You have banned and challenged To Kill a Mockingbird due to offensive language and racism. But what have you done to discourage offensive language and racism from being tolerated in our country?
You have banned and challenged The Giver because it normalizes violence. But what have you done to help prevent violence in our everyday lives?
You have banned and challenged Thirteen Reasons Why because it addresses teen suicide in great detail. But what have you done to help guide and assist teenagers through their powerful and often difficult emotions?
You have banned and challenged The Hate You Give because of what you claim to be an anti-police message. But what have you done to shield black and brown people from being brutalized and killed by those who are supposed to protect and serve them?
You have banned and challenged The Handmaid’s Tale for “vulgarity and sexual overtones.” But what have you done to subvert this cultural expectation that women exist solely to be used in such vulgar and sexual ways?
You have banned and challenged Maus because it “shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids,” and asked, “why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff?” But what have you done to ask yourself and others why anyone would want to have history erased?
Over the years, you have banned and challenged so many books that trigger your fragile little egos. You have banned and challenged so many books that describe things you don’t want to have to read about—things like violence and racism and offensive language and vulgarity and suicide. But have you ever, for a single moment, stopped to consider the fact that some people live with these things every day? That all these writers are writing what they know, and what they know is a world full of violence and racism and offensive language and vulgarity and suicide that no one is bothering to actually do something about?
Have you ever stopped to think that it is, in fact, you who are the problem?
Sincerely,
A Book-Reader
Happy Banned Books Week. Night Owls, what frequently banned or challenged books have you read recently?
https://cdhe.colorado.gov/banned-book-list
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/holocaust-novel-maus-banned-in-tennessee-school-district
