Every year during Banned Books Week, we try to feature a letter from an author responding to the challenge to, or attempt to ban their books.  This year’s letter come from American novelist, memoirist, and lover of words and letter, Pat Conroy.

Conroy was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1945, the eldest of 7 children.  His father was a Marine Corp fighter pilot who suffered from alcoholism, and was both physically and emotionally abusive to Conroy, his siblings, and his mother.  The family moved a great deal as a result of the armed forced, and thus, Conroy had few outlets or friends until college.  Basketball was a saving grace, allowing him an outlet for the emotions and stress of his home life.  So was English, as you’ll soon see.

Conroy was a graduate of The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina and his experiences there provided the basis for two of his best-known works,  the novel The Lords of Discipline and the memoir My Losing Season.  Though he taught in South Carolina after his graduation, he was fired after his first year for his unconventional teaching practices, including his refusal to use corporal punishment on students, and for his alleged lack of respect for the school’s administration. He later wrote The Water Is Wide based on his experiences as a teacher, and the book was awarded a humanitarian award from the National Education Association.

Conroy wasn’t afraid to shy away from tough discussions and conversation.  His novel The Great Santini dealt with a marine fighter pilot who was physically, emotionally, and psychologically abusive to his family.  The book caused a good deal of estrangement between Conroy and his family, with his mother’s family picketing outside his book signings and attempting to prevent people from attending.  His father would also, apparently, sign copies of the book with the inscription “I hope you enjoy my son’s latest work of fiction”, with ‘fiction’ underlined multiple times.  Conroy also supported bringing awareness to the hidden life of ‘military brats’,  from their secrets strengths, to the enormous difficulties of displacement, isolation, and trauma.

His two most well-known works, arguably, are Prince of Tides, about Tom Wingo, an unemployed South Carolina teacher who goes to New York City to help his sister, Savannah, a poet who has attempted suicide, to come to terms with their past, and Beach Music, a novel about an American ex-patriate living in Rome who returns to South Carolina upon news of his mother’s terminal illness, and attempts to face his own darkness, including the loss of his wife to suicide, and the friendships that were torn apart by the Vietnam War.  Both novels–and many of Conroy’s other works–were made into successful and memorable films.  But their content also made some people uncomfortable.

Some of those people worked for the Kanawha County school board in West Virginia.  When parents complained about their children reading the books for their high school Honors English class, taught by Steve Shamblin (who had taught the books several years in a row) due to the depiction of suicide, violence, and sex, the Kanawha County school board banned The Prince of Tides and Beach Music in 2007.  Students in the school banned together, led by a young woman named Makenzie Hatfield, and vowed to take the school board to court to prevent the ban from being implemented, or spreading.  As Hatfield noted to the press, “This is a college class… We chose to take this class. The school didn’t tell us to. We chose.”  During Banned Books Week in October of 2007, students from Nitro High School teamed up with students from George Washington High School, both schools in the Kanawha County School District, to form a student coalition against censorship, and approximately 50-60 students wore T-shirts with their own protest slogans, and held their books at a board meeting, while demonstrating a silent protest. Some 20 students also signed up to speak about their First Amendment rights, and rights as readers.

Hatfield also sent an email to Conroy, who responded with the letter below, which we quote in part:

October 24, 2007

To the Editor of the Charleston Gazette:

I received an urgent e-mail from a high school student named Makenzie Hatfield of Charleston, West Virginia. She informed me of a group of parents who were attempting to suppress the teaching of two of my novels, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music. I heard rumors of this controversy as I was completing my latest filthy, vomit-inducing work. These controversies are so commonplace in my life that I no longer get involved. But my knowledge of mountain lore is strong enough to know the dangers of refusing to help a Hatfield of West Virginia. I also do not mess with McCoys. […]

In 1961, I entered the classroom of the great Eugene Norris, who set about in a thousand ways to change my life. It was the year I read The Catcher in the Rye, under Gene’s careful tutelage, and I adore that book to this very day. Later, a parent complained to the school board, and Gene Norris was called before the board to defend his teaching of this book. He asked me to write an essay describing the book’s galvanic effect on me, which I did. But Gene’s defense of The Catcher in the Rye was so brilliant and convincing in its sheer power that it carried the day. I stayed close to Gene Norris till the day he died. I delivered a eulogy at his memorial service and was one of the executors of his will. Few in the world have ever loved English teachers as I have, and I loathe it when they are bullied by know-nothing parents or cowardly school boards.

About the novels your county just censored: The Prince of Tides and Beach Music are two of my darlings which I would place before the altar of God and say, “Lord, this is how I found the world you made.” They contain scenes of violence, but I was the son of a Marine Corps fighter pilot who killed hundreds of men in Korea, beat my mother and his seven kids whenever he felt like it, and fought in three wars. My youngest brother, Tom, committed suicide by jumping off a fourteen-story building; my French teacher ended her life with a pistol; my aunt was brutally raped in Atlanta; eight of my classmates at The Citadel were killed in Vietnam; and my best friend was killed in a car wreck in Mississippi last summer. Violence has always been a part of my world. I write about it in my books and make no apology to anyone. In Beach Music, I wrote about the Holocaust and lack the literary powers to make that historical event anything other than grotesque.

People cuss in my books. People cuss in my real life. I cuss, especially at Citadel basketball games. I’m perfectly sure that Steve Shamblin and other teachers prepared their students well for any encounters with violence or profanity in my books just as Gene Norris prepared me for the profane language in The Catcher in the Rye forty-eight years ago.

The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language. Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in Lonesome Dove and had nightmares about slavery in Beloved and walked the streets of Dublin in Ulysses and made up a hundred stories in The Arabian Nights and saw my mother killed by a baseball in A Prayer for Owen Meany. I’ve been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.

The school board of Charleston, West Virginia, has sullied that gift and shamed themselves and their community. You’ve now entered the ranks of censors, book-banners, and teacher-haters, and the word will spread. Good teachers will avoid you as though you had cholera. But here is my favorite thing: Because you banned my books, every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book-banners are invariably idiots, they don’t know how the world works—but writers and English teachers do.

I salute the English teachers of Charleston, West Virginia, and send my affection to their students. West Virginians, you’ve just done what history warned you against—you’ve riled a Hatfield.

Sincerely,

Pat Conroy

You can read the full letter over at Letters of Note.

As Conroy notes, life is hard.  People do terrible, seemingly unspeakable things to each other, and to themselves.  But books give us the power to speak of these things in a way that builds empathy, provides invaluable insight, and helps many of us feel that we are not alone in coping with such issues.  They may spark uncomfortable discussions or thoughts, they may lead us to feel negative emotions–but all of those feelings are part of growing, of having our worldview expanded, and widening our ability to connect with other human beings whose live is unlike our own.  That is an incredible power for such a small object as a book.  And Banned Books Week calls on us to celebrate that power, not to hide it.

Pat Conroy died in March 2016…but we still send along our thanks to him for his courage, for his words, and for his defense of everyone’s right to read.

It’s a big week in bookland, dear readers.  Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers — in shared support of the freedom to seek and express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

Banned Books Week began in 1982 in response to a surge in challenges to books across the country.  Since them, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF)  tracks reports of book challenges and bans and compiles the annual Top Ten Challenged Books List  in order to bring awareness to this issue.  Their report this year was chilling.  There was an alarming 17% increase in book censorship complaints in 2016.  Since most challenges do not get reported by libraries to the OIF, the actual number is probably much higher. Another fact to add to this disturbing trend: typically, only 10% of the titles reported to OIF are normally removed from the institutions receiving the challenges.  In 2016, half of the most frequently challenged books were actually banned last year.  You can have a look at this video, produced by the American Library Association, about the 10 most challenged books of 2016.  Many of them are titles that have been challenged previously, but a few are new.

The Banned Books Week Coalition (BBWC) is a national alliance of diverse organizations joined by a commitment to increase awareness of the annual celebration of the freedom to read, and this year, they are is responding to these challenges and increased censorship with “Our Right To Read,” a celebration of the diverse range of ideas found in books, and our right as citizens to make our own intellectual choices.

BBWC Chair Charles Brownstein says, “Our free society depends on the right to access, evaluate, and voice a wide range of ideas. Book bans chill that right, and increase division in the communities where they occur. This Banned Books Week, we’re asking people of all political persuasions to come together and celebrate Our Right to Read.”

We’ve said it here before, but at our Library, you–and everyone else who visits us–have the right to read whatever you like.  We are honored to help you access the stories, information, and resources that you need, without judgement.  And we are also huge fans of Banned Book Week.  So stay tuned this week for more celebrations of our right to read!

Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Putnam County, Georgia.  She was the youngest of eight children born to Willie Lee Walker, a sharecropper whom Alice described as “wonderful at math but a terrible farmer,” and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant, who supplemented the family’s income by working as a maid.  Alice grew up during a time when Jim Crow laws–laws that enforced segregation and privileged white people living within their jurisdiction–were in effect, and Alice and her siblings were all expected to work as sharecroppers, helping their father.  Her mother defied convention, however, insisting that her children learn how to read and write.  As a result, Alice began writing her first stories at the age of eight.

Around this same time, Alice was wounded in her right eye by a BB pellet fired by her brother.  Because her family didn’t own a car and couldn’t easily travel, it was a week before Alice could get to a doctor and, as a result, lost the sight in her eye.  For years, scar tissue built up around the wound, making Alice extremely embarrassed and shy.  The scar tissues was removed six years later, however, and by the time she graduated high school, however, she was valedictorian and was voted most-popular girl, as well as queen of her senior class.  However, Alice noted that the physical and emotion trauma of that event had  given her the opportunity “really to see people and things, really to notice relationships and to learn to be patient enough to care about how they turned out”.

After high school, Walker went to Spelman College in Atlanta on a full scholarship, and then transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1965.  During this time, she began to publish her poetry, and devoted herself to the Civil Rights Movement, even taking part in the 1963 March on Washington, D.C.   She also joined Ms. magazine as an editor in 1971, before moving to California and writing the novel that would forever after be associated with her name.

The Color Purple was released in 1982.  The novel follows a young troubled black woman fighting her way through racist white culture, as well as patriarchal black culture as well, highlighting in a devastating, insightful, and deeply emotional way how oppressions work together to keep people from achieving their dreams.  The book became a bestseller and was subsequently adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie, as well as a 2005 Broadway musical, which was revived just this past year.   Alice Walker also received the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award for her work–and became one of the most censored authors in contemporary American history.

In 2012, Alice Walker gave an interview to Guernica magazine in which she discussed her book, and the many reactions readers have had to it, as well as her own thoughts on censorship and the need to read ‘dangerous books’.  In honor of Banned Book Week, here are some highlights from the interview (you can read the whole thing here by clicking on this link).

Alice Walker: Writing What’s Right

Guernica: In the introduction to Alice Walker Banned, Patricia Holt writes, “Along with her Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award, Alice Walker has the honor of being one of the most censored writers in American literature.” Did you ever feel that the censorship of your work created duties for you—moral, ethical, or otherwise—that you didn’t ask for?

Alice Walker: Not at all.  I considered it part of what can happen to anyone on the journey of one’s life.  In Southern Black culture we are sustained more than most people might imagine by our ancestral songs; these songs, called “sorrow songs” (from the days of enslavement) and later “spirituals,” later morphed into gospel, jazz and blues.  In this canon we find songs that, even under the most brutal conditions, consider Life itself to simply be a race with one’s self.  The object is to reach the end intact as you.  So one of the songs goes:  “Guide my feet, while I run this race; Guide my feet, while I run this race.  Guide my feet, while I run this race.  ’Cause I don’t want to run this race in vain.”  This plea is addressed to The Creator, who is also the deep Self. The truest work is not to run the race of life in vain; ending up completely severed from your true self.  I am so thankful for songs like this!  When I speak and write about being under the protection of ancestors, it is because of messages and wisdom like this that I know sustain me.

Also, I think it is anyone’s right to do what they feel they have to do.  They have a job. I have a job. I will write what I think is right for me to write.  They will oppose it.  In a way that makes us equal.  Though when one’s work is completely suppressed this is a bitter acceptance.  However, my work has always been championed.  Stood up for. Thousands of people in California and beyond spoke up for The Color Purple and for my short stores.  There was a great outpouring of support.  From everywhere! And actually I left the struggle up to others.  I had delivered my gift.  It was given in complete love to everyone.  If they wanted to keep it, it would have to be their work to fight for it. They did.

Guernica: As a censored writer, you’re keeping hallowed company: Dorothy Allison, Harper Lee. Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Zinn have all been challenged, and that’s just the tip of the censorious black marker. What are some of the banned books you most admire?

Alice Walker: I have so loved the work of Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Zinn, especially while a student, both of them dedicated to the exposure of the insanity of war.  I also love Mark Twain for his clear denunciation of American imperialism and for his wise and humorous, often quite sly, sendup of organized religion.

Guernica: What’s most at stake when a book like The Color Purple is banned?  What’s at stake for women, and women of color, when a story like this is silenced?

Alice Walker: Great Literature is help for humans.  It is medicine of the highest order.  In a more aware culture, writers would be considered priests.  And, in fact, I have approached writing in a distinctly priestess frame of mind.  I know what The Color Purple can mean to people, women and men, who have no voice. Who believe they have few choices in life.  It can open to them, to their view, the full abundance of this amazing journey we are all on.  It can lift them into a new realization of their own power, beauty, love, courage.  It is a book that unites the present with the past, therefore giving people a sense of history and of timelessness they might never achieve otherwise.  And even were it not “great” literature, it has the best interests of all of us humans at heart.  That we grow, change, challenge, encourage, love fiercely in the awareness that real love can never be incorrect.