Banned Books: One Parent's Perspective

Okay, so there's been a lot of talk this week about banned books, not only here on the League, but everywhere.

This is a hard topic for me, and I'll tell you why. I'm apathetic. I know, some of you are going to hammer me in the comments. How can you be an author and be apathetic about this? Don't you believe in having books available for everyone?

I do. I also believe that parents have the right to choose what media comes into their homes and is viewed by their minor children. I believe we live in a country where some people have louder voices than others, and sometimes those people get laws changed, or acts passed, or books banned.

Those people aren't horrible, awful people. They're people who believe they're doing what's right to protect their children.

Does it mean I support them?

Not really. I want to be able to choose for myself and for my children, so I automatically balk at someone telling me that a book is "bad" for whatever reason. I want to decide for myself.

Does it mean I don't support them?

Again, not really. I want to be able to ban anything from my house that I don't deem appropriate for me and my children.

Basically, I don't want anyone telling me what to like or not like, what to believe or not believe, and what to read or not read.

I know this is 2009's BBW poster. But it's my favorite one.

I support Banned Books Week as outlined in the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom: Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose and the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular, stressing the importance of ensuring the availability of those viewpoints to all who wish to read them. It is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of American Publishers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Association of College Stores. It is endorsed by the Library of Congress' Center for the Book.

While some books I read I don't particularly like (for whatever reason) and I don't let my still-maturing children read, that doesn't mean I want to eliminate the choice for everyone.

I want everyone to have the ability to choose what they should read, and what they should provide for their children to read. To me, that's what Banned Books Week does.

I know not everyone thinks the way I do. They do ban books. To me, it's simply because they have a louder voice than I do, and need to be heard. Also--it's their right to exercise. If they don't want to read a book, so be it. If they don't want their children to be exposed to that book, that's their choice too.

But as a reader and a parent, I can still choose to read and provide books for my children.

What do you think? Have I missed the mark of Banned Books Week?

Banning Reality

The ALA lists of frequently challenged books fascinate me—as do the reasons people cite in their objections. Take the Top 10 Challenged Books for 2010:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson; 
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie; 
3. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; 
4. Crank, by Ellen Hopkins; 
5. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins;  
6. Lush, by Natasha Friend; 
7. What My Mother Doesn't Know, by Sonya Sones; 
8. Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich; 
9. Revolutionary Voices, edited by Amy Sonnie; 
10. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

Most of these have been challenged for violence, language, drug references, or sexuality. [ALA has graphs of challenges by year, reason, initiator, etc. for the last twenty years.]

However, the one that really surprised me was #8: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. This book is nonfiction—and about real life experiences of the working poor.  The author spends a year doing a series of minimum-to-low wage jobs. She starts from scratch with each experience, not using any of her own comfortably middle-class resources. Morgan Spurlock did the same thing on his show 30 Days—for 30 days. Ehrenreich did it for a year, and she worked in different areas of the country and at different types of jobs. She waited tables, cleaned hotel rooms, emptied bedpans at a nursing home, and worked at Walmart.   Nickel and Dimed is the story of her experience—and those of the people she meets along the way.

Many schools use this book in personal finance / getting ready for the real world kind of courses. So why has this been challenged? How could one object to the lives of waitresses and Walmart cashiers? Well, one of the challenges cited "book's profanity, offensive references to Christianity, and biased portrayal of capitalism."  Another complained that the book promoted socialism.  [Marshall University libraries did a nice breakdown of challenges for each book.]

I can understand objecting to profanity. (This book was intended for an adult audience, after all.) I don’t remember if/how she criticized Christianity in the book, so I can’t comment on that.  But a biased portrayal of capitalism? Promoting socialism?

What Nickel and Dimed promotes is empathy. The author finds out, for instance, that it’s nearly impossible on a diner waitress’ salary to save up enough for first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit (not to mention utilities). This is why most of her co-workers lived in a motel, something which she didn’t think made economic sense until she was in that situation.  Or, as the author writes on her blog:

A Florida woman wrote to tell me that, before reading it, she’d always been annoyed at the poor for what she saw as their self-inflicted obesity. Now she understood that a healthy diet wasn’t always an option.

This is one of those books (imho) that everyone should read, regardless of political viewpoint or economic status. Or age.

What do you guys think? Are political and/or economic viewpoints valid reasons for challenging books? [Not that I think any reasons are truly valid. Maybe reasonable is the right word. Maybe.]

What Books Would I Ban?

People who want to ban books are a little hard for me to understand. I hear about them and I think "Are your personal beliefs really built on such shaky foundations that they can't be challenged? Are you really so scared of ideas?"

Detect a little self satisfaction in there? Yeah me too. I mean, surely I would never be so weak as to consider banning a book. Surely I'm better than these heathens. Right? Eager to pierce my own smug certainty, I decided that for Banned Book week I would try to find a scenario where things might not be so clear. 

There was a case in Fairfax, VA where a religious group tried to get works with an anti-gay message into libraries to counter what they felt was a pro-gay bias. They were rebuffed and quickly cried that their books were being banned. The exact details of the story don't quite fit the typical banning story. These were books that didn't fit the libraries inclusion guidelines for technical reasons like not having at least two positive reviews from reputable sources. Also, not being included in a library's collection is not quite the same as being in it and then being thrown out.

But, details aside, it made me think. Hypothetically speaking, if these anti-gay books did fit the libraries guidelines and were made a part of the collection how would I feel about that? What if I had a gay son or daughter and these were in their school?

Like most writers I'm viscerally against the banning or censoring of books. When the ideals that are being attacked are my own, I'm the first to call wannabe book banners cowards who are terrified of ideas. Repressive ideologues. 

But I'm also a huge supporter of gay, lesbian and transgender rights. Pro-gay marriage, pro gays in the military. All of that. I think the kind of crap these anti-gay groups pedal is repugnant and helps create an atmosphere that leads to bullying and self hatred and eventually the rash of suicides we've seen from gay teens.

It's tempting to tell myself that these anti-gay books are different in some essential way from the pro gay books my opposite numbers would like to ban. Anti-gay books abuse teens. They can help create real physical danger. I believe that. But the thing is, I know that people on the opposite side of the argument from me are just as sure that  "pro-gay" works irreparably harm kids as I am that "anti-gay" works do the same. Their desire to ban is motivated by feelings as intense and honestly felt as my own. I can disagree with them, I can say I'm right and they're wrong, but I can't deny the sincerity of their beliefs.

So, what to do? Would I work to kick these books out of libraries? 

When I think I wouldn't I feel like I'm betraying all those abused gay kids, people who are having a pretty rough time of things right now. When I think I would I feel like a complete hypocrite.

I guess on balance I'd rather feel like a hypocrite but no matter how many ways I work around the idea I just can't get comfortable with it.

What about you all? What would you do in this situation? Can you imagine a situation that would make you a book banner?

Banning books doesn't stop reading them.

By the time I was twelve, I'd read through most of the children's room books in our small library. I wanted to read Gone with the Wind. The head librarian actually called my grandmother to see if it was all right for me to check it out. (Of course, she said yes!) I don't recall it being particularly racy - but I did love it! And, even if I hadn't been allowed to check it out, I would've spent some time in the stacks reading it!

Banning books isn't going to stop them from being read. If you want to read a banned book, it would be nearly impossible to NOT find it. And, if you find it - you're going to read it!

Fear is the motivation behind book banning. With parents in particular - the fear of losing control over their children. Well... as a parent with grown children, I can categorically state - you will eventually lose control! And, those children will have their own ideas, they'll make up their own minds, and they will live their own lives. However, if you want to be a part of that process - reading these books alongside your children & discussing the ideas found within will do more to cultivate understanding and to forward the education and enlightenment of our kids.

Book banning - I'm agin' it!

Banned Books in a Dystopian World

There's a reason why there are so many banned books in dystopian worlds. In fact, if you look at dystopian lit, a lot of times one of the first things mentioned in world building is banned books.

FAHRENHEIT 451: Books of all kinds are banned--in fact, Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which books are burned, hence the title.

DELIRIUM: Only approved works are allowed to be read--and often books are interpreted differently from how we look at them now, such as ROMEO AND JULIET, which in this world is considered a tale of warning about the madness love brings.

MATCHED: While grandparents might recall some banned works fondly, the kids being raised in this society are kept sheltered from literature so much that there is a list of 100 approved poems...and those are the only ones acceptable to read.

And on and on and on. Sometimes, it's simply a matter that the characters don't have time to read--they're too busy fighting to save the world. But in many, many cases, books and literature of all kinds are targeted specifically by the government and banned...often times with the caveat that reading such banned literature will result in your death--or worse.

So why are banned books so often wearing a bright red-and-white target symbol on their covers in dystopian worlds?

Because books are dangerous.


Look at that pile of bound paper on your bookshelf. Every single page is a bullet, every cover a holster. Books are possibly the most dangerous weapon in the world.

Because books are ideas.


Every book--the ones you love, the ones you hate, the ones you love to hate--every book has ideas in it. Every word, every comma, every "the end." Ideas. Ideas. There are so many ideas that they leak off the page and right into your head. There are the ideas the author intends to write. There are the ideas that author didn't intend to write, but are still there. There are the ideas that the reader thinks of as he's reading. There are the ideas the reader thinks of for long afterwards, little seeds of ideas that plant themselves in the gray matter of your brain and grow and grow and grow and grow and never, ever quit.

And ideas are dangerous.

That--that--is why books are banned in dystopian worlds.

And honestly? It's why books are banned in the real world, too.

People--not all people, but some very narrow-minded, angry, scared people--they know that ideas are dangerous. And they don't want people thinking them. It might be because they disagree with that idea and don't want that idea to grow like a tree in other people's minds. It might be because they just don't like ideas at all. But either way, the simple fact remains. When book-banners attack books, they aren't attacking the paper or the ink. That would be silly. They are attacking the ideas. Book-banners are idea-banners. Thought-banners. Individuality-banners.

Freedom-banners.

And that is why I fight them. That is why they are wrong. That is why I will never be in favor of banning books.

Because I love ideas.

Is Dystopia Too Bleak?

As an author of a dystopian novel, I've been thinking a lot about the genre, and the topics and content in post-apocalyptic novels.

Sometimes I see people talking about how bleak these types of novels are. Depressing, sometimes. Is this true?

Yes and no.

I find people fascinating. There are so many differences, from what books we like to what we find attractive, to what we believe. Difference is what makes each of us unique; it's what gives the world spice.

Because, really, one person’s idea of a perfect, ideal existence is often another person’s nightmare.

Dystopian novels examine these differences. They peer into what makes us different, and they peel back the layers of what we believe. Each person will get something different from each dystopian tale, because they have the opportunity to apply it to their own lives, in their own unique situation.

And to me, that's a very good thing.

Do you think dystopian novels are too bleak? What do you see in them?

Adaptations we've loved and loathed

Like everyone else in the world, I’m reading George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series right now. (I’m on number 3, Storm of Swords.)  You think I’m kidding about the everyone else part? I09  reported that Martin boosted August book sales pretty much by himself.  In my local library system, every single book of the series in every format (even on Overdrive) had a very long waiting period.  It’s not really a surprise: HBO series plus long-awaited 5th book = big sales of all books.  And now that the series got 13 nominations, and several Emmy wins, the wait at the library just got longer.

I’ve only seen 1.5 episodes of the HBO series, but it was enough to make me want to read the book. And now that I’ve read the first book, the series seems like a very good adaptation—which is a relief. I do plan to watch the rest once it hits Netflix.


On the other hand, I cannot watch True Blood. I’m a huge Charlaine Harris fan, but I hate how much Alan Ball has strayed from the books. I understand his rationale, but still. (And please, some of these new plots seem to come straight out of the bad arcs of Dark Shadows.)

So I hope some of the dystopian adaptations planned for the near future ( cough, Hunger Games) don’t stray too awfully from the originals.   I loved Jeanne Duprau’s Ember series but the movie, which bore only a passing resemblance to the first book, seriously sucked.

What are some of your favorite and/or least favorite adaptations of science fiction / fantasy books?