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).
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.
Mr. Nguyen’s original response to “Close Quarters” raises an important question:
Should books be banned because they make us feel uncomfortable?
“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."
If you expanded your search beyond the year 2021, you’ll find
a list of the 100 most commonly banned books:
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”
“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”
They burn them.
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.
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.
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.
·
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.
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.
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.
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.
