A Poem Highlights Banned Books Week

This week is Banned Books Week here in the U.S., an event sponsored primarily by the American Library Association (ALA) to draw attention to recent acts (and attempted acts) of book banning. You might be familiar with the well-publicized challenges to classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, or the more recent attempts to muzzle Harry Potter and (further) benight Philip Pullman's series His Dark Materials. Not so newsworthy are recent challenges to Gossip Girl (there was a book?!) and And Tango Makes Three, a book I haven't read that appears be about gay penguins.

This year, the event features work by Ellen Hopkins, a young adult author who was recently banned from speaking at an Oklahoma middle school when a parent complained about her novels Glass and Crank, which are based on her daughter's past addiction to crystal meth. According to the school superintendent, the school banned her out of concern for the appropriateness of the subject matter for its students.

Hopkins offered her own opinion on her blog.

"I can see a parent's concern. So fine. Don't let YOUR child read them. However, NO ONE PERSON should be able to tell other people what their children can or can't read. I have received thousands of messages from readers (and yes, many are middle grade), thanking me for: turning them away from drugs; insight into their parents'/other family members' addictions; allowing them to live vicariously through my characters, so they don't actually have to experience those things; literally saving their lives. Who has the right to keep books that do these things off the shelves? And the bigger question, who has the right to keep ANY books off the shelves?"

Hopkins also responded angrily in verse, with a poem called "Manifesto" which has become something of a manifesto for this year's event.

To you zealots and bigots and false
patriots who live in fear of discourse.
You screamers and banners and burners
who would force books
off shelves in your brand name
of greater good.

You say you're afraid for children,
innocents ripe for corruption
by perversion or sorcery on the page.
But sticks and stones do break
bones, and ignorance is no armor.
You do not speak for me,
and will not deny my kids magic
in favor of miracles.

You say you're afraid for America,
the red, white and blue corroded
by terrorists, socialists, the sexually
confused. But we are a vast quilt
of patchwork cultures and multi-gendered
identities. You cannot speak for those
whose ancestors braved
different seas.

You say you're afraid for God,
the living word eroded by Muhammed
and Darwin and Magdalene.
But the omnipotent sculptor of heaven
and earth designed intelligence.
Surely you dare not speak
for the father, who opens
his arms to all.

A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear.

Hopkins angry, passionate poem--as with many angry, passionate poems--is something of an easy target. An editorial in Friday's Wall Street Journal took advantage of the poem's hyperbole (is anyone really trying to torch every book?, etc.), and made the point that even if a book is removed from a school library, it's still readily available at a public library or book store. And our internet culture certainly changes the debate: you can't ban books on Amazon.com.

So maybe Banned Books Week can be fairly characterized as erring on the safe side (the ALA reports that just 513 challenges to books took place last year, and the vast majority of those were unsuccessful). But while it might seem like much ado about nothing much, I think most appreciate the ALA's attempts to draw attention to that nothing much. I certainly do. Now can we all just agree to keep Glenn Beck out of this?

Comments

[dahpunkster]

they banned anastacia krupnick which was a favorite book of mine. I am not sure why . I didn't find anything offensive in its pages other than she acted like a real child. Which is missing in alot of children's books.

[Jude2004]

As a high school librarian, I've never been able to force myself to read one of Ellen Hopkins' books. She seems to me like an e e cummings wannabe (e.e. is one of my favorite poets, so I find this especially annoying). But it's not as though her books stay on the shelves long enough for me to read them. I have multiple copies which are always checked out, with long waiting lists of potential readers. The best thing about my annual banned books week display is the way it sparks conversations with students about censorship. It's one of my favorite displays of the year for that reason. In my conservative district, Phillip Pullman's books were pulled off the shelves by an overzealous aide based on an email; other books have been "banned" by overzealous principals. Even though it doesn't seem like a huge problem based on the number of official challenges, the problem is much worse than it appears. Also, not every kid can make it to the public library (ours charges fines and isn't easy to get to; I charge no fines). Not every kid can afford to purchase the books they want on Amazon. My library may be the only one they have.

[carpinter]

Readers pf the Huffington Post should know that the main Banned Books Week sponsor – the American Library Association – has failed to defend the most notable recent victims of censorship.

In Cuba, inquiring minds have challenged state censorship by establishing dozens of independent neighborhood libraries at their own expense, offering uncensored literature to fellow citizens. Volunteer librarians in Cuba are being assaulted, persecuted and imprisoned, some sentenced to more than twenty years.

Out of devotion to the Revolution and its literacy campaign now half a century past, ALA violates its own principles by denying and covering up Cuba's violations of the freedom to read, refusing direct appeals to join the worldwide human rights consensus that demands release of the library prisoners. Although the Association has reported book burning in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Canada, Vietnam and the Republic of Georgia on its “Book Burning in the 21st Century” website, it refuses to post any information about Cuba’s ongoing police raids, beatings and the Cuban court documents of 2003 (available at the “Rule of Law and Cuba” web site) that contain orders to incinerate or destroy entire library collections, including biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

For more details on this betrayal of intellectual freedom, readers can see the “Friends of Cuban Libraries” website on the Internet.

[ChrisWarren]

I know we are 25 years beyond 1984 but I can't help recalling the 'big brother' culture and the struggles of those who fought to overthrow the oppression.

I also can't help thinking, paradoxically, of the way in which modern society favours minority groups.

Well done ALA but at a broader level - ' are we several steps down the road to losing the plot?'

Chris Warren
Author and Freelance Writers
Randolph's Challenge Book One - The Pendulum Swings

[slpmom]

My kids went to a private school where they were REQUIRED to read a banned book in October every year in middle school. If you look at the lists of banned and challenged books, it shows that some people give children absolutely no credit for common sense - ability to tell reality from fantasy; or a sense of humor -- ability to laugh at Junie B. Jones' grammar and malopropisms. Yes, Junie B. Jones has been challenged, because it may corrupt children's grammar! Give kids some credit and some freedom to make their own choices. Columnist Susan Reimer once said, "Prisons aren't full of kids who read 'Goosebumps'. They're full of kids who can't read."

[blit]

One major problem of the censorship issue is some folks use extreme examples and attach some sort of predicted behavior to the example they use, and then take it a step further to include conservative folks as ignorant idiots. So then, predicted behavior and stereotypes become the issue and censorship does not. In doing so, these same people who use these examples are proving how ignorant they are because no one can stereotype better than they can. I can tell you that the Nazis were seething pigs out to destroy another race out of pure hatred, and that was born in stereotypes of the other race as inferior. The Nazis believed they were superior in all ways and would just shoot or burn anyone who was inferior to them. Those inferior folks had no voice. The next step to genocide is the degredation of another race in terms of forbidding human rights among other things. I'm sure Nazis ate, slept, and went to the bathroom like the rest of us, and that does not make us all Nazis. Another example of weak reasoning mentioned above that has nothing to do with censorship but everything to do with some sort of connection, a mysterious one, between Nazis and censorship, in other words another psychic prediction of behavior stemming from the example of actually burning books. The ALA should moderate the issue and not dictate that censorship is a negative thing.

[blit]

Public libraries are a manifestation of the local culture to which they belong. I understand the argument for dissemination of intellectual freedom in all forms to an extent. I can not use the Internet and Television, and I can teach my kids what is wrong to watch and/or read, and that is my form of intellectual freedom. The argument and source of contention is at what point does a community allow obsene materials in their libraries, which the libraries are reflections of the local culture.

The citizens who pay the bill for the library to identify, acquire, organize, and disseminate information have a right to be concerned about how there money is being spent. The same goes for K-12 schools. The citizens pay and have a right, freedom, and liberty to object to the content of materials in public schools/libraries. In other words the right to free speech applies to all people for and against censorship. Intellectual freedom applies to all people for and against censorship.

My point is that I am not for or against censorship as a concept, but I am for censorship in very specific instances. It would be unfair to run the government without checks and balances, so there is no reason why the ALA should not develop a good system that hears both sides of a censorship "case" and makes a fair, considerate judgment.

[jhlibrarian]

Hi John,
Yes--thos

[SafeLibraries]

These Banned Books Week resources may also be of interest:

"American Library Association Shamed," by Nat Hentoff, Laurel Leader-Call, 2 March 2007.

"Banned Books Week and the ALA," by Dennis Ingolfsland, The Recliner Commentaries, 4 August 2009.

"'Censors' Are So Scary," by Annoyed Librarian, Library Journal, 6 October 2008.

"Finding Censorship Where There Is None," by Mitchell Muncy, Wall Street Journal, 24 September 2009, p.W13.

"National Hogwash Week," as coined by Thomas Sowell. And this resource has a long, updated list of BBW-related articles.

"US Libraries Hit Back Over Challenges to Kids Books," by Sara Hussein, Agence France-Presse [AFP], 6 September 2009.

[jsaul]

I am no fan of censorship - I think every work of art and literature has something to offer us.

That said, "Manifesto" has a fine message, but it is seriously bad poetry. Painfully bad. Perhaps I just object to the post-modern poetry style where there is no rhyme or meter. Its just a series of brain farts.

To demonstrate, I will reformat my above post to be a "poem":

I am no fan of censorship
i think every work of art
and literature has something to offer us
that said, "Manifesto" has a fine message,
but it is seriously bad poetry.
Painfully bad.

Perhaps I just object
to the post-modern poetry style
where there is no rhyme or meter.
Its just a series of brain farts.

[hilaritee]

John,

And Tango Makes Three has actually been the most banned book for three years in a row.....you should read it. Everyone should. Children's books are often the most frequent victims of bannings and challenges in the U. S. Censorship, it would seem, is a family value.

[OldSkooler]

Art can't hurt you.
Ignorance sure can.

Since we're celebrating poetry, here's a little ditty by Dorothy Parker that would probably provoke all manner of backlash today but back then I think more people understood irony. When taken tongue-in-cheek I think it conveys exactly how I feel about book-burners and book-banners:

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Putting bullets through the brain
Of the folks that give me pain.

If I had some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon
So does fate our pleasure step on.
And they are alive and well,
Who should be, by rights, In Hell.

And, to exit this rabble-rousing post with perhaps a bit more grace, here's a wonderful quote from Tolstoy's essay, My Religion:

"I was driven from the Church, by the strangeness of its dogmas, and the approval and the support which it gave to persecutions, to the death penalty, to wars, and by the intolerance common to all sects; but my faith was chiefly shattered by the indifference of the Church to what seemed to me to be essential in the teachings of Jesus, and by its avidity for what seemed to me not essential."

[TheKurgan]

Guess who burned books? Fascists and Nazis. And the step from banning to burning is a very short one indeed. I guess it's not surprising that the American Nazi Party (whoops, the Republicans, sorry) are looking to their forebears for literary guidance.

I am not a seething degenerate just because I read Catcher in the Rye, and millions of kids today are not devil worshipping heathens simply because they read Harry Potter, threw a few dice in a basement, or happened to ask about magic.

This is ludicrous. If you don't like the books that are ALLOWED in this country, leave and go form your own. Seems we did that once before....it resulted in America. I hear Antarctica is nice this time of year (summer there).

The cold will match your political intelligence.

God, what a bunch of morons.

[fpie]

The famous quote about the holocaust could truthfully be amended to: First they came for the books.

[princeza]

First books are banned, then books are burned. There's a part of me that can't believe this happens in our country, and there's a part of me that isn't at all surprised. And yes, even though these books can be found elsewhere, they should still be found and available in a school library. I guess in a way it's easy for me to say since I don't have children, but I've been a child whose parents could hardly keep up with the amount of books I read, and I never had my parents say "No, you can't read this one." I read what I wanted, with my parents' blessing.

Especially now with the widespread use the of the internet and video games and cell phones, we as a society are reading less and less. Isn't it better to encourage our children to read, to learn, to develop an imagination and to think for themselves?