Two banned books in CBSD used to “justify” bad library policy.
Two books have been removed from CB libraries under the new policy: Gender Queer and This Book Is Gay. There only ever was 1 copy of This Book Is Gay. Gender Queer existed at 1 high school. They were outliers in our library collections. They do not accurately reflect what is in our libraries.
Yet, since 2021, people have been parading around images and snippets from these books, out of context, some even suggesting they were available to elementary age kids. Many use these books as a rallying call and a political talking point to gin up fear by suggesting: if these books are in our libraries, then surely our libraries are riddled with sexually inappropriate material. Not true. Cheap, low, and false.
The truth:
None of these books is pornographic. Yes, some are explicitly sexual, but they were written to inform and educate, not to arouse or stimulate. Case in point, Gender Queer author Maia Kobabe reports: “Struggling kids told me my book helped them talk to parents.”
Librarians are trained to know what books are of educational value in our libraries. They know the difference between pornography and educational books with sexual content.
It’s important to remember that no family ever needed to allow their kids to read either of the two now banned books.
Our high school students range in age from 15-18. We do not see how anyone can make a case that it’s appropriate to withhold accurate, helpful information from near adults.
Here’s what we see as the larger problem:
The 2 books are being held up as “justification” for a regressive library policy that allows for a snippet of sexual content to qualify a book for removal, and jeopardizes dozens of books of literary merit including Melissa, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Bluest Eye, Looking for Alaska, The 57 Bus, unless the book is considered a “classic” and then is oddly protected.
This raises the question of whether those who favor book removals have read many classics:
A Tale of Two Cities centers around a rape and murder.
The Great Gatsby is an elaborate tale of adultery.
The Odyssey depicts its title character held in sexual slavery twice.
Brave New World contains two orgies.
The Crucible contains a scene between an adulterous husband and a 16-year-old servant girl with whom he had an affair, in which she says, “You sweated like a stallion when I come near.”
Fun fact: all of the above have been part of our CURRICULUM: they were assigned to kids, not just lying on a shelf in the library for them to read if they chose.
Where is the dividing line between “classic” and “modern” and therefore ripe for removal? Why is this okay and our newer books are not?
There is good reason why the board excluded literary merit (book must be considered as a whole) in a book’s evaluation: without it, any book can be removed based on any policy criteria they set.
Heck, maybe they could write a policy that prohibits smoking, littering, or drinking. We all agree those things are bad for kids. Or how about outlawing books that depict suicide, regicide, or homicide? Farewell, Macbeth, Hamlet, and most of the rest of Shakespeare, Brave New World, Death of a Salesman, The Catcher in the Rye... we could go on, but the list would be long and we’d have nothing left to teach, let alone allow kids to read.
If we can set Gender Queer and This Book is Gay aside for a moment and consider the slippery slope to censorship CB is currently on, we will see the irrationality of this moment.
There are dozens of books challenged for removal: Nineteen Minutes, Water for Elephants, Normal People, Eleanor and Park, The Haters, Two Boys Kissing, Girl in Translation, and on and on.
Where exactly does this end? Not having an answer to this question is precisely the problem.
Taking books from our library shelves is an attempt to control how other people’s children grow and think. Book removal is book banning. Replacing a banned book with another book of the same genre does not negate the ban, which is permanent. Each author’s story is unique and cannot be replaced by another’s.
The goal ought to be to add books to provide more representation, not to eliminate the great books we already have that show lives other than Stephen Crane’s or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (let’s not lose sight of The Scarlet Letter’s focus on adultery!).
Books are tools for understanding complex issues. Limiting young people’s access to them does not protect them from life’s complex and challenging issues.
We will leave you with this from a student who testified last year in a congressional hearing on free speech and book bans. In her testimony she shared:
“Limiting students’ access to difficult topics can lead to a really rough transition from high school to college curriculum. So far I am in my first year of college and I have had some heavy graphic explicit material in college. In classes, I have to be able to openly talk about pretty serious stuff, serious issues. And bans and restrictions without the opinion of parents and teachers and students weighing in, causes so much damage, it hinders our emotional and social growth so much.”