6 Oct 2023 | News and features, Opinion, Ruth's blog
This week is Banned Books Week. It should come as no surprise that the topics of censorship, banned books and cancelled authors are a regular theme of discussion at Index on Censorship. In fact we are the UK partner of the global coalition against banned books. The banning of books has repeatedly proven to be a key tool in the arsenal of tyrants and repressive regimes. Control of information and the need for one dominant narrative always leads despots to ban and even burn books. It’s been true throughout history and as much as that concerns me (and it does – a lot) – what worries me more is how pervasive the banning of books is becoming across more democratic countries and what that means for enlightened societies and their peoples.
I truly struggle to comprehend the rationale behind the banning of a specific text or author.
Words can be challenging, thought-provoking and yes, of course, they can even be hateful and inciting. But the answer, surely, is to argue back, to find different authors, to debate and win an argument – not to ban, not to cancel and definitely not to remove from the shelves of our libraries.
The editor in chief of Index, Jemimah Steinfeld, asked the team to write about their favourite banned books as part of the campaign. And as you will have seen I wrote about Judy Blume, one of my favourite authors as a child, I find it ludicrous that anyone would seek to ban books which help young people come to understand their own sexuality or their personal relationships with faith.
But I could have written about a dozen other authors whose words have shaped my worldview but yet inspired such hate and fear that others have sought to ban them. The works of George Orwell were key to helping me develop my own politics – 1984 and Animal Farm confirmed my lifelong commitment to social democratic politics and inspired my personal political campaigns against those on the extremes. Yet these works have been banned repeatedly and not just in repressive regimes but also in some US school districts, unbelievably for being pro-Communist (it really would help if people read the books before they sought to ban them…)
And as a Jewish European woman my politics are grounded, for better or worse, in understanding the horrors of the Shoah. As a student of history I, of course, believe that we must understand our history so that we aren’t destined to repeat it. So the banning of Anne Frank’s diary and the graphic novel Maus by Art Spielgelman, is completely beyond my comprehension. The crucial importance of both of these books isn’t just the subject matter – but the fact that they bring the horrors of a very dark period of our history to life in a format which is accessible to all – including young people. What is there to ban? Unless your real goal is to rewrite Jewish and European history?
Books are the light, they drive challenge and change. They feed our minds and ensure that societies move on and develop. They educate, inform and entertain, even when they are wrong. There are books that I have considered to be of no value, books which I have considered to contain dangerous views and books which I consider to be hateful. But there is no book so dangerous that I don’t think it should be available in an academic library, available to study.
And if you believe on freedom of speech – then that’s the least you should believe too.
8 Nov 2022 | News and features
Just over a month after Banned Books Week 2022, the risk to literature has intensified. Depending on the outcome of the US midterms, moves from Republican lawmakers to silence certain books could take a firmer grip.
On library shelves in the USA, certain books have fallen prey to challenges and subsequent localised bannings. There’s a blank space where Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye used to sit in many Florida schools (and beyond), while Juno Dawson’s This Book is Gay has been banned in a septuplet of states. The incredible Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, an interweaving of narratives that crosses generations and continents, has been carted away on the librarian’s trolley in areas of Florida, Georgia, Missouri and Texas.
Of the banned works, the vast majority centre stories of people of colour or LGBTQ+ characters and authors. A recent report from PEN America found there were over 2,500 book bans across 32 states between July 2021 and June 2022. And where America goes, the rest of the world often follows.
In the autumn issue of Index on Censorship, we explored book bannings in the USA and the growing movement to keep literature free.
George M Johnson, author of one of the most banned books in the USA, wrote about how being banned gave them a hunger to write more, to deal with the racism and sexual identity that they had no resources to tackle as a child. We spoke to Kings Books in Tacoma, Washington State, where a monthly banned books club sets free the literature which has been erased from the shelves of school libraries and classrooms.
“You end up talking about topics that don’t normally come up in conversation because banned books cover those controversial topics [including] the clichéd things you don’t talk about in public,” the club’s co-ordinator David Raff said.
This group puts freedom to read into practice, and it is not alone. There’s the protest against book censorship in classrooms, where students in Texas staged a read-in at the Capitol Rotunda, devouring books on a Republican lawmaker’s list of condemned titles. Students in Pennsylvania stood up against books being removed from their library. Parents in Texas and Florida organised protests. Against the rising tide of book bannings, even calls to burn books which echo the darkest moments in history, people are resisting.
The big question around these book bannings is: why? Why would parents or lawmakers seek to ban The Handmaid’s Tale, The Hate U Give, or I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? Even the stunning children’s picture book by Jessica Love, Julian is a Mermaid, does not escape the censor’s wrath in areas of Florida and Pennsylvania.
Of the banned works, the vast majority centre stories of people of colour or LGBTQ+ characters and authors. As the latest American Library Association (ALA) report puts it, the challenges are often led by conservative groups to shut down materials which “address racism, gender and sexual identity”.
The most-banned books, compiled by PEN America, paint this picture clearly. George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue is banned in multiple areas of 13 states, including New York and Washington. Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison racks up bans in 12 states. And Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel Gender Queer: A Memoir, is missing from shelves in multiple school districts in 15 states, landing the unenviable spot as most-banned book.
In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that allowed parents to search a list of books available in schools and to object, specifically referencing Lawn Boy as containing passages of “paedophilia”. Meanwhile Moms for Liberty was one of the groups that spearheaded the campaign for All Boys Aren’t Blue to be banned, tweeting: “They [school board members] want to rob children of their innocence.”
I spoke to Nick Higgins, the chief librarian at Brooklyn Public Library, where the Books Unbanned project supports young people across the USA facing book challenges or outright bans in their communities. Brooklyn might not be at the sharp end of book bannings, but they’ve extended their relatively censorship-free status to allow young people across the whole country to access their catalogue of half a million eBooks and audiobooks using a free library card – whether the books are banned or not. Higgins says the library wants everyone to have access to a well-maintained, diverse, broad spectrum of ideas.
“This is what it means to live in a pluralistic society,” he said. “You are encountered with ideas that you agree with, and ideas that you don’t agree with, and the diversity of a community is something that makes us richer, stronger, more empathetic to one another, and is really necessary for a healthy democratic society.”
The recent spate of book challenges and bans, he said, is a movement to silence particular voices and lock away those narratives.
“What that says to a young person […] trying to seek out voices that sound like their own, characters that speak to them – and they find adults in their communities taking those stories off the shelves and hiding them away – it says to that young person that they don’t belong in that community, they have no place in that community and their voice doesn’t matter,” he said.
And the library hasn’t stopped with the Books Unbanned project. There’s a virtual banned books club, most recently discussing Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe with teen librarian Jes G. Young adult interns also formed the Teen Intellectual Freedom Council, creating a network of young people. They meet remotely with a group of teens in Austin, Texas – the state that tops the list in number of bans and where in 2021 a bill passed prohibiting lessons where “an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex”. One of the bill’s sponsors, Representative Matt Krause, followed up by demanding that libraries tell him if they carried any of the 850 books on his hit list.
“It’s a troubling development in this fight, where lawmakers are getting involved in basically doing the work of professional librarians, are doing the work of professional educators, and making the case that because they in some way, shape or form are allocating funds to support this institution, then they have the say on what is actually presented on the shelves or in the classroom,” Higgins said.
The #FReadom campaign in Texas is another grassroots effort. Sparked in response to Matt Krause’s list of condemned books, #FReadom started life as a Twitter hashtag where people were asked to tweet about diverse books across a day of action. After a huge success, the campaign morphed into a website, alongside behind-the-scenes work to support librarians facing book challenges. The goal is to uplift and support librarians, as well as providing resources for those who want to speak up. I spoke to retired librarian and one of the founders of #FReadom, Carolyn Foote.
“Obviously there’s a hunger for fighting back against censorship and fighting for intellectual freedom,” Foote told me. “So many librarians are scared to speak up. And so I’ve kind of become the spokesperson for our group because I am retired. I don’t have an institution keeping an eye on what I’m saying.”
Book challenges, she said, are extremely isolating for librarians. But the empathy and support the campaign musters is designed to give people hope, and to remind people who librarians are.
When Matt Krause’s list of books came out, she remembers how glaringly obvious it was that the target was books about race, authors of colour and LGBTQ+ topics.
“We felt like it was so important to speak up on [behalf of our] more marginalised kids or more vulnerable kids, because it was their stories being removed from the shelf,” she said.
When America’s bookshelves are emptied of very specific books, everyone loses. The young readers, the librarians, the teachers and the communities that miss out on important and varied conversations. Uncomfortable topics are buried instead of addressed, brilliant books become taboo. As Carolyn Foote said to me, “Libraries are about truth telling.”
But while the book ban figures increase and a new threat looms, the movement to unban books shows no signs of slowing down.
An earlier modified version of this article was originally published on The Bookseller.
9 Sep 2020 | Events
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114632″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]Banned Books Week 2020 (27 September–3 October) takes place four months after George Floyd’s murder led to a global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and three months after the publication of the Rethinking Diversity in Publishing report, which demonstrated the particular challenges writers of colour still encounter.
Taking Banned Books Week’s theme as its starting point – a celebration of the freedom to read – our panel take stock of the commitments to inclusion and representation that have been made in publishing over the last few months. With representatives from the books industry – from editors to heads of writers’ organisations – this webinar will explore how we work together to celebrate marginalised voices in literature.
Adam Freudenheim is the Publisher and Managing Director of Pushkin Press. He has worked in publishing since 1998 and was Publisher of Penguin Classics, Modern Classics and Reference from 2004 to 2012. Adam joined Pushkin in May 2012, where he has launched the Pushkin Children’s Books, Pushkin Vertigo and ONE imprints, and he is particularly proud to have published the first translation of The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt and Jakob Wegelius’s dazzlingly original The Murderer’s Ape; as well as to have introduced the acclaimed American short story writer Edith Pearlman to British readers (with Binocular Vision) and Israeli writer Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (her most recent novel is Liar).
Sharmaine Lovegrove is the Publisher of Dialogue Books, the UK’s only inclusive imprint, part of Little, Brown Book Group and Hachette UK. Dialogue Books is a home for a variety of stories from illuminating voices often missing from the mainstream. Sharmaine was the recipient of the Future Book Publishing Person of the Year 2018/19 and is inspired by innovative storytelling, and has worked in public relations, bookselling, events management and TV scouting. She was the literary editor of ELLE and set up her own bookshop and creative agency when living in Berlin. Sharmaine serves on the boards of The Black Cultural Archives, The Watershed and is an founding organiser of The Black Writers Guild. Home is London, she lives in Berlin and her roots are Jamaican – Sharmaine is proud to be part of the African diaspora and books make her feel part of the world.
Claire Malcolm is the founding Chief Executive of the literary charity New Writing North where she oversees flagship projects such as the David Cohen Literature Award, Gordon Burn Prize, the Northern Writers’ Awards and Durham Book Festival and award-winning work with young people. She works with partners from across the creative industries and charity and public sectors including Penguin Random House, Hachette, Faber and Faber, Channel 4 and the BBC to develop talent in the North. Claire is a trustee of the reading charity BookTrust, the Community Foundation Tyne and Wear and a board member of the North East Cultural Partnership.
Aki Schilz is the Director of The Literary Consultancy, which runsediting services, mentoring and literary events. At TLC Aki co-ordinates partnerships and programmes, including running the Quality Writing for All campaign which focuses on inclusivity and diversity. In 2018 Aki was named as one of the FutureBook 40, a list of people innovating the publishing industry, and was also nominated for an h100 Award for her work with the #BookJobTransparency campaign. In 2019 she was shortlisted for the Kim Scott Walwyn Prize for women in publishing, and in 2020 was named as one of INvolve’s Top 100 Ethnic Minority Future Leaders.
In partnership with the Royal Society of Literature, English PEN, the British Library and the Black Writers’ Guild.
This event is FREE for all. Please register here.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”114627″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
9 Sep 2020 | Events
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”114628″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the resultant global Black Lives Matter protests, it has been clearer than ever before that the voices of some are prioritised to the exclusion of others.
As part of Banned Books Week 2020 – an annual celebration of the freedom to read – Index is partnering with the Royal Society of Literature, the British Library and English PEN, bringing together a panel of writers who have committed to sharing their stories, to creating without compromise, and to inspiring others to do the same. We ask what ‘freedom’ means in the culture of traditional publishing, and how writers today can change the future of literature.
Urvashi Butalia is Director and co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house. An active participant in India’s women’s movement for more than two decades, she holds the position of Reader at the College of Vocational Studies at the University of Delhi.
Rachel Long is a poet and founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Womxn of Colour, based at the Southbank Centre. Her first collection My Darling from the Lions, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020, explores the intersections of family, love, and sexual politics. She is co-tutor on the Barbican Young Poets programme.
Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist, whose work has been translated into 54 languages. She is the author of eighteen books; her latest, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the 2020 RSL Ondaatje Prize. She holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK. She was elected an RSL Fellow in 2019.
Jacqueline Woodson is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books. She is a four-time National Book Award finalist, a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a two-time NAACP Image Award winner, a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner, recipient of the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award and the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award.
Public tickets can be booked through the British Library (£5).[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”114627″ img_size=”large”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
