For hundreds of years, books depicting controversial topics have been banned. At first, books were banned mainly over discussions of negative portrayals of religion. Now, seemingly non-controversial books, including The Dictionary, The Lorax, Where’s Waldo, and Hansel and Gretel are being banned over the smallest dissensions, such as inaccurate depictions of words, slang, and minority representation.
In modern society, books are being banned more for depictions of violence, nudity, and crude language, and especially for portrayals of minority groups like people of color, women, LGBTQ+ figures, etc. While banning a book does not make it completely inaccessible or illegal to obtain, it can be significantly harder to get your hands on a particular book if it’s banned, especially if you are in a state with heavier reading restrictions.
As more and more books are banned at this rapid pace, future generations will be left with limited opportunities to read books with controversial matters and opinions. This will affect the way the youth of today will shape their minds, and therefore the world around them.
Librarian Jennifer Berube cited The Handmaid’s Tale as a book that significantly affected her when she was growing up.
“For example, in The Handmaid’s Tale, I read when I was a high school sophomore, and at the time that I was young… I really didn’t think about sexism… it was just the way women were treated,” Berube said. “Even though the feminist movement had just happened, it wasn’t part of my little world, and then when I read The Handmaid’s Tale and I read how women were treated in that society, it opened my mind to what was happening to women in our current society.”
While they remain banned, hit books like The Handmaid’s Tale are still considered eligible to be turned into TV shows and movies. While the commercialization of controversial books can lead to increased awareness of the book and the controversy surrounding it, this can also mean that the main point will go over people’s heads, which belittles the book itself and its claims (usually about society).
Additionally, many books are banned for showing disturbing parallels between horrific dystopias and modern society. For example, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Marshall University attributes the first challenge to the novel coming from a student’s parent due to “profanity and using God’s name in vain.” However, the banning of the book at all only proves its point. In Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist, Guy Montag, works as a fireman in a totalitarian government that bans books. Rather than putting out house fires as a fireman, he starts fires in houses caught with books. Throughout the book, Montag questions his morality and eventually flees this oppressive society.
With books being challenged and banned so often now, we must now begin to question what we are being told to ignore. “Most books that are good-quality books have at one point been challenged or removed from a library,” Berube said.
With all this being said, it begs the question of how this will directly affect the students and staff members of Arcata High. California is regarded as a more liberal state, so we feel that we are safe from book banning, but this may not be entirely true. Teacher Alexander Kantner said, “It’s not like I’m banning books from my own class but I’ve certainly been reconsidering what I teach.” Kantner also added, “I told my students the other day, I don’t know how I can teach a class about literature… without talking about race and/or sexuality.”
While California is generally a more liberal state, especially along the coast and in Humboldt County, we are not immune to censorship of books. Kantner, for one, had a lot to say about the banning of books in California. “You think it couldn’t happen here? ‘Cause drive 10 miles away from the coast and there’s a very different, you know, cultural climate,” Kantner said on people who consider California to be shielded from book banning. “I think anything that happens to any of us affects all of us.”
There is also the question of whether book banning is an infringement on the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause. The New Jersey State Bar Foundation says it is an infringement. “Book bans violate the First Amendment because they deprive children or students of the right to receive information and ideas,” law professor David L. Hudson Jr. said, in an interview with the foundation.
So with that being said, how will you let book-banning affect history?
