Next week, September 22 to 28, is Banned Books Week. The Gilpin County library is “celebrating” by suggesting that we “Live life on the edge and read some banned books!”
Some of us can remember the dark days after 9/11, when the Patriot Act enabled this country’s security services to monitor, among other things, what we were all reading – ostensibly to see who was reading “subversive” material – and our Gilpin County librarians offered, gently, to erase our library records just in case.
Today, in some states, those librarians could be thrown in jail for even offering “inappropriate” material to their readers. Teachers have been fired for leaving on the shelves books that have been accused – not proven – of being “inappropriate” for students at their grade level.
It started with folks wanting to keep our young people “pure” – eliminating books that had anything to do with sex, including nudity or discussion of bodily functions. Or profanity. Then it began sliding into the political, with bans against books mentioning anything to do with LGBTQ+ issues. And issues of racism – which, the zealots seemed to assert, doesn’t exist any more in this country.
First it was for the primary kids…then the bans were extended to middle schoolers. Too bad if an 11-year-old girl wanted information about puberty – BANNED! Too bad if a curious kid wanted to read the highly regarded book Maus: the mice in the book were – shock! – naked! For shame! Can’t have kids seeing that.
This movement seems to be advancing from two epicenters: Florida and Texas, both also centers for Christian Nationalism, defined by NPR as a movement “to make [our country] great again in terms of being a Christian nation.” We’ve all heard about Florida’s “ban the gay” laws. They are nearly as bad here in Texas. Some Texas school boards have banned Harry Potter books (for “mysticism and paganism”); others, anything to do with slavery. One major complaint was that “the story (Charlotte’s Web) portrayed talking animals that can communicate and act just like humans.”
And now, it seems, the corruption has moved on to South Carolina, and turned to Holocaust denial, as the powers there have banned a graphic novel for middle schoolers titled We Survived the Holocaust – as inappropriate for their age group.
This prompts the question: when is it appropriate for kids to learn that just one lifetime ago, nearly all the Jews of Europe – including their children – were killed? When should they learn that not all adults are straight? That, until 160 years ago, the ancestors of their Black neighbors were enslaved? And who makes those decisions? Is there a one-size-fits-all answer to each of these questions, as the book banners propose? Or is it more “appropriate” for the kids and their parents to make those decisions?
