no effect on publishers, libraries, booksellers, and writers. If you know a book is going to generate heated blowback from certain parties backed by well-funded and organized national groups, how can that not enter into the calculus of what gets written, published, or distributed?
Despite the increasing number of book bans, or perhaps because of them, opponents are rallying efforts of their own—and in many cases are winning. They succeed by recognizing that censorship is unpopular regardless of partisan affiliation; that book bans lead to additional costs in litigation expenses and insurance premiums for city officials who are sued by one side or the other; and that guidelines for what should and should not be banned can be so vague or broad they can even include the Bible. (It contains reference to “incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” per plaintiffs in the Utah matter in which this lawsuit was filed.)
That said, the debate can still at times take an ugly turn.
Just this past week, after parents sued the Llano County in federal court and won a reversal of that county’s book bans, the county commissioners are planning a meeting to discuss closing the library altogether.
Proponents of the ban have contacted a local judge who has assured them “he WILL NOT put the porn back in the kid’s section!” [emphasis in original]
The books in question, including the “porn”:
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
- They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
- In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
- The graphic novel Spinning by Tillie Walden
- It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris
- Three books from Dawn McMillan’s I Need a New Butt! series and four other children’s picture books with “silly themes and rhymes,” like Larry the Farting Leprechaun, Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose; Freddie the Farting Snowman and Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts.
For some, however, getting the local government to shut down the public library doesn’t go far enough. A woman in St. Tammany Parish in Louisiana challenged several books in the local library as being “harmful to minors.” She failed to show up at the next local library control board meeting, however, and the board voted to keep the books on the shelves.
What came next was reported recently on Book Riot:
Sometime in the early morning of April 7, an anti-book ban billboard in Abita Springs, Louisiana, was set on fire. The billboard was created by a woman involved with the St Tammany Library Alliance and designed by her trans child. It was meant to raise awareness of book bans in the Parish and it was located on their private property.
The joyful billboard featured a red-headed child with a brightly colored book. The text beside it reads “Ban Hate, Not Books.”
After the arson, the only clearly visible word was “Hate.”
Is your community or one you know well currently facing a book ban? How did it start? How is it going? What books were targeted? What justification was given for their removal? What valid points are being made on either side?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
Well, I live in Texas, so this is a hot topic here. Our home school district is more liberal than most, being in the city, but still bad enough. Most challenged books here have to do with LGBTQIA+ themes. My way of combatting this came to me when I realized just how many kids end up in my yard every day. I live across the street from two public schools and four other schools have bus stops outside of my house. What a perfect place to put up a Little Free Library! I make sure to keep a few challenged books in there at all times, as well as books for all ages by authors of color. It is VERY well used. The LGBTQIA books never stay in there for more than a day or two.
Love this, Kim!
You are my hero, Kim Bullock.
Kim, I applaud your trying to make all kids feel welcome and affirmed. (David, I’m sorry your brother was told that being gay was a one-way ticket to hell. That is not the Church’s teaching.) However, have you talked to the kids parents about this? Do you encourage them to talk to their parents about what they’re reading? As a precocious but sensitive 13-yer-old, I read some books that I now wish my parents had known about and forbidden.
Thanks for entertaining an outlier’s viewpoint.
And who do you suppose takes those books once the word gets out?
So…at least with regard to the LGBTQ book bannings, these are simply a transparent attempt at authoritarianism, and cannot really be separated from the recent sharp uptick in hate crimes (e.g. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/03/25/asian-hate-crime-fbi-black-lgbtq) and anti-LGBTQ legislation (e.g. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/over-120-bills-restricting-lgbtq-rights-introduced-nationwide-2023-so-far). The only two positions are: do LGBTQ people have a right to exist in the world, or not? All of the other rhetoric which attaches to this, which you helpfully reproduce, exists as a fig leaf to obfuscate the issue and make the “no” side seem more palatable to people outside either of these communities, the authoritarian one that does not need the additional rhetoric (they’ll skip straight to “[crude term] the gays”), and the people in the community being targeted, who can see right through it.
There’s no neutral position to take, no “let’s consider both sides,” because that’s giving the hate protection and legs.
You’re absolutely right, these efforts can’t be separated from their political context. And growing up with a gay older brother, I saw the torment he went through with no one to talk to — to the point, as a Catholic boy, he went silent for several months fearing that if he expressed what he was feeling to anyone he would be “an occasion of sin” to someone else for “making” them also have thoughts about homosexuality. How different it would be if, from the earliest age, children could see that there is nothing exceptional, let alone wrong, with being gay.
And the rhetoric to protect kids is in many senses premised on the whole idea there’s still something “not quite right” about being gay. (I’m being as charitable as I know how here.) But there are not too many dots to connect before you end up with mass shootings at gay clubs.
This is part of the turmoil we can reasonably expect as the world changes in ways that terrify a great many people. What is authoritarianism but way to install “strong leaders” who agree with your values to stamp out all this wishy-washy equality talk? Why risk equality when “strength” can silence those who scare you?
It’s also good to keep in mind that during another period of profound social change, the response included witch burnings, the Inquisition, the Thirty Years War, Cromwell’s devastation of Ireland, and other atrocities. We are in the middle of a similar period of worldwide change. And we need to prepare ourselves both for responding wisely and for dealing with incoming fire.
I live in Bucks Co., PA, where the issue of book banning has been front and center. We have a school board in Central Bucks that has targeted mostly LGBTQ content (they’ve taken other steps against this community, but that’s for another post). The Editorial pages of our local paper have been a sounding board for fierce debate, with anger on both sides. But I smell fear. And I appreciate your quotes from Thomas Zimmerman. We are in a time of change and these are the birth pangs of progress. Difficulty at the beginning, the I Ching says. I would add to that, difficulty at the end, because a way of life is slipping away as another emerges. The wheel always turns. But to really know that, one must read widely and deeply. That said, I’m fascinated when folks shame others for what they view as shaming. There’s a lot of finger-wagging going on, but I trust that we’ll see our way through tho a kind of grace. What stood out for me here among so much good stuff was this. “It might instead be better to accustom ourselves to the unpleasant – to value resilience and forbearance over safety and indignation.” I look forward to more of this discussion!
Hi, Susan. I was hoping someone from a Pennsylvania county would chime in, because apparently the action is pretty fierce at that level. Anger is a masking emotion, usually to conceal fear, shame and/or guilt, so I think your nose is onto something.
My use of the term “forbearance” was inspired by an article responding to a certain ex-President’s claim that he was his followers’ “vengeance.” The hate crimes cited by Linguist above are a reflection of that desire for vengeance, as are the various anti-LGBTQIA+ measures working their way through state legislatures. Responding with resilience and forbearance does not mean sitting back and waiting out the fight, and I too hope we can muster “a kind of grace.” It may turn the tide–people tend to recognize in hate and anger the cowardice and fear below. But we’re in for a long fight, and need to think deeply about how we intend to conduct ourselves.
I agree, we are in for the long haul. I’ve been using my pen as my sword, but also my vote. School board elections are coming up here in Bucks and people have traditionally ignored these. Voting is vital. The candidates and bios will be front and center the local paper. Non one has an excuse not to participate.
In some places, the country has gone mad. As Linguist wrote, book banning is often used to silence voices that others fear or hate. This may sound ordinary, but knowledge is power. A person can fear a thing, a movement, a race, an idea WHEN THEY DON’T TRULY UNDERSTAND IT. Reading a variety of viewpoints, discussing why and how the culture might be changing is the only way an individual can come to a conclusion or form an opinion. And I am not sold on trigger warnings. Growing up, I learned much from reading and some of it might be currently banned. Progressing through life stages demands evaluation, understanding. What better way to do that than through a book. Children who have found themselves in abusive relationships might have fared better, if a book pointed out that certain behaviors on the part of adults ARE WRONG. Under the guidance of teachers, we can help growing children navigate a sometimes precarious world. Keep them in the dark, makes them even more vulnerable. And yes, spoken and written like a mother of two daughters and son…who believes knowledge is power.
Thanks, Elizabeth. hey, the more parents chiming in the better. Probably some of the most powerful voices in this debate are those of parents with LGTBQIA+ kids. As for books that might have been helpful to children going thorugh some seriously tough stuff, see my response to Linguist, specifically my comments about my brother.
And yes, I’ll be returning to trigger warnings and other strategies in subsequent posts. They are not as conspicuously coercive as book bans, but there are still some issues worth debating, as Jamie Beck’s excellent post earlier this year made abundantly clear.
David, what a difficult topic.Thank you for sharing Professor Zimmerman’s substack series.
In the little spot of the world I’m in, we have a monthly Inclusive Community group, begun in 2019 when the Community Ed director invited me to lead one session that morphed into monthly gatherings. We now partner with several organizations and individuals.
For book bans, the children’s author in our group helps us through: https://circulatingideas.com/2022/04/19/220-dr-tasslyn-magnusson/?fbclid=IwAR0Z4bOQNgSE1iRy8nviypLf7Ezm4eimBWuncFahGrhRnz_LerxQOk29cHI and through https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/research_and_reports.
Thanks for the comment and the link, Lisa. Of course I’m curious as to what little spot of the world you are indeed in. I transplanted from the Bay Area to the Catskills, and gave up political solidarity and racial diversity for the opposite here. And yet in my county there is an excellent community of activists making sure the library serves all. Supporting it has become one of my foremost projects now that I’ve settled in.
Wow, there is a lot to digest here. Thanks for laying it out so clearly (and for the kind words about my article). One thing that strikes me is that, when you look at the list of 50 books and specifically the 5 you note, most of them would not be read in early grade school. A majority are aimed at middle school students and beyond, at which point the “protecting kids” argument becomes very thin. How many of the same folks screaming about what “horrors” these “bad books” expose their kids are paying as close attention to what their kids/teens are doing online (where they can easily access actual porn and come in contact with strangers who mean them true harm)? I doubt many.
Perhaps I’m cynical, but I also suspect that half the parents who are taking up against these books have probably not even read most of them. They are just joining “their side” (we all crave community, after all) in this negotiation (to use your word). For me, the thing about negotiation is that it requires both sides to be willing to enter into discussions in good faith. That is not what I see happening, particularly from the frenzied folks who are willing to close entire libraries over a handful of titles.
If there had been a book I deemed objectionable when my kids were in public school, I would’ve spoken to the teacher/librarian/admin and come to an agreement FOR MY CHILD. But as you note, to force my opinions on others (or to close down a community resource like a library just to “win” an argument) does not help children or foster community.
As someone with family members and close friends who teach elementary school, the stress of this parental over-involvement (undermining/devaluing an educator’s expertise) is driving them out of the profession and making would-be teachers rethink that career choice. This is also terrible for children and the nation. Thus, it seems pretty clear that the cons vastly outweigh any perceived pro, and the totality of the circumstantial evidence suggests that none of this uprising is honestly about the welfare of children.
And finally, this will absolutely affect how publishers make decisions about what they can sell, which is precisely the big goal of these organized book banners.
I was hoping you’d chime in, Jamie. To be fair, “negotiation” is Professor Zimmerman’s word, I’m just latching it to my wagon. And I get that it can seem euphemistic, given the rhetoric and actions being taken.
I think driving teachers out of the profession is a feature, not a bug. This is all part of an effort to destroy public education and replace it with private schools geared to ideologically align with the parents who send their kids there. (There’s an excellent article in the New Yorker last week on Hillsdale College, the conservative college that has a K-12 charter school model that’s a favorite of Governor DeSantis and others on the right.)
I also agree that book banning is an effort to affect which books publishers offer, and in what form. I’ll be covering that in coming months. (And I really did admire your post on trigger warnings–incredibly thoughtful and it generated such a fascinating discussion.)
Education and repression are opposites. The forces of repression made an error when they chose “parental rights” as their stalking horse. In the end, education is the stronger force and it will win.
I hope you’re right, Don. But I can’t help thinking of the rabbi who sued to reverse the Dobbs decision because it’s a violation of the religious liberty of Jews, who believe the health of the mother, interpreted broadly not narrowly, trumps (ahem) the life of the fetus. It’s doubtful that case will gain traction, despite its obvious relevance (since so much of Dobbs was based on “tradition,” i.e., Christianity). And though, as I said above, parents of LGTBQIA+ kids are becoming some of the most effective spokes-folks against this repressive agenda, that agenda’s proponents have been preparing for decades how to assert political power even when they’re in the minority. So though “parental rights” may be a double-edged sword, I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to ensure openness (education) triumphs over repression. I also think it’s going to depend a lot on where one lives.
David, certain people are reactionary. That’s always been true, but the people who look to the future outnumber them. I will grant you this: The reactionary people in our time have organized and done their best to rig the democratic process not only to protect their position but to force everyone else to live, be and believe as they do. That is the opposite of democracy.
We who want progress must push back, yes, but democracy–in our country, anyway–is stronger and will prevail, and I believe that is true because of our foundational American belief in fairness and equality, and because of our strong system of education. It’s a multi-front struggle, to be sure, but knowledge is stronger than fear, and love sustains where hate destroys. Hate and destruction do not, finally, benefit the human race. Knowledge and love do.
“Hate and destruction do not, finally, benefit the human race. Knowledge and love do.”
That one word “finally” is doing a lot of work there. What must be endured, by whom, and for how long before “finally” comes to pass? Over 650,000 died in the Civil War, more if you count civilian casualties (which one should). Estimates vary from 35 million to 65 million for World War II. I won’t go into figures for the Thirty Years War of Cromwell’s rape of Ireland, but you catch my drift. All of these wars were (ostensibly) fought over ideological differences, bbut once the blood starts flowing it’s hard to stop. I don’t intend to underestimate the fury felt by either side, one of which is armed to the teeth. A racial or ethnic majority has never surrendered power without violence. We’re seeing a tip of the violent iceberg now, and no surprise a lot of it is focused on schools. I hope you’re right (though I’d also take issue with our “strong system of education,” which is under relentless attack). And I think “in the end” progress will prevail. But I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about what happens before the end.
But it will require a fight.
Totally agree. Education moves ahead. Parental guidance can get stuck.
As you say in this useful guide to one aspect of current culture wars, “they [those who censor] seek to constrain rather than add to what can be said or expressed.” True enough. But setting aside the banning of books, the idea also makes me think of a quote from Quentin Crisp:
“The young always have the same problem – how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.” This seems relevant to the current discussion. To what degree does the creation of an ever-changing, ever-longer list of topical and linguistic no-nos serve to punish rather than to add to the discussion?
An even more relevant idea courtesy of Quentin Crisp goes like this: Etiquette is a system of exclusion. It serves to identify those who belong and those who don’t. It relates to social gestures at dinner (which fork?), to fashion, etc., but for us, it’s especially relevant to language. A system of spoken and written etiquette is intentionally complex and subtle, hard to master, let alone keep up with. Manners on the other hand are inclusive. They are simple, can be learned by anyone, and therefore serve to invite and welcome, not exclude. Manners make life possible among strangers living in cities. Manners for writers are analogous to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Granted, they aren’t easy, but anyone who learns them now belongs.
Thanks, Barry. I love that distinction between etiquette and manners–rules that are imposed by an elite as opposed to those that arise naturally among people who need to have daily contact with one another. That’s a theme that’s going to run through all of these posts.
I particularly loved this: “Manners for writers are analogous to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Granted, they aren’t easy, but anyone who learns them now belongs.”
You also reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from the Jungian psychoanalyst James Hillman. In an essay on Jung’s concept of the feeling function, Hillman said (paraphrasing): To speak of the importance of manners in a time of ever-escalating violence is to speak of the importance of the feeling function.
I haven’t quite moved the distance you have! I have one foot in Minnesota and another in Wisconsin, with the Twin Cities flowing into former small-town rural areas, including the influx of more openly diverse people. Before I moved to this area 8 years ago, people and groups were already working toward awareness and education. The Inclusive group, which started with me and the community education director, has become a common gathering space for all the pieces–little and big–that were already in place, creating a sense of connection and solidarity. Support for this long haul is needed and necessary.
sigh….sorry my comment didn’t end up where I intended!
That’s okay, Lisa. I know what you were referring to. And I heartily commend you’re involvement with the exquisitely named Inclusive Group.
Excellent post. I am reminded of me at 13/14 reading a book about Janis Joplin, which talked about her relationship with another woman. This was back in the 70s so not the norm. Anyway, my dad discovered the book and he was furious I’d read it, told me I was never to read books like that again. Kinda crappy but pretty normal for the times. What he didn’t do was go the library where I’d no doubt taken the book out and tell them to remove it. He also read the book (he wouldn’t have been able to help himself. He was an avid reader.) before passing judgement. Needless to say this didn’t stop me from reading whatever I wanted but boy, if only conservatives now were like conservatives then. I hope Professor Zimmerman is right and all this banning and hatred will pass.
Thank you for this. We are putting up a Little Library (it’s actually quite large for a Little Library) on our lawn. I’ve always loved these. And I realized how very important they have become in the face of book banning. No one can tell me what books to put in it. This could be one way to make available to children books they won’t find in their school or public library. At first I thought our library too big, and with others in this area, unnecessary. But now I say the more the better, to preserve literature and knowledge and keep it available to the public.
Banning books? All my shackles go up. On my side of the Atlantic, when someone talks about banning books, the association is “Nazi Germany” immediately. So, no way.
And in my experience, school libraries are very careful about ages groups and books. My kids have never been exposed to something inappropriate from a school library.
Today I read an essay by David French by David French titled: The Moral Center is Fighting Back on Elite College Campuses. This is not exactly the focus of your essay, but I thought you’d find it interesting.
Thank you for taking on some sensitive and timely subjects. I think the professor is Thomas Zimmer (not Zimmerman?). Nice try on his part, but I’m still inclined to side with the NYT Editorial Board (establishment maybe, but certainly not right wing by any stretch). They’re journalists on the front lines, so I think they’d know when we have a problem of extremism (of the right and left). Re: book banning, I’m in NY with two kids in public high school. Every district seems to have adopted a formal process to address complaints about a book. Then, too, passive “censorship” is always going to be there in the form of choice as to which books to buy. Around me, it seems to be the non-fiction books by conservative authors that public librarians either chose not to buy, buy only in electronic form, or buy only a few copies of. (I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that the librarians are politically liberal. (For the record, I’m in a town that leans right even though I don’t.))