[Happy Banned Books Week! In high school I had
a deeply nerdy sweatshirt
that read “Celebrate Freedom: Read a Banned Book”; this week I’ll do so by
AmericanStudying books that have been frequently banned, in the past or
recently. And yeah, read a Banned Book this week!]
On why the
concept of “banned books” isn’t quite as obviously wrong as we might think.
You’re not likely
to find a more lifelong opponent of banning books, and I do mean lifelong—as I
noted above, one of my favorite sweatshirts in high school (what can I say, I was
an uber-nerd) read “Celebrate Freedom, Read a Banned Book” and then listed a group of works that have been banned
at one time or another. So it wasn’t easy for me to write the teaser sentence
above, believe me. But the truth is that in our conversations about banning and
censorship we tend to conflate a couple pretty different actions: attempting to remove books from schools and/or libraries (a practice that I thoroughly oppose); and advocating
that we not teach books in particular classes, for certain grade levels, and so
on. The latter, which is generally known instead as “challenging” those books, is certainly complicated and often problematic, but is not the same as
banning the book from those institutions.
For a case in
point, we could go to the ur-source for such conversations: Mark Twain’s Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884). Within a year of
its 1885 American publication the novel was banned by the Concord Public Library, the first of many such bannings. But even if we agree with the premise
that the CPL and other banning institutions were mistaken (and I do), it
doesn’t necessarily follow that Huck
is (for example) perfectly fine to teach in middle or high school English
classrooms (both places where it has been taught with some frequency). On that question I tend to agree with my Dad, Stephen Railton, who has argued that the book’s defenders have short-changed genuine questions about its
language and racial depictions, particularly when it comes to the challenges of
presenting them to younger readers. Which is to say, challenges of Huck in the classroom not only aren’t
the same as banning or censorship—they also have, at least, a leg to stand on.
And then there’s
the case of Lois Lowry’s The
Giver (1993). Lowry’s award-winning novel is one of the most acclaimed young adult books of the last few decades,
and so it stands to reason that it would be a good choice to teach in middle
school classrooms. But while the novel does not include unintentionally
problematic or objectional material like Twain’s book, it does create an
incredibly complex and dark dystopian world, one in which characters, situations,
and themes are far more sophisticated and troubling than in many other young
adult works. There’s something—a great deal, in fact—to be said for teaching
precisely such complex works, provided there is sufficient time and space for
the teacher and students to discuss and analyze and engage with those
complexities. But there’s also something to be said for parents and organizations
worrying that, in the absence of those resources, Lowry’s novel will affect
students more negatively than positively. I don’t agree with the challenges that Lowry’s novel has received, but I understand them—and they shouldn’t all be
dismissed as simple censorship.
Next banned book
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Banned books you’d highlight?
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