It’s a dangerous world out there for books, dear readers. Not only for their easily-damaged covers, or for their fragile pages, but for their words and ideas as well. Every year in the United States, the American Library Association deals with hundreds of “challenges” to material in both public and school libraries. A “challenge”, technically speaking, is defined as “a formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that a book or other material be restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness”. It’s the first step towards making a “banned book”, which is the actual removal of said book from a library’s collection in response to a “challenge”.
There are any number of reasons people provide for challenging books, which the ALA has recorded : inappropriate or offensive language, offensive content, content that is considered inappropriate for the age group to which is it offered, nudity, sexuality, violence…the list goes on and on. But every reason, every single reason that people provide for challenging a book boils down to one main point:
A “challenge” is not just someone stating what they disliked or disagreed with in a book. It is an attempt to restrict, totally, the access of other people to that book because they disliked or disagreed with it.
Not only is that censorship, it goes against the very foundation of what a public library is and does, which is to be a space for the safe, free, and open sharing of ideas. And, in response to those hundreds of challenges that the ALA receives every year (not to mention the hundreds more that don’t make it up to the ALA, but stay in their local or school libraries), Banned Books Week was established to give us a chance to highlight the value of free and open access to information. As the ALA states on their website: “Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.”
Additionally, every year the ALA puts out a list of the 10 Most Challenged Books of the past year. As this article from Time Magazine points out, the list is always provides interesting commentary on the things that “society” (or that part of society that feels the need to restrict other people’s access to books) fears. For a long time, the titles on the Most Banned List were for pretty straightforward issues, like sexual content, graphic language, or drug use (or, in the case of the Harry Potter books, which made the list from 2000 to 2009, for ‘promoting Satanism’). This year, however, there appears to be a worrying trend running through the list of Most Banned Books, according to James LaRue, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. As he notes, “there’s been a shift toward seeking to ban books ‘focused on issues of diversity—things that are by or about people of color, or LGBT, or disabilities, or religious and cultural minorities,’… It seems like that shift is very clear.” You can check out the list at the bottom of this post and see for yourself.
Now, to be frank, people have gotten uppity over language, sexual behavior, and other taboo issues since the establishment of “western civilization”. Truth be told, it’s part of the foundation of “western civilization” to get uppity about these things–so that probably isn’t going to change, no matter how many blog posts and book displays we put up to tell you that four-letter-words and some sex scenes are not going to ruin lives. But to challenge a book because it reflects a lifestyle that is not your own, a faith that you don’t share, or an identity that you do not personally own is so much more dangerous–especially when the vast majority of these books were written to help those struggling and lost, or to provide voices to those who are so often silenced by mainstream society.
The world is, in many ways, becoming a bigger place, with room for a number of new identities, recognition of more diverse cultures and traditions, and discussing new, complex, and sometimes scary issues. And that is a good thing. Because everyone should be able to dance their own dance through life, so long as they don’t intentionally stomp on anyone else’s toes. To keep these books off our shelves–to keep people who are different from you from speaking, or from having their stories told–is doing a damage far greater, and far more profound than the act of simply taking a book from the shelf.
So this week, come check out a banned book, think for yourself, and let others do the same. Here’s the list of the Most Challenged Books of 2015 to get you started:
Most-challenged books of 2015:
- Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group. - Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”). - I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group. - Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”). - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”). - The Holy Bible
Reasons: Religious viewpoint. - Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”). - Habibi, by Craig Thompson
Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group. - Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence. - Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).