Reading into Book Banning Rori anderson & claire Silva
Defining Book Banning
In 2021, 1,597 books were challenged or banned, according to the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual report. This number is the highest it has been since the ALA began tracking book banning in the U.S. in 1989. However, despite the prevalence of book banning, many are unaware of its complexities.
At its core, book banning is the act of removing a piece of literature from a library, school, store or other space, due to controversial content. Although anyone can petition to remove a book, the appellant is required to present the challenge to either an owner, the board or the government of the establishment.
Since the beginning of its existence, opinions on book banning have forged two distinct sides. Carol Acquaviva, a Marin librarian and archivist, is a representative of those against book banning.
“Someone telling someone else they can't have access to read or to write [is censorship],” Acquaviva said.
On the other hand, No Left Turn, an organization based out of Pennsylvania dedicated to monitoring and managing book content, argues that banned books often encourage material that is too graphic for young readers, particularly content regarding sexual and racial identity. The organization’s mission statement is to “use all forms of media to expose the radical indoctrination in K-12 education, its perpetrators, the resources and methods employed and the resulting harm it inflicts.”
Contrastingly, many consider book banning to be a serious violation of personal rights. Natalie Weber, a teen and adult services librarian at the Marin Civic Center, describes many librarians' stances on this issue.
“In the library world, we really believe deeply in intellectual freedom, which means [community] access [to any book] for pleasure or for education,” Weber said.
Oftentimes, libraries promote intellectual freedom by advocating for and promoting their supply of banned books. The Redwood Library publicizes its stance on book banning through a large display, which gives students access to books that have been banned in other areas. Kathleen Savastano, the Library Specialist, shared that parents often jumpstart the motion of book banning.
“I think the unintended consequence of parents protesting these books is that they’re getting more attention from the librarians and the educators,” Savastano said.
In accordance with her views, Savastano ensures that the library has every book on the ALA’s list of most challenged books in 2021.
History
Literary content has been a topic of debate for centuries. America’s first experience with book banning dates back to the 1600s. “New English Canaan,” a novel by Thomas Morton, was banned in 1637 after Puritans complained that it mocked their traditional society. Morton’s arguments against the British government resulted in his work becoming the first of many books banned in America.
Over the years, literary censorship has remained prevalent. Harriet Beecher’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a book that revolutionized discussions regarding race and enslavement in the 1980s, was banned because of its encouragement of greater racial inclusion. Books containing controversial subjects to Beecher’s continued to be challenged or banned in the following decade, which occasionally resulted in backlash from the public. In the 1933 Supreme Court case, the United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, the federal ban of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was overturned. It was originally challenged in 1922, as it was perceived to be written by someone with a “disordered mind.” Additionally, critics claimed that the sexual content in the book could lead to “impure and lustful thoughts.” The judge who overturned its ban ultimately determined that serious literature should contain topics that make readers uncomfortable to widen their understanding and perspectives.
Other Supreme Court cases, however, have had different outcomes. In Roth v. the United States, writer Samuel Roth was convicted for distributing pornography in his 1957 publication. Roth’s conviction caused the U.S. to reconsider its interpretation of obscenity, which was narrowed to content that is “utterly without redeeming social importance.” This specification allowed books that contained graphic or explicit content to be published and displayed as long as they were meaningful to society. Despite this step, the disagreement regarding book banning persists.
Franklin Escobedo, the Community Services Director at Larkspur Library as well as the President of the Adult Service of the ALA, notes the inevitability of ongoing conflict.
“There have been challenges over the years, some good and some bad, depending on the type of literature. There has always been this conflict between art and inappropriate [content] for certain age groups,” Escobedo said.
Despite book banning’s lengthy history, it was not until 1982 that the ALA created Banned Books Week, which brings awareness to the otherwise forgotten subject. This tradition aims to acknowledge and embrace discomfort when reading about an unfamiliar subject.
History in Marin
While book banning is perceived to be limited to conservative states, it is a national trend, reaching even Marin County.
Although Marin currently tends to lean left, it has not always done so. In fact, as Acquaviva found, Marin used to be relatively conservative.
Marin’s past political identity partially contributes to the large number of book challenges it has faced. In the 1950s, one Larkspur parent prompted a county jury investigation of over 200 books in Marin’s high school libraries. The majority of the content challenged was claimed to push a communist agenda, not far from most other book challenges at the time.
“What's really important to think about is that for the most part, this was after World War II. Everyone was really concerned about communism. It seemed like the threat of communism was paramount to anything else that was going on,” Acquaviva said.
According to Acquaviva’s article published on Medium, an online publishing platform, book banning in Marin sparked an array of reactions. When the county jury decided to ban the proposed books, they were met with dismay from the school district’s Board of Trustees and ultimately reversed their previous ruling. Despite this, other community members advocated for the banning of books. Harold W. Tobin, a Fairfax resident, spoke in 1953 on behalf of the Marin Council of Catholic Men and claimed that most books that were challenged had words that he “could not repeat or could not be repeated between a husband and wife.”
Book Banning Now
“At one point in time in 2021, there were 729 challenges,” Lesliediana Jones, the Associate Director of Public Services at Harvard Law School Library, the chair of the ALA intellectual freedom committee and a trustee of the freedom to read foundation, said. “That involved over 1,500 books. Now contrast that to 2018 — there were about 400 challenges. In prior years, there were numbers like 200 or 300, a vast difference from what the numbers are now.”
No Left Turn credits the increase in book banning, not to the challengers but to societal changes and creating a need for banned books.
“[The Black Lives Matter movement] that erupted in May 2020 provided the perfect cover for a complete assault and takeover of our educational system. Aided by the mainstream media, the teachers’ unions, together with an increasing number of educators and administrators have become the true schoolyard bullies, using taxpayer funds to indoctrinate their captive audience — our children,” No Left Turn stated on their website.
Jack Haubold, a senior and advocate against book banning, speculated about the reason why more and more books are being challenged.
“I think it's a social movement across the country of people being uncomfortable with topics of slavery, Jim Crow and the Holocaust, that has caused people to try to cover up our history instead of acknowledging it and trying to address the lasting impacts of that history,” Haubold said.
While banned books have been declared too graphic or explicit, Jones has noticed additional reasoning for recent book challenges.
“In the past, the reasoning has been sexually explicit material and racially charged material. Now they are coupling it with more reasons — books by authors of color and books that have LGBTQ [authors],” Jones said.
Jones noticed that the exclusion of these identities from literary works limits the growth of readers.
“I will fight against anyone telling my community, or any community, ‘You cannot read about yourself, you cannot have information about the world, you cannot grow as an individual,’ because that's what [people who ban books are] telling them when they can't read things about themselves [or] about the world at large. [They are] telling that person that they cannot grow,” Jones said.