The Hate U Give. The Catcher in the Rye. A Time to Kill. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Maus. Charlotte’s Web.
Each of these books is among the thousands that have been banned at some time and in some place in the United States.
For so much talk of freedom, there are all too many people wanting to strip away the types of rights that lead to freedom for all—literally and figuratively.
I miss the days when Florida Man was the worst thing about Florida. At least we could sometimes laugh about the story behind the headlines. These days, my home state—but more accurately, the state’s so-called leadership—is making headlines for other disturbing reasons.
Florida has banned nearly 600 books from public and school libraries, as of this writing, making it second to Texas for the most bans. This type of censorship bothered me as a teen, and it angers me today. Back then, I remember religious groups doing much of the challenging. But these days, book banning involves politics just as much as religion, which should not have a place in public schools.
No one who’s using a rational thought process is buying into the Florida governor’s argument that book bans are a result of “pornography” being on school shelves. Many of the titles removed from schools feature minorities (famous and fictional) and/or LGBTQIA+ people and characters. How biographies on Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron fit the label of dangerous reading is beyond me, and yet, they’ve been banned. The award-winning And Tango Makes Three, banned because two male penguins raise a chick, has basis in science, since penguins of the same sex sometimes raise chicks together.
Banning books isn’t new. However, the sharp increase in the number of challenged books in just the past few years is alarming. In 2019, 566 books were challenged. In 2022, that number rose to over 2,500.
Amazingly, the majority (sixty percent) of book challenges examined in a Washington Post analysis were brought by just eleven people. What these overly zealous challengers fail to grasp is that there is an age-appropriate way to discuss topics like same-sex relationships and critical race theory. These are real-life issues that most children will come face to face with, or more likely have already faced, at some point. Children’s books that focus on these important and sensitive topics give kids a way to better understand them, as well as the necessary vocabulary to express their feelings about them. This is vital for marginalized kids who feel alone or misunderstood.
Even in America, not every child has ready access to the Internet, and not every family has the money to buy books. The public library, including school libraries, is sometimes the only place children can read books outside of a classroom, books they choose themselves. When that access is taken away, kids lose the ability to read more, especially more of what interests them, which is what makes learning fun. Too often, the children who don’t have this type of ready access are Black and brown, and poor kids of all colors. With the lack of diversity in children’s literature still a problem, not seeing themselves adequately represented on an increasingly shrinking bookshelf does nothing to make these kids feel seen or heard.
Books aren’t only an escape into entertainment. They’re a doorway to education and knowledge. They give readers a broader view of the world, introducing them to cultures they might not get to experience firsthand—and sometimes spurring a lifelong interest in those cultures and people who don’t look or live like they do. It’s difficult for me to understand a desire to repress knowledge, to be comfortable being spoon-fed education that doesn’t allow for free thought or your own ideas. Worse still is that some book ban proponents don’t even read the books they don’t want others to read. Maybe they gleaned all they need to know from a book jacket? Or from their governor. They have the right to keep certain books out of their children’s hands. But they do not have the right to dictate what other people’s kids read.
Librarians, teachers, and schools face the threat of being charged with felonies or losing school accreditation if they object to removing challenged books from shelves. Florida is already dealing with a teacher shortage; making their jobs even harder isn’t helping this crisis. For librarians to be harassed and threatened with violence is ironic, considering that so many of those in favor of censorship claim they’re challenging books featuring violence.
In the end, it’s not only disenfranchised authors and readers who lose. Everyone does.
First, it’s a ban on books about gay protagonists. Next, it’s a ban on books that present racism as the evil that it actually is. After that, it’s only a quick hop to a ban on books that don’t adhere to biblical teachings, until the only titles left on school shelves will be books that reframe history to make oppressors look like heroes and erase marginalized communities as much as possible.
If this sounds like early stirrings of fascism, it is. In Germany, students in a Nazi association burned books they deemed “un-German” in 1933, literature that didn’t fit their “pure” ideals. It’s surreal how fascism has been embraced by some Americans today, including a Florida parent who supported these Nazi book burnings in a school board forum in 2023.
The bigger issue here is having control over other people, particularly those who don’t look, think, or act like them—whether those people are different in color, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. People who don’t engage in critical thinking are easier to control, because they’re more likely to listen to leaders and not push back against or even question the laws these elected officials try to pass.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. My children are out of school, so I could look the other way while Florida does what it’s been doing for the past several years. But this state is as much my home as anyone else who lives here.
I won’t leave Florida being driven out by people who seemingly prefer a time in the not-so-distant past when women had even fewer rights than they have today and when voting wasn’t a right extended to everyone. I’ll stay and fight for the state that has been my home. I’ll continue to vote for legislators who have the interests of all people at heart and not a vocal minority who insist on control of all.
As I continue writing my truth, I encourage other writers to do the same, even if it upsets people who can’t face hard truths: that this country was not founded on democracy for all, but only a wealthy, land-owning few. That there is a disturbing shift toward concern only for fetuses and not children sitting in classrooms.
American history has been shaped by people from all walks of life. Attempting to stifle the voices of those whose ancestors contributed to the creation of this country, or any country, is erasing those people from that history. And yet, that’s exactly what states like Florida and Texas are trying to do, with a fanatical insistence on their version of events. But a story that characterizes people who fought for civil rights as criminals and presents American slavery as nothing more than an economic necessity to the growth of the country isn’t history: it’s a lie.
Speculative fiction has long exposed societal ills, acknowledging the unfair status quo through characters and worlds that are sometimes less strange than reality. From George Orwell’s 1984 to An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King, writers have called attention to some of humanity’s most significant issues, and in ways subtle and pointed, have exposed racism, sexism, and discrimination for the serious problems they are.
We don’t have to simply sit by and watch book bans happen. Here are some steps you can take to fight back:
• Celebrate Banned Books Week in your community and/or online.
• Buy banned titles, or check them out from your library.
• Amplify these books by spreading the word on social media or in person.
• Create a banned book club, where members only read challenged books.
• Support your local library, including becoming a library advocate.
And parents can be actively involved in their children’s schools, attending open school board meetings and voicing their concerns about those seeking to speak for all instead of a conservative few.
Progress isn’t made in societies where the status quo is never challenged. We don’t grow if we’re unwilling to progress. I have no desire to live in the world Ray Bradbury created in Fahrenheit 451, but these days, it seems like the “firemen” are wearing lawmakers’ suits.
Book bans will not take away our voices. The people who support these bans can only accomplish that if we stop talking and stop expressing ourselves through open and imaginative dialogue, both on and off the page.
© 2023 Del Sandeen
