The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.
We’re usually prepared to be frightened by Stephen King. But it was still scary to see how relevant his 1992 BDN column about the dangers of book banning remains today. Sadly, many of his words in the piece could be written today.
Take, for example, his message to the kids in communities where people are trying to restrict their access to certain books and certain ideas.
“There are people in your home town who have taken certain books off the shelves of your school library. Do not argue with them; do not protest; do not organize or attend rallies to have the books put back on their shelves. Don’t waste your time or your energy,” King wrote. “Instead, hustle down to your public library, where these frightened people’s reach must fall short in a democracy, or to your local bookstore, and get a copy of what has been banned. Read it carefully and discover what it is your elders don’t want you to know. In many cases you’ll finish the banned book in question wondering what all the fuss was about. In others, however, you will find vital information about the human condition. It doesn’t hurt to remember that John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, and even Mark Twain have been banned in this country’s public schools over the last 20 years.”
It also just so happens that, if anyone were to hustle over to the Bangor Public Library this week, they’d find a moving and enlightening display about banned books. Oct. 1-7 is Banned Books Week, and the library is displaying a group of books that have faced banning efforts over the years — along with input from community members (both library patrons and staff) about what those books have meant to them.
John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.” Toni Morrison’s “Beloved.” George Orwell’s “1984.” These are works that many of us would think of as unquestionable classics. And as both King and the Bangor Public Library have reminded us, even the classics have been subject to book bans over the years. That is worth keeping in mind as more recent works face the age-old hysteria that often accompanies new ideas and experiences that help us learn.
The Bangor library display includes handouts from the Office For Intellectual Freedom, part of the American Library Association (ALA), that detail book ban attempts in 2022. It says that last year featured the highest number of attempted book bans in the more than 20 years the organization has been tracking censorship in libraries. The handout also includes a list of the 13 most challenged book titles of 2022, and at the top of the list is “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe.
According to the ALA document, the reasons for the challenges to this book were “LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit.” Even past c omments from the author indicate that there are some discussions to be had about age appropriateness relating to some of the illustrations. But it matters how and where those conversations happen. Frequently, and harmfully, the movement to challenge this and other books has framed LGBTQIA+ identities as somehow perverse or obscene. That is wrong, and speaks to why access to new ideas and new perspectives is so critical in the first place.
It is so important to consider what community members who did read it had to say at the Bangor Public Library.
“This was the first book that made me truly understand my trans family member. When I gave it to them to read, it was the first book they saw themselves in,” one person said about “Gender Queer” at the banned books display.
“Both my son and I read this in 2021,” someone else said. “He was 14 at the time. It helped both of us understand folx who are non-binary and showed us a glimpse of what that means. It was really a great education for us both.”
Isn’t this what education is all about? Different perspectives help us learn more about the world around us — and even learn more about the people closest to us. Even learn more about ourselves. Despite some of the divisive rhetoric at school boards and legislatures around the country, literature has an amazing power to bring people together, if we let it.
That was also evident in another community member comment about “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee, which has seen its own book banning controversies.
“I enjoyed reading this book as a teen, but when I read it as an adult with my library book group, it became this symbol of unification,” someone explained in the display. “My book group consisted of mostly women in their 60s and 70s, but I invited the local high school junior English class to join us. My 90-year-old friend bonded with a 16-year-old boy over this book. They both loved it and discussed why they did and left the meeting with appreciation for one another. It was a beautiful thing to witness.”
There is beauty in this understanding, even if it sometimes means confronting ugly realities through the written word.
“This was the first piece I had ever read that gave me a much better understanding of what many veterans still deal with day to day,” someone else said about “The Things They Carried,” a collection of short stories by Tim O’Brien. “Being in a war is a traumatic event, no matter what your role is in it. Everyone is just trying to survive, and these stories brought that home to me.”
We do ourselves no favors if we ignore the difficult realities or seek to shield others from them. Which brings us to another comment at the Bangor Public Library, this time about “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
“This is a book everyone should read … lest we forget,” the person said. “Only cowards are afraid of books that point out uncomfortable truths.”
