It’s Banned Books Week—let’s celebrate. Celebrate what? The freedom to read, and to read what we want, no matter if someone else disagrees with what the book is saying or the ideas it’s promoting.
I remember when I was a child hearing the expression “banned in Boston.” Boston was a prudish town then, and certain plays, books, and I suppose movies—although censorship within the movie industry itself was still pretty strong in those days—were not allowed to be read, viewed, sold, or otherwise purveyed in Boston.
But is not just the Boston of years gone by that saw censorship of books. There are towns even today that will not allow their libraries or schools to offer books they may find objectionable by their local standards.
The reasons vary: The books may put forth ideas deemed dangerous or simply politically unpalatable. The books may encourage kids in ways of thinking that the so-called “city fathers” (note that the expression is not and never has been “city mothers”) object to. One such that comes to mind is the groundbreaking Heather Has Two Mommies, about a girl growing up in a household headed by her lesbian mom and the mom’s domestic partner.
But it is not just kids’ books that have been banned. Libraries have banned Hitler’s treatise, Mein Kampf, because of the hatred it spews.
I revile Hitler and all he stood for—yet I will stand up for the right of the reading public to peruse his book if they so choose. Making the book unavaiable will not destroy anti-Semitism (or his hatred for the other groups he also tried to exterminate, including Gypsies and gays). You know what they say about forbidden fruit: It tastes the sweetest. Making Hitler’s treatise illegal or illicit only serves to make it seem more appealing to certain elements of the population.
But it is not just Mein Kampf or Heather Has Two Mommies that have been banned, or that various groups have tried to ban. Think back to the sixties, if you were around then, and the books that exalted the drug-fueled hippie culture. There were attempts—some of them successful, others not—to ban books that glorified said culture, especially but not only the books that promoted the use of drugs. It was not just the “turn on” part of the hippie mantra, “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” that offended or alarmed the more staid and more easily shocked members of the older generation.
The fact is, there are those of many persuasions and many political affiliations who feel—wrongly—that the best way to fight ideas and ideals that they oppose is to silence those who would promulgate them, whether to adults or to children and whether through factual books or fictional ones. They are the Big Brother whom Orwell wrote about. (If you’ve never read 1984, I recommend you do.) And inevitably banning books is high on their to-do list.
We must all and always fight such censorship. We must stand up for the right of books of any sort to be published, providing they are not slanderous. We can refuse to buy them or read them. That is certainly our right. I am among the minority who have not read Fifty Shades of Gray. I am not interested in reading about a woman who subjugates herself, however voluntarily, to another human in a slave/master relationship and endures whatever type of abuse, be it physical or mental. Yet I would challenge anyone who suggested removing the book from library shelves or, even worse, making its publication a criminal act.
It’s national Banned Books Week. Let us celebrate the freedom to read whatever we want, regardless of how odious or otherwise offensive someone else might find that particular book, magazine, treatise, or other reading matter might be.
This is America, the land of the free. And while the cost of the book may not be free (we authors, our publishers, and the others involved in the production of books need to eat), the books—all books—should be free of impediments to their availability.
For the most part, they are. Where that is not the case, we need to fight whatever individuals or entities are promulgating squashing their availability.
And Banned Books Week reminds us that as long as people or groups continue to try to ban books that offend their particular sensibilities, we need to keep up the fight.
Yes, you are free to disagree with the content or premise of a book, as you are free to disagree with the fellow or woman at the office, or on the next barstool, or in your social circle who puts forth ideas that you don’t agree with. But in a free country, he or she still has the right to express his/her feelings or beliefs. So do authors. Banning books is never the answer.