I’ve been banning books from my daughter’s library since before she was born.
I always encourage family and friends to fill our bookshelves with preschool favorites, and yet I can make certain books disappear in a moment, sometimes to Goodwill, sometimes to the dumpster. Baby Bibles with pink cherub-cheeked Eves and button-nose Noahs. Fairy tales featuring Disney princesses who always need saving. When I’m in a bind, I’ve learned how to redact the troubling scenes of death and loss from bedtime stories so that my 3 year old can sleep better at night.
I’ve always considered myself a champion of creative freedoms. (I still remember how hurt I was in high school when my Stephen King and Anne Rice books began to sprout legs and walk because my mother believed that I was “dabbling in the occult.”) I celebrate Banned Books Week and I often include these controversial texts in my university courses. As my daughter grows, I want to teach her how to become responsible for her own reading choices and ultimately, no book will be off-limits. So, perhaps then, the books I’ve donated to Goodwill aren’t really banned books, they’re not now books.
Consider: when my daughter was only months old, I read Dr. Suess’s My Many Colored Days half a dozen times before I decided that any book that characterizes black days as a wolf, “Mad. And loud” and brown days as a bear, “slow and low, low down” was not right for a little black girl with golden brown skin and many “colored” days before her. One day, she may want to pick up this book. Okay, fine. But not now. Let’s read about eggs that are green or The Lorax, once banned for promoting negative views of the logging industry. (Seriously!)
Being able to make these choices is a form of freedom that I cherish as a parent and a teacher. I’d hate to think that I might be aligning myself with book burners who insist that Harry Potter advocates devil worship or that comic books lead to juvenile delinquency. Nevertheless, as Uncle Ben once warned Spidey, with great power... you know how it goes.
It is with this mindset that I encountered the news about a school board in Michigan that recently pulled Toni Morrison’s novel, Song of Solomon, from a high school AP English class reading list.
It bothered me that Morrison’s book had been being singled out for criticism of its so-called “profanity, sexual references and violence” and how dare they ban one of our President’s favorite books! But I also wondered if the decision was motivated by people who determined that Song of Solomon was a not now book. According to the local newspaper, Morrison’s book would still be available for students in the school library, just not required reading in the classroom. Other books noted in the debate were Walker’s The Color Purple and Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. The school board has since lifted the ban, but not without revealing the philosophical divide within their community.
Race is almost certainly a factor here. I know very little about the Michigan high school system that pulled Morrison’s novel, but I do know that stories about black American experiences are often singled out for reasons that go unacknowledged. The forthright portrayal (and critique) of violence and misogyny coupled with explorations of race and racism makes white and black readers uneasy. These are conversations that many of us are unwilling to have as adults.
On the other hand, I’m always a bit disturbed by college students in my African-American literature course who tell me that they were taught The Bluest Eye in their younger years before they could fully grasp the novel’s complex messages. Should Morrison’s writing be allowed unquestioned access to all ages, simply because she’s the greatest living American author today and a Nobel Prize winner? Ironically, Morrison’s latest publication, Burn this Book, is a collection of essays by prominent writers about literary censorship. Her essay speaks eloquently about the value of literature for our cultural health and well-being. But I think even she would agree that there are other ways – and other books – that are better suited for young minds to explore issues of black self-love, gendered identity, whiteness, and history until they are ready for her unflinching narratives.
(Ugh, I just don’t know… Even as I write this, I remember how grateful I am to my grandmother for allowing me and Frieda to read The Color Purple when no one else would. It opened our eyes to a reality we had never confronted before and I think we are both the better for it.)
Is creative freedom about the right of expression or access? The American Library Association argues for both, stating that “intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.” But I am not as clear on how these ideals should apply to young people, especially children who are not yet equipped with the decision-making tools to exercise their liberties. Shouldn’t parental and teacher discretion be an important part of this freedom too?
Perhaps you disagree. Is there a better way to approach the issue? I’d love to continue the conversation.
Posted by fayezie on May 30, 2009 at 4:14 PM
I appreciate your post. I am a mom too. one of my top favorite reads of all time was “The Color Purple”, though I did not read it in school…. coincidentally, when I was in high school, (in the 90′s), I read both Richard Wright novels, and we also read Sula. I didn’t “get” Sula, when I was just a little blond blue eyed 15year old…. but, Wright to this day still remains an image in my mental library. Though, neither Wright’s novels nor Sula were thrust at us as if we had to understand or grasp at that moment what it meant to be black. However, I believe that the exposure to those novels affected me once I moved to the south. having grown up in a midwestern university town, i had never witnessed the poverty, and fight to live that one can witness in some of the poorer areas of the south.
as a mother, i think that you are doing a wonderful thing by being mindful now, and naturally there never is one right answer. your parenting will constantly evolve, and your influences will no doubt be sucked up by the sponges that you nurture. I think that your sensitivity alone is something that your child will witness and follow.
of course, i also have no clue what a reader’s experience is when they themselves are young and black. which now after reading your post i find really intriguing. sorry, i can’t help it… cause you know, i’m just the blonde girl on the other side of the room. :)
my kids are still young. but i find that simply explaining things along the way has had a huge impact. i was secretly amused and patting myself on the back a few days ago when my son (4 years old) was attending a preschooler day at the local art museum, and the lady asked the children something about an “indian”, and my son said, “what’s an indian?”…. LOL… we had at one time had a conversation about “native americans”, and apparently it stuck.
i look forward to perusing the rest of your blog.
Posted by marcys on May 30, 2009 at 5:25 PM
I’m conflicted about the issue too, and I never thought I would be. I let my kids read whatever they liked, and even took them to see adult movies like Saturday Night Fever. This was in the 70s and I believed in total freedom. Now I have two grandsons, and I argue with my daughter, who in my opinion is overprotective. BUT. I changed my mind over Slumdog Millionaire. The kids were dying to see it (they’re 9 and 11). My daughter said absolutely not, and I ridiculed her. Then I saw it, and agreed. I told the kids that the movie had some scenes and images that I wish weren’t in my head, and that they definitely don’t need in theirs. So now I’m a little less permissive, understanding that kids don’t need every horrible cultural image that comes down the pike. I also remember being terrified by my first movie, at five years old: The Wizard of Oz!
Song of Solomon? My favorite Morrisson book. I can’t recall what in it would be so offensive.
Posted by Edi on May 30, 2009 at 6:35 PM
I often find the arguments for banning books quite ridiculous, but I have to remind myself that in reporting these events, newspapers condense the essence of the story to the most provocative elements. I have to admire those who feel strongly enough to launch these attacks, though as a card carrying member of the ALA I’m supposed to dislike them. I’m also suppose to fight all forms of censuring. Do you think my book selections represent no favoratism?? These parents would blush if they knew the extent to which many school librarians have to go to engage students to read!
I hope this school system has realized their flaw. Rather than forcing teachers to make a unilateral selection in reading materials, there should be an advisory group with the school librarian, language arts teachers and parents prior to school starting to select books for the courses.
Posted by Claudia on May 31, 2009 at 5:23 AM
Hey Edi! I’m dying to know which of those strategies would make parents blush?!? And I also hope an advisory group is/was involved in the Michigan decision, but it sounds like they just had some very vocal protesters.
Posted by Edi on June 8, 2009 at 10:17 AM
In working with teachers, I’m amazed that so few, including Language Arts teachers, understand that there is young adult literature which is a bit more appropriate for young readers. Most want the students to read what they’ve read, whether recently or in high school. Many teachers think that teens will enjoy the same books that they too enjoy. Thus the selection of Morrison for middle schools. Many don’t want or don’t have time to read or look for books that librarians might recommend. Parents would blush if the simply picked many of the best selled YA books! Schools with large Latino and African American populations often have to resort to adult urban/hip-hop lit to get students to read. And, this stuff is never challenged. But, Morrison, Twain, Cormier… are routinely challenged.
We want parents involved in education. We have to get them in on the planning stages! When it comes to choosing books, we need to make it more of a community effort with parents, teachers and librarians/media specialists. Pick themes, suggest several books for teachers to select from. Decide as a community the issues to approach with students, and decide when it will be most appropriate to do so.
Posted by Wilhelmina Jenkins on May 30, 2009 at 11:38 PM
I agree with the idea of a “not now” book, and I really don’t consider this banning books at all. I have to admit that there are many images in Morrison’s work that I find disturbing myself. I am, of course, ancient, so I can decide whether or not to continue reading. But to put a book with violent or graphically sexual imagery on a required list seems unwise and, to me, lazy. There are so many African American authors who write books that would be wonderful for high schoolers, but I suspect that it is easier to choose a Morrison book than to do the work of finding a more appropriate choice. My stepgrandson was assigned “The Bluest Eye” in middle school. There is no way that he could have fully appreciated that book at his age level. (It is one of my favorites, but I read it as an adult and it broke my heart even then.) I also feel that, if you are teaching students of various ethnic backgrounds, you may be giving your students a very skewed view of African American life. They are very young and tend to generalize.
Keep them in the library, but not on the assigned list.
Posted by Claudia on May 31, 2009 at 5:35 AM
Mina, I’m so glad you weighed in! I have to agree with your assessment about “lazy” choices; I think it’s very easy — too easy — to pick a Morrison book when there are other YA books available. And oh my goodness, The Bluest Eye in MIDDLE SCHOOL. See this is exactly what I mean.
Do you have any thoughts on macys question about what exactly what it is about Song of Solomon that might be considered offensive?
Posted by Claudia on May 31, 2009 at 5:21 AM
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave such thoughtful comments, everyone. (And I wasn’t sure anyone would read this post on a Saturday!)
fayezie, I really value your perspective – as a reader, a mother, and a blonde girl :) – and I suspect that I will get better at navigating all this in time, but I wouldn’t want the pressure of having to made such decisions about reading choices for other people’s children. Although it sounds like Wright may have been introduced to you at just the right time.
And marcys, isn’t it amazing how a personal experience can bring all this home! I am also a bit puzzled as to why Song of Solomon of all books, might be considered so offensive. All I can come up with is the images surrounding how “Milkman” got his name. I also thought about the violence that leads Guitar’s Seven Days to do their work, but even most of that is relatively “off camera” – I wonder if the idea of a clandestine black vigilante group getting “revenge” is part of the trouble? It’s strange.
Posted by jo on May 31, 2009 at 10:28 AM
i agree with mina. making available and making mandatory are very different things.
but i would like to expand on the concept of “banning.” when you keep your three-year-old from reading a certain book you are not “banning” that book. banning is an institutional gesture performed on the basis of a certain conception of what is good and permissible and what is bad and impermissible. since it’s institutional, it’s ideological and it’s blanket: the book is verboten for everyone, period. targeting books to audiences we are familiar with (our kids, our students) is not banning, is educating. if your kid or your students really wanted to read a book you consider inappropriate (for any sorts of pedagogical reasons), you’d probably, i think, would be more than happy to read the book with them, while making ample time to discuss it. in other words, you are not making a blanket, irrevocable decision. you are engaging in a meaningful relationship in which you, the grown-up/teacher, are supposed to know more and dictate (some) rules. likewise, keeping your daughter from drinking wine is not banning wine. you can drink it and your spouse can drink it and your friends can drink it. you tell her your daughter she’s not yet allowed to drink wine and if she kicks and screams you let her lick the tip of a spoon that was dipped into wine.
mandatory curricula are a curse on education. ideally we would have teachers choose they own books based on their own understanding of a) what they can handle and b) what their students can handle.
and this of course leads us into a whole discussion (we probably don’t want to have) about primary education in the US, and at despair at all the ways in which it’s not going as well as it should be going — not even close.
i wish i could answer your questions about Song but it’s one of the few TM i haven’t read. please don’t hold it against me!
Posted by Claudia on June 1, 2009 at 11:59 AM
Hey, jo! Thank you for explaining those terms, that’s almost worth knowing that you haven’t yet read Song of Solomon! Ha ha. But I agree with you about irrevocable, blanket decisions. Now, does this mean, however, that you don’t think that the school’s decision was a form of “educating” because it was an institutional/ideological one and not targeted to their student’s needs? Or does this get us into the sticky territory of mandatory curricula?
Posted by jo on May 31, 2009 at 10:30 AM
p.s. a really thoughtful and interesting post, c.!
Posted by fayezie on May 31, 2009 at 10:48 PM
Hmm. While only having read the first 1/3 of Beloved as an adult, and then Sula as a naive teenager, naturally at the age of 15 i had no real world experience to comprehend the depth and complexities of poor black women trying to fight and raise a family, etc. ( i know i know, i really need to get some Morrison on my nightstand pronto) however, now giving a personal interjectory here, i divorced last year after an abusive marriage. 3 kids, 1 autistic, i’m on my own, i had to take my skinny white-girl butt into DFCS to apply for foodstamps and I felt really out of place…. but but but, having some of those images ingrained in me at one point or another, I could feel some of that bravery and courage that a woman can muster to carry herself and her children through to another day. (this is where it goes from a black story to a white girl’s story….oye! what’s the rule? to stay in the original story or see the grander picture as the way the reader experiences the story? i don’t know, maybe it’s just the way any individual reads and interprets stories… black/slave stories? for me personally I become personally attached to characters and their human experience, thank god afterall for being raised in a midwestern university town where that stuff is preached to us in third grade, versus the disgusting bigotry that still passes down generations here in the south)…..
having survived an abusive marriage and all that comes with it, I can now read Maya Angelou and feel as if she’d been peering through my cranium for themes.
sooo, what’s my point? that i agree with the not-now concept, but I do think that giving a young person a glimpse of the stories, and handing them the “binoculars” to see the world through the eyes of characters in some of these books may not make sense “now” for a teenager, but someday that teenager will grow up and be faced with a situation that suddenly harkens those locked away images and memories from that one novel they had to read in 11th grade english….
Posted by Claudia on June 1, 2009 at 12:04 PM
Good points, fayezie – this is what I was trying to get at with my reference to reading The Color Purple before my own parents thought it appropriate. I appreciate you sharing your own experience, too. Sometimes that early exposure can mean the difference in developing empathy for others and coping with unexpected hardship.
Posted by jo on June 1, 2009 at 12:14 PM
it does get us into the sticky territory of mandatory curricula.
:)
Posted by GirlGriot on June 2, 2009 at 1:49 PM
I’m all for the not now category! I wish my own parents had had that idea when I was a kid. Might have kept me from trying to read Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children when I was 11 and being so completely traumatized after the first story that I put the book back on our shelf with the spine facing the wall so that I wouldn’t even have to see that the book was there!
At the same time, I’m eternally grateful to my parents for being open to us reading any and everything. Our family trips to the library were bi-weekly habit, and we all went to whatever sections we wanted without our parents looking over our shoulders at our choices. The idea of someone telling me I couldn’t read a book was unimaginable to me.
Clearly, I’m ambivalent about the not now category. I read books as a kid that I was definitely too young to fully understand. But I’ve come back to them as an adult and I’ve found that my early impressions remain valid and important, even as my grown-up brain sees and understands so much more. Maybe part of the key is raising children to be thinkers and then trusting them to think well (for example, my knowing that I needed to put the Wright book away, that it wasn’t the book for me at that time). And certainly another, equally important part is making sure they have access to many, many different kinds of books — genres, authors, cultures — so that they have a real opportunity to find the things that speak to them.
I went back to Uncle Tom’s Children as a grad student. It still upset me, still hurt my heart, still made me cry … but I was older and had learned many more things by the time I sat in that Master’s class, and I was able to read the book with an understanding beyond my 11-year-old visceral emotional response.
(Did you hear Morrison interviewed on NPR this weekend about the new book? She talked about the banning of Song of Solomon among other things.)
Posted by Claudia on June 2, 2009 at 4:05 PM
Oh my goodness!!!! Thanks so much for posting this GirlGriot! Here’s the link to the Morrison interview, I’m going to listen to it tonight: http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/05/toni-morrison-2
And I most certainly share your ambivalence. I remember reading the first page of The Color Purple and slamming it shut like it was on fire. But clearly it is a moment that stuck with me and I like the way you argue for the fact that you put the book away, knowing yourself that you weren’t quite ready. That shows real maturity, and I hope to teach those kinds of attitudes to my daughter.
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Posted by Holly on June 9, 2009 at 11:49 AM
I had no idea that Michigan had done this (we moved to NOLA from Ann Arbor 5 years ago… liberal little people’s republic of AA). My guess is that the folks in AA are falling over themselves in disgust.
I have a hard time with any limit on access to books, even to children. What is more important, I think, is the quality of the teacher: does the teacher have the skills, perspective, and no-how to appropriately shape the students’ reading of the text? Can they put it in context and help the students think through the difficult issues within? I worry about this more than WHAT a child may read.
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