First they will come for your books, then they will come for your art.
An interesting Guardian article came into my inbox recently, ‘US public school ban 10 000 books in most recent academic year.’ [1], Apparently, US children and young adults are not allowed to learn to assess for themselves the difference between wrong and right. Rather than teaching ‘ethics’, instead they have chosen to simply ban any book, which dares to question the narrow white ‘Christian’ view of the world. Fantasy pretty much gets an automatic ban, as does anything LGBTQ+ inclined. However, the number of books by African American authors is alarming. As is the exclusion of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank? Fahrenheit 451, the irony. But also the challenging or banning of several books that were set books in my high school curriculum, ‘the lord of the Flies’ and The ‘Catcher in the Rye, to mention some examples. When looking at the list as a totality, the removal of any book which presents an alternative position or represents a real but disturbing aspect of the world. It suggests an inability by the American voting public to make a distinction between the need to limit perhaps age and maturity of access and a misguided approach to protect, at all costs, the mind of younger readers.
The thing with fiction, and literature more broadly, is that it is, imaginary. Its consequences are limited. This makes it a great way to explore challenging concepts, reflect on past issues, and imagine alternative futures if we take the current situation to its conclusion. The inclusion of any one work of fiction within a body of knowledge does not imply agreement with the knowledge contained within the book, but rather that it is deemed worthy of inclusion by way of its contribution to knowledge, or uniqueness of its perspective, or the voice and life experience of marginalised experience it place represents. Banning books with aspects that may make ‘folks uncomfortable’ is a slippery slope and undermines democratic systems.
Richard Ovenden, in his ‘Burning the Books’, sights the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
‘The story of apartheid is, amongst other things, the story of the systematic elimination of thousands of voices that should have been part of the nation’s memory.’ The report blamed the government: ‘The tragedy is that the former government deliberately and systematically destroyed a huge body of state records and documentation in an attempt to remove incriminating evidence and thereby sanitise the history of oppressive rule.’ (Ovenden, 2020, p. 14).
The concluding absence of the erased voices and actions has echo in today’s Political space. Not to mention the absence of critical voices silenced during Apartheid, most notably the works of banned black authors, artists and poets. During my counties, banning of all manner of creative works. Ovenden’s book explores the value of books and records, often the first to be destroyed when a new regime wishes to silence or erase positions in opposition to a narrow, exclusionary narrative of the past. Recently, asking a group of master students about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and was shocked to discover many had never heard of it, preferring to follow a narrowly constructed narrative of the past, fed through the filter of opinion only. This highlights the deep need to continually advocate for access to knowledge and openness to diverse perspectives. Lest in our ignorance, we repeat the horrors of the past.
– Barnes and Noble[2] Along with Amazon offers a fanatic list for purchasing.
Here are my suggested must-reads in no order; I have included some books here by authors whose political positions, in today’s light, are questionable. To make the point, I do not think authors or their work should be cancelled. Because,
All the Tony Morisson
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lea
Brave new world – Aldus Huxley
1984 – Goerge Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
The Face on the Milk Carton – Caroline B. Cooney
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher
Where’s Waldo? – Martin Handford
The Witches – Roald Dahl
James and the Giant Peach – Roald Dahl
Harry Potter (series) – J.K Rowling
Go the Fuck to Sleep – Adam Mansbach (its in the title – if you don’t understand satire).
Further Reading:
Ovenden, R., 2020. Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/23/pen-book-bans
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