I've discovered many wonderful books, mostly in the young adult category, reading news about what's banned in public schools these days: “Gender Queer,” the fascinating and disturbing graphic novel about the nonbinary author's journey of self-discovery; “Dear Martin,” in which a black teenager who is wrongfully arrested while trying to help his drunk ex-girlfriend get home writes an imaginary letter to Martin Luther King Jr.; and “Paradise Lost,” John Milton's 17th-century epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.
Hope for?
It is not a joke.
opinion columnist
Robin Abcarian
Late last year, according to the Orlando Sentinel, “Paradise Lost” was one of 673 titles removed from public school classroom shelves in an Orlando-area district in response to new state laws requiring Librarians and teachers check all books in the classroom. and banish those that are pornographic or represent “sexual conduct.”
As the Sentinel explained, “The new state training…warns them to 'err on the side of caution' when approving books and warns them that they may face criminal penalties and the loss of their teaching certificates if they approve inappropriate books.”
Florida's censorship efforts are part of a book-banning frenzy sweeping the most conservative parts of our supposedly free-speech-loving country.
“We've had book bans in 30 states,” said Kasey Meehan, director of Freedom to Read at PEN America, which advocates for free expression and fights censorship. “Florida and Texas are leading the way, as are Missouri, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Utah,” she said.
In Idaho, librarians are so demoralized by the censorious political climate (one Buhl city official referred to the local librarian as a “barber”) that more than half recently told the state library association that they are thinking about leaving this field. according to the Idaho Capital Sun.
Primarily, the pressure to censor comes from the right, which has pushed for book bans under the banner of “parental rights.” Meehan told me that efforts originating on the left often involve protests against white authors who use the N-word. In 2020, the Burbank Unified School District removed some books from required reading lists, such as “To Kill a Harper Lee's “Mockingbird” and Mark Twain's “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” after parents complained that the books were racist. However, Burbank Supt. John Paramo told me Tuesday that they are still available in school and classroom libraries.
The books targeted by conservatives often feature characters who are not white or who are not straight.
In January 2022, a North Carolina father asked his school district to remove “Dear Martin” from the required reading list in his son's high school English class. Tim Reeves told a local television news station that he was not opposed to the novel's message about racial profiling, per se. Rather, he opposed the liberal use of vulgar words. “Words that start with the letter S”, as he himself said. “Words that start with the letter F.”
“Dr. Martin Luther King would not want vulgarity or sexual innuendos [to] “It will be used to teach the lesson about racism and brutality,” Reeves said. I do not know about that. It seems that King might have been more interested in ending racial discrimination than in caring about how fictional children speak.
Anyway, thanks to Reeves, I downloaded “Dear Martin,” the acclaimed debut novel by Nic Stone, a black woman whose father is a police officer. The book was inspired by the same events that inspired the Black Lives Matter movement: the police killings of unarmed black men and women. “I was wondering: what would do What would Dr. King say or do if he lived in our current social climate? Stone wrote in his author's note.
Thanks to the magic of my search function, I detected 10 F-words, 39 S-words, 30 “damns” and three “damns” in the text of “Dear Martin.”
As someone raising a teenager, that seemed about right to me. You should listen to how children talk when they think there are no adults around.
You might think that banning books is beneficial to a young author. Hey, all publicity is good publicity, right? But that's not the case, Meehan said.
“When your works are banned,” he told me, “it can have a significant impact on your income. Those authors are less likely to be invited to a school visit, a reading at the public library, or a Zoom classroom visit. “Those are income generators that children's literature authors depend on.”
If you're a famous author, like Ann Patchett, or perhaps a dead one, like Milton, a ban may not hurt at all. It might even help.
When Patchett learned this month, for example, that two of his books had been banned in Orange County, Florida, he trolled the censors on Instagram:
“Personally, it's a great day for me,” Patchett said. “My first novel, “The Patron Saint of Liars,” is about a home for single mothers in rural Kentucky. … They have the baby and put it up for adoption, just like they tell us to do in the state of Florida. In fact, I think this book would be required reading.” (His other banned novel, “Bel Canto,” features a hostage situation and ends with the death of the terrorists. With guns. “Maybe in the state of Florida that would be fine too, because they don't ban guns,” Patchett suggested.)
It's not just sexual, gender and racial issues that outrage some on the right, Meehan said. Parents have also banned books that include scenes of violence (the sci-fi classic “Dune” by Frank Herbert), sexual abuse (“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood), drug use (“The Perks of Being an outcast” by Stephen Chbosky) or suicide. (“Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher).
“It's the content that makes people uncomfortable,” Meehan said. “But isn't that the beauty of books?”
Is.
Just think about how much discomfort (and enlightenment) is conveyed by the most famous line from “Paradise Lost,” uttered by that great fictional character, Satan: “It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”
