Dear parents:
As an American, I am concerned about all the movements across this nation to ban books. My own state of Texas is going full ban with forthcoming laws that call on communities to play librarian and approve all books, especially for adolescents, that will be permitted in public school libraries. There are laws that throw school librarians in prison for six years if a banned book is found on the shelves.
There are proposals to ban books, some even American classics written long ago, that have been part of required reading in elementary, junior and senior high school classes for generations.
This time around, the reason for all the book bans (a pretend Christian populist craze that, like a brain virus, spreads across this nation every few decades) was initially due to sexually explicit material found in books written for today’s young people. First off, parents, I hear kids and teens use profanity and speak jokingly of genitalia and sex almost every day and have heard such talk starting when I was a kid and teen myself. Bawdy talk among kids and teens is a part of growing up. In other words, many young people already know a lot about sex. They gather information from blatant rap and some pop songs, music videos and cable TV where language and adult content are unrestricted. And let’s not forget what all they see on the internet.
What I know about book bans is that at some point, every book ever written eventually makes the list and is thrown into the community fire. The most ironic book called for banning is Fahrenheit 451 which is a novel about banned books. The title is supposedly the fire intensity necessary to thoroughly burn a book … out of existence.
Ban a book, ban a thought
Free thought is the ultimate ideal book banners want to control. Everyone thinking the same, feeling the same (hating gays, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, girls, women, Muslims, etc.), believing the same.
The human masses are never going to believe the same.
This is because every person has a different story to tell. Their stories are based on their life experiences. Everyone’s life experience is not beautiful and free of ugliness. But … everyone’s story is interesting.
Readers love to read in the first place to escape their own lives, the good and bad, wholesome and horrible, loving and hateful. Our society should be encouraging reading instead of banning it. And that’s what book bans do.
Don’t forget, kids are more influenced by what they see and hear than what they read or think. Seeing and hearing is real. Reading is cerebral, not their real experience. And kids/teens know the difference.
To point out how ludicrous the latest ever-expanding book bans have become, these are some of the listed books as of today:
Charlotte’s Web The Dictionary To Kill a Mockingbird The Scarlet Letter
Beloved The Bluest Eye The Catcher in the Rye And Tango Makes Three
Of Mice and Men The Hate U Give The Color Purple Brave New World
All Boys Aren’t Blue The Call of the Wild An American Tragedy
Speak Animal Farm A Child Called “It” The Kite Runner
Two Boys Kissing Bless Me, Ultima Lady Chatterley’s Lover This One Summer
Beyond Magenta Gender Queer: A Memoir Flamer Lawn Boy
Out of Darkness Crank Me and Earl and the Dying Girl Sold
Soon there’s something offensive in every book ever printed. Why isn’t the Bible on the ban list? It’s full of nasty stuff. Stories about incest, male body fluids, nudity, lust, sex, marital affairs, homosexuality, virgins, beheadings, murder, war, crucifixions. Even a talking snake, and I mention that because ‘talking animals’ is one of the issues with which some people take issue in the children’s book my mother read to her 4th-graders every year, Charlotte’s Web. Those offended by the book maintain only humans talk, not animals. These same families will let their children watch the Muppets, animated cartoons, and travel to Disney World to hug Mickey Mouse.
Like the ban on rock music recordings in the 1990s, which resulted in Parental Advisory stickers—ironically making the recordings even more desirable for kids and teens—the latest cry to ban books and save the children, in the end, is a moot point. Parents, how about reading the books your teens read and talking to them about it? Good parents watch shows and movies with their kids and discuss scenes and situations if not censoring them. If it’s too sexual (and so much these days is sexualized), you’re the parent; parent.
We adults need to realize (or remember) young people tend to be curious about things that are banned, restricted, prohibited & illegal. Book bans always create an opposite but equal reaction: attracting young people to find copies to read one way or another.
I object to book bans. It’s puritanical and unAmerican. I’m a reader of banned books because I prefer nonfiction. Many banned books have to do with real-life stories whether experienced by the author or other people. More importantly, reading about other people’s lives, whether fiction or nonfiction, makes us empathetic. We pause to imagine. We become better people. Isn’t that what we want for the next generation?
Sincerely yours,
T3