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Banned books - a mistake being made again

  • Writer: The Mary Word
    The Mary Word
  • 3 days ago
  • 7 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

By Rose Cunningham



Every one of these titles is one I have on my bookshelf, or I have seen on a library bookshelf (either the Normo one or the Hornsby/Pennant Hills ones) in the last month or so. 


What else is common about each of them?

They have been banned in at least one school district in the US.


I love reading, writing and studying English and History, reading about writing and writing about reading. However, I’m not a fan of what I’ve read in the news lately. What topic have I been reading about? Book Banning… I don’t like it one bit.


Disappearing Bookshelves


In 2023 alone, the US saw over 10,000 books being banned from schools. PEN AMERICA is an organisation that tracks book bans (find the 2022, 2023 and 2024 spreadsheets here), recording about 15946 bans in 3 years. These numbers aren’t just statistics, nor should they be disregarded. I am insistent in the fact that literature is perhaps the best way to learns about the world, and to me, these bannings represent a concerted campaign to pull stories, ideas and identities from shelves and from lives, because how can we “learn from history” if we can’t even read it? Does that make us even more “doomed to repeat it”? I would think so. 


The American Library Association reported that 72% of the 2024 bans were initiated by school boards, elected officials and a mix of school and government administrators, with about 16% by parents and civilians themselves. Florida and Iowa are leading the charge, with 6537 and 3671 bans successful, respectively (according to the Excel sheets). The ALA reports that the most common reasons to ban books include “explicit language”, “unsuitable to any age group”, “offensive content”, “explicit material” and “violence.” Some are simply “divisive” or contain any “political or religious viewpoint.” The thing about this is that these rulings are vague. I consider pineapple on pizza a divisive topic (ask your friend group - trust me) but I entirely support the reading of Percy Jackson despite its banning in one Florida County for “paganism” (which is ironic given that Ancient Greek history is still being taught).


The power and "danger" of literature

Why do books get banned? It is rarely due to poor writing or irrelevancy. Instead, it is because books have the power to challenge, provoke and inspire - perhaps to disturb complacency, or bring a resolution to a world of upheaval. Literature is one of the oldest forms of self-expression. It can force us to question our assumptions, biases and more importantly, our own complacency.


Take Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” (challenged or banned at least 137 times - Atwood’s writings in general being one of the most restricted, if not the most challenged author in the US). It’s a dystopian novel that explores the consequences of authoritarianism, and the subjugation and oppression of women. Alternatively, consider Orwell’s “1984”, which gave us terms like “Big Brother” and “Newspeak” as ways to describe surveillance and the overbearing propaganda. If you’ve read either and come away feeling unsettled deep in your bones, that’s exactly the point. Cesar A. Cruz, a Mexican poet, is attributed with the saying “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable," and quite often, it does just that to oppressive regimes, which is exactly what makes literature so dangerous. Banning books doesn’t erase their message but it amplifies it, signaling the fear of what they represent: the possibility that someone, somewhere, might see some of their own world in a dystopia and question the world as it is.


This is why regimes, both past and present, have feared literature. They have had reason to. In Nazi Germany, books by communists, Jews and “Un-German” authors (the phrase “Un-American was used in the cold war too) were burnt in public squares. In the Soviet Union, writers who challenged the state were exiled, had their reputations ruined, were imprisoned or just ‘disappeared’ never to be seen again. In the US during the Cold War, anything “un-American” or sympathetic to a communist cause, or at times, in support of greater social progress, was put in front of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) and banned.


The pattern is pretty clear. Power feels threatened and tries to control the narrative.

 

Orwell even said in 1984 that “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past,” and any centimetre of control over what we think, read and learn is a dangerous one.


Who gets hurt when books are banned?


This is a question we need to consider, because the answers say that book banning disproportionately hurts marginalised voices. PEN has revealed that based on the 2023/24 book bannings, 44% had some level of focus on BIPOC characters and 39% of them targeted books with LGBTQ themes. Nearly 65% of them were written for young adults, and deal with topics like grief, mental health, belonging and history, including a huge range of other topics which have only recently fallen out of the taboo category. These books being removed from access isn’t just bad because it limits our access to stories other than our own, but if you do relate to the characters and experiences of the book, it sends a message. Your story doesn’t belong. Your story isn’t welcome. You’re not welcome.


Furthermore, it undermines our capacity to think critically. School isn’t only about memorising facts or evidence (though I wouldn’t mind needing to remember a few fewer quotes for Modern History). There’s so much that we learn about how to think, question, empathise and challenge. Being denied access to subversive and challenging literature costs opportunities to engage with the real world and its diversity, in a safe environment, that should be designed to allow this! It builds an insular effect where it is hard to learn about the complexities of morality and difference, and variation, and politics, before students are thrown into “the real world” and have to grapple with it themselves, rather than getting to view the world through someone else’s eyes, and learn through their voice. George Bernard Shaw said that, “Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.” Essentially, when no one needs to read because the reason reading is so important has been taken away.


Another issue with book banning can be considered through Hallin’s Spheres of legitimate debate. Essentially, rather than having a sphere each for consensus (comfortable opinions which everyone/most will agree with, which is ‘good’ to write about), 'Legitimate Controversy' (the thin sliver where debates can be explored, structure can be challenged, and complexity emerges) and 'Deviance' (effectively ‘cancellable’ opinions/writings), the options become either 'us or them', 'with the government or against the government' and 'friend or foe'. This leads to self-censorship, which can affect teachers and librarians, authors and journalists. People are worried about being called out for ‘defamation’ and there's a fear of job loss and further ramifications. This can be scary and has the potential to affect what gets taught in schools, adhering to stricter limits and at its most dangerous, rewriting textbooks. It’s not just the books that disappear. It’s the conversations and questions that theoretically uphold democracy.


Learning from history? Or dooming ourselves to repeat it?


When we get asked in the first History class of the year, “why we study history,” I have always heard, “Because those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” - and, as a Modern and Extension History student, I can see where the saying comes from. It often occurs that the suppression of books and words leads to the suppression of people. The banning of Anne Frank’s Diary in some US Counties is a concern. If we can’t read the stories of a young girl hiding from Nazi Germany, how can we hope to understand what went wrong - if we don’t read about racism, how do we confront it?

Literature gives us a chance to see the world through anyone else’s eyes, no matter where in the world you are from.


We can fight back, though!!


I’ll be honest, the statistics are pretty grim but there is a reason for hope. Across the US (and the world), there are students, parents, teachers and librarians fighting back. There are “Banned Book Clubs”, petitions and many book shops that are actively fighting to maintain their “banned book lists” which help to ensure that the books are still being read. Groups like PEN America and the ALA are tracking the banned bookd, offering resources and even challenging the bans! 


In some cases, bans are also backfiring! In 2022, a book called “Maus” by Art Spiegelman was banned in McMinn County. Whilst it hasn’t been unbanned, it shot up through the Amazon Best Sellers list, and one bookstore was able to raise over $80,000 to buy extra copies to lend to school students in the area to ensure its continuing access.


Conclusion


So, how do we fight book banning? By doing what many of us love to do - read. Read important stories, which make you think, which you enjoy and books which unsettle you a little bit. This is our responsibility, and something we get to do. Banning books is a dangerous game. It has no winners and the danger isn’t even in the words of the books but the attempts to control how we read, think and dream.


I leave you with two quotes which I feel encapsulate why reading might be the most important thing you will ever do:


1: “One glance at it (a book) and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time—proof that humans can work magic.” —Carl Sagan


2: “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.” —Frederick Douglass


Go, read the books, banned or not - and perhaps one day, your name will be on one of the ones changing the world.


References

(Please note that Book Bans are generally unreported, and a range of sources will offer a range of data due to their evolving nature)
















(The following spreadsheets are provided by PEN America)



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