This is not going to be funny.
I sometimes visit Veronica Roth's tumblr ( http://theartofnotwriting.tumblr.com/ ) and this morning, she had posted a response to an article about how a parent in Charleston lobbied for a book, Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers, to be removed as an option from a summer reading list for her freshman daughter. Here's the link to the original article: After parent outcry....
The mother's complaint regarding the book was that the way it presented issues of bullying, drugs, and sex was 'destructive' to kids. She wanted to read the book with her daughter and made it to page 74 before she decided it was inappropriate. While I applaud her for wanting to read the same book as her daughter, I am also disappointed.
There was a time when I would have been furious. Earlier this year, parents in Meridian, Idaho lobbied for Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to be removed from an additional reading list. I believe the reason was that the book talked about masturbation. This school district is not the first in the nation to ban Alexie's book but Meridian is close to home for me. And I was furious with those parents, just like I was furious when my mom told me one of my friends wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter because it had wizards and this somehow offended God.
The unbelievable arrogance of people who think that they know best about what is appropriate in books is staggering to me. Now I am not saying that parents don't have the right to tell their kids if they aren't old enough to read something. There are certainly kids out there who might pick up books they aren't emotionally ready to read. But the key word is their kids. Just because a parent believes a book is inappropriate does not give them the right say it is inappropriate for every single kid in a school district. And given that both of these books were choices and not required reading, their reaction seems even more ridiculous and makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs.
Do they think by banning a book with bullying in it will mean their kid never witnesses bullying, never bullies? Do they think by banning a book that mentions oral sex their kid will never hear it at school, on the Internet or on TV? Do they think by banning a book that talks about masturbation their kid won't do it? Don't they realize that the best writers, the ones who write books English teachers choose, write things that are true about the world? Don't they understand that no matter what they believe, banning a book is by definition forcing those beliefs onto someone else's kid, a kid who is trying to figure out who they are and what they believe? Don't they see the damage of taking away those choices?
Yes, there was a time when it would have made me furious.
But now when I see that parents have banned a book from being read in school, I cannot help but smile after I let my initial anger wash away. This country does not support censorship and so even if a book is banned in every school district, it will still be available in book stores and in libraries. If a kid wants to read it, they will find a way to read it.
Because there is power in reading and I think these parents know it. They know how powerful books can be and it scares them. But to be afraid of books, of reading, is so sad. The best books are the ones that crack open your heart and examine the pieces of your soul that spill out. They are the books we hid flashlights in our rooms for, so that we could stay up late on a school night reading. They are the books that let us cry for characters when we can't cry for ourselves. They are the books that let us know that it's going to be okay, because someone else has been where we are and they made it out.
I have come to think of getting a book banned as a badge of honor. Because if someone somewhere was scared enough by what was written in that book, it must mean that it is true.
And at the end of the day, people are scared by the uncomfortable truths that come from being human.
