It’s Banned Books Week again? Well, Happy Banned Books Week! Wait, do you say that? Or is that like “Happy Yom Kippur”?
I shouldn’t joke — Banned Books Week is important, bringing attention to the plight of schools and libraries being forced to yank books off their shelves, perhaps pressured by glittery-eyed religious zealots and prudish church ladies (Look, the mice are nekkid!”).
Not that we need reminding. With thousands of efforts across the country, it seems every week is Banned Books Week. Banning efforts are on the rise. Pen America records 3,362 attempts to ban books across the country, a third more than the year before. Librarians who defend their collections are harassed.
At least nobody is piling the books in the Operalplatz and burning them. Yet.
We in Illinois of course can be proud to be the only state that passed a law against book banning — starting next year, any library that pulls books for “partisanal or doctrinal” reasons can become ineligible for state funds.
I’m sure some folks consider that oppression. What about their religion and their right to impose it on everybody else? Book banning is attractive because it doesn’t seem, at first glance, to be the same as, oh, demanding everybody in class be baptized. But that’s exactly what it is. Puff away all the underlined prurient passages and imaginary harm that book banners focus on, and what they’re doing is insisting everybody view the world through their keyhole.
What I want to know is, where are the victims of these dangerous books? The children plunged into emotional turmoil after reading a Judy Blume book? If only parents wildly indignant about edgy books could manage to get equally worked up about real problems that result in actual damage — school shootings come to mind. How come the same parents who shrug off the very real prospect of their kids being murdered at school line up at board meetings to scream about “Gender Queer”? It’s a puzzlement.
As a rule, I don’t like to advocate for the impossible, But I want to suggest a new tradition. Parents who want to pull books from school libraries ought to be required to first show up at their kid’s classroom, when class is in session, with a quart of black paint and a narrow brush — say an inch wide. While the kids are inside learning, the parent must stand outside the windows and slowly, one by one, paint them black.
Because that is what book banning is. Narrowing the view of young people. Blindering them. The same logic used to ban a book — it has a gay character, it shows a piece of history that might make me think and, ouch, thinking hurts — can be used to block out the windows of a classroom. Otherwise, who knows who could walk by? The kids might look out and see two squirrels having sex. Can’t have that.
The sad thing is, parents would do it. I hope the schools use watercolor, so it can be washed off.
In closing, let’s not fall into the trap of focusing on the blame-others part of a problem while ignoring the larger dynamic where we all are culpable. The sad truth is, the most effective, widespread book banners are individuals themselves. The average American reads a book a month, supposedly, but I think that’s really one American reading a cozy mystery every week and three others reading no books at all).
What good is being free to read books if you never do?
I swung by the Harold Washington Library Center in the Loop last week, doing research, and was surprised to find the place almost empty at 9:30 on a Thursday morning, except for a scattering of individuals who ... shall we say ... did not seem there for the books.
What was the last book you read? (“Alone on the Moon: A Soviet Lunar Odyssey” by Chicago author Gerald Brennan, a gripping alternate history tale where the Apollo moon landing failed and the Russians are the first to land on the moon. “This guy knows Russians,” I thought. Finished that, and started on Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s “The Iliad.”)
The best way to celebrate Banned Books Week is to read a banned book. I’ve never read anything by Toni Morrison (judge me harshly if you must), whose books are often challenged. So on Tuesday, I started reading “The Bluest Eye.”
“... since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.” Exactly.
