Sunday, January 30, 2022

should books be banned?

 

When Viet Thanh Nguyen was 12 or 13 years old, he read Larry Heinemnn’s’ 1974 novel, “Close Quarters”. He was upset about the racism, sexual assault and brutality in the book, and returned it to the library because he felt it was how some Americans saw Vietnamese people – including himself. He hated the book – and he also hated the author.

(Heinemann also later wrote an excellent book titled “Black Virgin Mountain”, which I read about 10 years ago).

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Virgin-Mountain-Return-Vietnam-ebook/dp/B000FCK2SS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1IH2B45U5K4G5&keywords=black+virgin+mountain&qid=1643565303&s=books&sprefix=black+virgin+mountain+%2Cstripbooks%2C109&sr=1-1

Years later, Nguyen re-read “Close Quarters”, and realized that he had misconstrued the author’s intention. In his words, he realized that the author wanted to show that war brutalized soldiers, as well as the civilians caught in their path. The novel was a damning indictment of American warfare and the racist attitudes held by some nice, average Americans that led to slaughter and rape. Mr. Heinemann revealed America’s heart of darkness. He didn’t offer readers the comfort of a way out by editorializing or sentimentalizing or humanizing Vietnamese people, because in the mind of the book’s narrator and his fellow soldiers, the Vietnamese were not human.

Mr. Nguyen didn’t complain to the library or petition the librarians to take the book off the shelves. Nor did his parents. It didn’t cross his mind that we should ban “Close Quarters” or any of the many other books, movies and TV shows in which racist and sexist depictions of Vietnamese and other Asian people appear.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/opinion/culture/book-banning-viet-thanh-nguyen.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Guest%20Essays

Mr. Nguyen’s original response to “Close Quarters” raises an important question:

Should books be banned because they make us feel uncomfortable?

 Throughout history, countless books in a variety of countries have been banned for various reasons. In 2021, there were 21 books that were commonly banned, and some of the reasons are listed below:

“To Kill a Mockingbird” – "Racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a 'white savior' character, and its perception of the Black experience."

“Of Mice and Men” - "Racial slurs and racist stereotypes, and their negative effect on students."

“The Handmaid’s Tale” - "Profanity and for 'vulgarity and sexual overtones.'"

“The Harry Potter Series” - "For referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use "nefarious means" to attain goals."

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/learning/banned-books-2021#this-one-summer-by-mariko-tamaki-illustrated-by-jillian-tamakiavailable-21

If you expanded your search beyond the year 2021, you’ll find a list of the 100 most commonly banned books:

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/blog/here-are-the-100-most-banned-and-challenged-books-of-the-decade/

The list includes the following:

“The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian” (which I have seen in local school)

“Fifty Shades of Grey”

“The Kite Runner” (which I have seen in local schools)

“Hunger Games”

 “The Perks of Being a Wildflower” (yep, local schools)

“Nineteen Minutes (we own a copy)

“A Brave New World”

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

“Beloved”

“The Catcher in the Rye” (Mark David Chapman’s favorite book)

“The Color Purple”

“The Holy Bible”

(Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close” (local schools)

“Lolita”

“1984”

 On occasion, the folks in authority take measures that are more drastic than simply banning books.

They burn them.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=HUlD9caN&id=E6BDCAD7B8B00036A5A68E98D506E2C1CB05E411&thid=OIP.HUlD9caNCF7M_V1PEtbTaQHaFj&mediaurl=https%3a%2f%2fblog.nli.org.il%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2019%2f12%2fI-715-537-blog.jpg&cdnurl=https%3a%2f%2fth.bing.com%2fth%2fid%2fR.1d4943f5c68d085eccfd5d4f12d6d369%3frik%3dEeQFy8HiBtWYjg%26pid%3dImgRaw%26r%3d0&exph=537&expw=715&q=nazi+book+burnings+&simid=608032481581540019&FORM=IRPRST&ck=2BA50632786F68C3186F88F88DCC2FAA&selectedIndex=65

 

Book burnings have been part of history for a LONG time. The first recorded manuscript burning occurred in 600 B.C., when Jeremiah of Anathoth wrote a scroll that the King of Judah did not like – so he destroyed it.

Book burnings continue to this day. As recently as 2019, a Catholic priest in Poland burned copies of some Harry Potter books.

After Tennessee banned "Maus" recently, a local pastor took it even further. He organized a book burning event.

https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/theyre-burning-books-in-tennessee/article_1f8c631e-850f-11ec-bc9f-dbd44d7e14d7.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share&fbclid=IwAR05MPg76MFE1DUps92YKuwlMYrIn6emnZ4vIqcI1VSN4KrH_W7-lqr5iuw


In terms of volume, though, it’s hard to beat the Nazis.

The Nazis destroyed much of Warsaw during World War II: an estimated 16 million books, and about 85% of the city's buildings. The libraries of the University of Warsaw and of the Warsaw Institute of Technology were razed. 14 other libraries were completely burned to the ground. German Verbrennungskommandos (Burning detachments) were responsible for much of the targeted attacks on libraries and other centers of knowledge and learning.

In October 1944, the manuscript collection of the National Library of Poland was burned to erase Polish national history.

Part of the Krasiński Library's building was destroyed in September 1939, leading to its collections, which had almost all survived, being moved in 1941. In September 1944, an original collection of 250,000 items was shelled by German artillery, although many books were saved by being thrown out the windows by library staff. In October, what had survived was deliberately burned by the authorities, including 26,000 manuscripts, 2,500 incunables (printed before 1501), 80,000 early printed books, 100,000 drawings and printmakings, 50,000 note and theatre manuscripts, and many maps and atlases.

The Załuski Library – established in 1747 and thus the oldest public library in Poland and one of the oldest and most important libraries in Europe – was burned down during the Uprising in October 1944. Out of about 400,000 printed items, maps and manuscripts, only some 1800 manuscripts and 30,000 printed materials survived. Unlike earlier Nazi book burnings where specific books were deliberately targeted, the burning of this library was part of the general setting on fire of a large part of the city of Warsaw.

The extensive library of the Polish Museum, Rapperswil, founded in 1870 in Rapperswil, Switzerland, had been created when Poland was not a country and was thus moved to Warsaw in 1927. In September 1939, the National Polish Museum in Rapperswil along with the Polish School at Batignolles, lost almost their entire collection during the German bombardment of Warsaw.

 

Books were not the only items that have been destroyed.

In 1948, children – overseen by priests, teachers, and parents – publicly burned several hundred comic books in both Spencer, West Virginia, and Binghamton, New York. Once these stories were picked up by the national press wire services, similar events followed in many other cities

John Lennon, member of the popular music group The Beatles, sparked outrage from religious conservatives in the Southern 'Bible Belt' states due to his quote 'The Beatles are more popular than Jesus' from an interview he had done in England five months previous to the Beatles' 1966 US Tour (their final tour as a group). Disc Jockeys, evangelists, and the Ku Klux Klan implored the local public to bring their Beatles records, books, magazines, posters and memorabilia to Beatles bonfire burning events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_book-burning_incidents#:~:text=The%20first%20book%20burning%20incident%20in%20the%20Thirteen,and%20subsequently%20all%20known%20copies%20were%20publicly%20burned.

Despite the efforts of some people in authority, the public NEEDS books.

During WWII, there was actually a library in Auschwitz. It was not large, since it only had 8 books, and it managed to survive the war. The lady in charge of the library published a book about her experience in 2017.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/the-librarian-of-auschwitz

On occasion, people will risk death to get them, and that phenomenon is explained in a book titled “The Book Thief”, which was published in 2005.

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19063.The_Book_Thief

 The latest book to face a ban is “Maus” (yep, it’s in local schools)

·         Maus,” the decades-old graphic novel about the effects of the Holocaust on a family, became an Amazon bestseller in recent days.

·         The interest in “Maus” was part of a backlash to news that the McMinn County, Tennessee, school board banned the book from its eighth-grade curriculum.

·         “Maus” author Art Spiegelman compared the board to Russia President Vladimir Putin, whose own ban of the book led to a surge in sales.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/28/maus-amazon-bestseller-after-tennessee-school-ban.html?fbclid=IwAR0q23c4Ofz-MJ6udFdafskKql_IDQqf67P8ef4kmoPlNN2CsNU-4MdaqdY

A book that is likely to wind up on a banned list eventually is book that was recently released. It’s titled “Mercy Street”, and it covers guns, race, and abortion.

I ordered a copy from the local library this morning.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/30/books/review-mercy-street-jennifer-haigh.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Books

 

In September of 2020, the topic of critical race theory was introduced to the viewers of the FOX network. During the course o 2021, the topic was discussed more than 2000 times – even though the majority of its audience actually did not know what Critical race theory actually is.

Critical race theory was a movement that initially started at Harvard under Professor Derrick Bell in the 1980s. It evolved in reaction to critical legal studies, which came about in the 70s and dissected the idea that law was just and neutral. Over time, the movement grew among legal scholars, mostly of color, at law schools across the country, including at UCLA, where Crenshaw lectured on critical race theory, civil rights, and constitutional law, and later at Columbia, where she was appointed a full professor in 1995, alongside Williams, a former student, research assistant, and lifelong mentee of Bell’s, and who is now professor of law emerita.

https://news.columbia.edu/news/what-critical-race-theory-and-why-everyone-talking-about-it-0

Then-president Donald Trump quickly seized on an opportunity to “stir the pot”.

In September of 2020, he issued an executive order banning federal contractors from conducting racial sensitivity training, emphasizing his desire to stop “efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex- and race-based ideologies.”    Earlier in the same year, a group of historians launched the 1776 Project, which was created to counter the ideas in the 1619 Project.

 President Biden issued an executive order abolishing Trump’s 1776 commission in his first week in office.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/26/biden-reverses-trump-policy-on-racial-training-patriotic-education/

The real reason that critical race theory and discussions about the 1619 Project” is that its opponents fear that discussions of these topics could make white folks “uncomfortable”.

When the author of the 1619 Project recently discussed her book at the Union League Club of Chicago, she quoted heavily from Martin Luther King – who also made white people feel uncomfortable.

https://www.vox.com/2020/9/24/21451220/critical-race-theory-diversity-training-trump

So, to answer my initial question of whether books should be banned because they make us feel uncomfortable, the answer is easy.

Nope.

1 comment:

  1. I went to a few book club meetings at the Silver Bay library, when an author gave a presentation. Denise attends book club at Woodbury libraries. Of course, Denise and Rebecca are librarians. My favorite recent presentations have featured Sinclair Louis ant the Minnesota Historical Society. Lunch with the curator. Currently, I'm on book 6 of 15 in the Wheel of Time series.

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