Article

I know it's been a while since I've updated my blog. To be fair, I do have an awful lot of scattered notes jotted down here and there which will be turned into numerous blog posts once I have the chance. Until then, here is an article I've written for a local bookstore here in Guelph on the subject of book banning.

Disappearing books, disappearing voices.

Earlier this year, the Tucson Unified School District in the state of Arizona went through their curriculum and banned approximately 50 books from their schools. The rationale included inappropriate content and age appropriateness, although most of these explanations were generally without basis. This act has received international attention, causing all kinds of questions to rise to the surface, particularly since most of the books were written by minority authors.  The TUSD has rephrased their decision due to public outcry about racial censorship, and now claims that many of the texts have not been banned but merely confiscated—as though this somehow lightens the blow. Through this process many of these texts have now become “disappeared books” that are neither explicitly condemned nor condoned, instead quietly slipping out of sight. Because of this new status they will be erased from book lists (banned and not banned) making the sheer idea of disappeared books disturbing. 

For there to be a need for censorship there is often a fear of stories which provoke thought. Stories which talk about oppression and liberation often stand as open threats to authoritative systems of government. This incident proves that not only is knowledge power and the control of books fraught with politics, but that free thinking and critically engaging with books can also be an act of empowerment. 

Removing free access to books which support alternative ways of thinking reasserts a hierarchy where those in power can rewrite history without resistance. By not including certain texts to be available or taught in schools, their content and their voices are forcefully silenced.  This is a colonial tactic of enforcing authority by removing any opposition that it faces. It is an ideologically based act of violence against narratives that conflict with power structures—structures which have long ignored the social injustices of which they are a part. In the case of many Mexican-American and Indigenous texts included on this list, the oppressive silencing is all too familiar. 

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire is one of the most popular books regarding critical educational practices and social equality, and yet it too has been confiscated. It has been removed even as it speaks against this form of social control. Freire states in his book that: 

“any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.”

Banning, censoring, even confiscating books is an act of violence enacted upon those who are denied the opportunity to access information. That this occurs within educational systems intended to support critical inquiry demonstrates a movement from education towards selected indoctrination. It perpetuates the oppression and social injustice of minority groups, robbing them of their voice and encouraging their disappearance along with that of the books. There must be some other way of teaching readers how to engage in critical thinking without simply removing books from shelves, as well as a way of reclaiming the power of books to protect ourselves from this kind of violence.