Happy Banned Book Week! Okay, actually Banned Book Week was at the end of September, and here we are mid October... But I wrote this post in September, excited to share my thoughts about banned books, and then life happened and I went out of town for a week and had horrible WiFi, and I've been playing catch up ever since...But I have this awesome post, and I even recruited some amazing art from the awesome Etha Pat @elvaerhapat, so I have to share this post, right? So here we go, back in time to late September:
Image by Etha Pat, on Instagram @elvaethapatart
It’s Banned Book Week, a week to celebrate and read books that have been banned! These are usually children’s books and young adult books, and they are usually being banned from school libraries and reading lists. Sometimes their presence in the public library is bring protested. Sure, there are other books that get banned, usually books pushing for violence and riots, but those are far less common. The books that are usually banned are books about the hard stuff: abuse, alcoholism, racism, LGBTQ issues. Books about sex education. These books are also objected to because they sometimes contain profanity.
Who is objecting to these books? It’s usually concerned parents, wishing to shelter their children from the world for a few years longer. They are just kids, they don’t need to be exposed to that kind of thing, right? These are dangerous, radical ideas, I don’t want my child exposed to that kind of thing.
When I was a child, my exposure to books was never censored, and I’m not sure if that was a conscious choice of my mother’s or just a happy accident. I tried to read “Roots” at a very young age, and failed. I listened to audiocassettes of “Clan of the Cavebear” and several other books in that series while still in elementary school, and only realized much later the heavy sexual content of those books (oops). But I read and listened to everything I could get my hands on. Every two weeks we’d go to the small public library, and I’d go home with a huge stack of books I had no chance of working through before it was time to return them, but I would try. And while I wouldn’t recommend “Clan of the Cavebear” for elementary school children, I feel this unfettered access to information and ideas shaped me into a better person. And there’s science to back that up.
There have been several studies showing that we can learn empathy when we read about others who are different than us. This is true when we read about people with different challenges than us as well. You may reside over a picture perfect heterosexual home with no substance abuse or physical or emotional abuse going on. Great! And you may homeschool, and never watch TV or see movies, you may effectively shelter your child from everything and everyone. But for how long? Your child will eventually go out in the world and meet people and have to deal with situations outside of their realm of experience. How will they react when their college roommate is dealing with an abusive boyfriend? Or when they have a friend dealing with addiction? Or the first time they meet someone who is gay? You may respond that you’ve taught your child to be kind to everyone and they’ll do fine…but being told to be kind is different than learning empathy. Books provide a safe place to learn about different life experiences, and to learn about hard things. Still uncomfortable with your child reading a banned book? Read it first and be prepared to talk about these topics.
Image by Etha Pat, on Instagram @elvaethapatart
And you may not know everything your child is going through. A couple of years ago I talked with a student who in high school began cutting herself, but she kept it secret from her parents. Then one day at the library she discovered a book about a teen dealing with depression and self-harm…and that book changed her life.
Books have been there for me. I read “Before Women Had Wings” in high school, and it was like a revelation to read about someone going through the types of things I was going through. Because we don’t talk about these issues, when you’re experiencing them it can be extremely isolating. That book was like a bright light shone into a dark room. I wasn’t alone.
If you censor your child’s reading, think about why. Profanity? You can’t walk down the street without hearing it, it’s in most movies that aren’t rated G, and it’s even on the radio. I’ve had some say that reading it is worse, but I don’t really think so. It’s more obvious, but when we are hearing it we are still internalizing it. This is why when you learn a language you can’t just read the text book, you have to participate in conversations in that language. I think reading violence is actually less sensory than watching it in a show. Your mind shuts off the more graphic details, which doesn’t happen when you watch a violent show. Books are easy to skim uncomfortable bits, and easy to close if it does become too hard. Don’t underestimate your child’s ability to self-censor.
My oldest and I have a deal. She can read anything, but we have to talk about it. If I know there’s something in it, we talk about it before, and if something comes up I didn’t know about, she’ll come to me and we discuss it. The only thing I really object to in young adult books are the books where unhealthy co-dependent or emotionally abusive relationships are made to look normal or even romantic. This is why I didn’t want her to read Twilight. But we talked about it, and she wanted to read it because a friend of hers really likes it, so I allowed it. She ended up abandoning them somewhere in the second book.
I encourage you to read something that makes you uncomfortable and that is widely outside the realm of your life experiences. This is how you learn and grow, which is what we should all be doing every day that we are alive.
Image by Etha Pat, on Instagram @elvaethapatart
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