The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: banned books

  • Don’t Ban What You Don’t Understand

    Our literary taboos tend to reflect the things that terrify the majority of society. I vividly recall July 3rd of 2008, when I got cornered by two friends while discussing the required reading list for a middle school in Olathe (or somewhere in that area). One, a father of a child a couple years away from middle school, ranted that one of the books has homosexuality and bestiality in it, and damn it, that’s not okay for kids! Except the whole discussion (if it could be called that) became about sex education in schools and, eventually, political conservativeness.

    This discussion wasn’t about homosexuality or bestiality or even the book1 but about the fear that someone else, some stranger, was going to teach this man’s son about sexuality — and in his personal dogma, that’s a moral issue.

    I’m okay with people being offended by the content of a book — everyone cannot like everything. I’m troubled by the message a lot of teen books send to teenage girls, but so be it. My friend is troubled by certain books in his son’s curriculum, and he is welcome to discuss alternative reading with his son’s teacher. These are personal issues, and we are by all means free to take these personal soapboxes and engage in discussion with whoever will listen. We are welcome to say, “No, Child, you will not be reading Abraham Bosnick’s book,2 because I don’t think you should be reading about one zombie’s battle against syphilis.” (more…)

  • What’s taboo? What’s bannable? What’s in good taste?

    I am behind schedule for this week’s blog post, so instead of wrapping my ideas in a clever structure, I’m just going to address this week’s questions head-on. I know, it’s a bold choice. That’s just how I roll.

    Commence the Answering of Questions!

    What’s taboo in literature:

    Nothing. I denounce censorship in almost every form, and I welcome authors to write about any subject. That doesn’t mean that I won’t personally find certain topics to be uninteresting, or distasteful, or downright abhorrent. However, I learned a long time ago, even without the advantage of Middle Ages Tech Support, that if I don’t like a book, I CAN STOP READING IT. Just like I’m able to turn off the television (or, even better, change the channel) when I don’t like a program.

    Is banning books ever appropriate?

    I can’t think of a single scenario where a book should be banned. Researching this question, I discovered that the American Library Association notes, “Books are usually banned with the best intentions—to protect others, frequently children, from difficult ideas and information” (see this site for more info).

    Should children be guided through (or steered away from) certain materials? Absolutely! That’s the job of parents, teachers, and other mentors. Should books be banned? Absolutely not.

    Who are the tastemakers and why do they matter?

    Today, some of the tastemakers fall into broad categories. Apparently we can thank thirteen-year-old girls for bad books like Twilight and good books like The Hunger Games. There are plenty of middle-aged housewives (or housedivorcees?) that devour trashy romance novels by the dozen every month. Teenage boys manage to poison the internet and online gaming services with vitriol that makes my hair smoke if I even think about participating.

    Sure, those are insulting, pigeonholing stereotypes. And yet, they seem to be steering many big dollar books, movies, games, and musicians. So do they matter? Of course! As an author, do I consider my (potential) audience? Some, sure. But at the end of the day, I know next to nothing about being a prepubescent girl or a middle-aged woman. Writing for those audiences would pose a challenge for me. I have a vague recollection of being a hormone-swamped teenager. I do my best to ignore those recollections, however.

    So, I follow the mantra, “Write what you know,” (which means something quite different than what most people think), and I hope that, by staying true to my own vision, I create stories that avoid the taboo, are unbannable, and meet with the approval of the tastemakers.

  • It’s None of Your Business!!!

    Censorship is a double-edged sword. There are several books on the banned books list that I’ve read simply because they were banned whereas I’ve never decided not to read a book because somebody else banned it. I never really paid attention to what book was and was not banned. For most of my life, the bookstore, and occasionally a public library, was where I found most of my new reading material, not a school library.

    The only people who censored what I read was my parents. And that’s precisely how it should be.

    I don’t think it is right that any single person, or group of people, should be able to decide that a book is inappropriate for the masses. That decision should be between a parent/guardian and his or her children. It should be a boundary that fluctuates as the children grow older and can decide for themselves. Something that isn’t appropriate for a seven year old shouldn’t necessarily be banned from a seventeen year old.

    There were several books my parents told me I couldn’t read until I was older, then they pointed me in the direction of other books to read that would have more appropriate content for someone my age but a high enough reading level to challenge me. The problem arose when I’d read through my parents’ collection and still wanted to read more. I was too advanced a reader to read Animorphs or Goosebumps with my classmates and the YA sections at libraries and bookstores didn’t offer the same variety of books they do today. I wanted more than two hundred pages in my books, so I turned to the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section. Picking a book off the shelves, it was impossible to tell from the cover if it was going to be rife with gratuitous sex and violence. The chick in the chainmail bikini on the cover was going to be there regardless of the content on the inside.

    Books should be rated and labeled, not banned. Movies do it. Video games do it. Why don’t books? Don’t just slap an arbitrary letter or age on it. Is the rating high because the characters all swear like sailors? Or is it because ten pages in there is a graphic torture scene? Is there more sex than in a romance novel? Give a clear rating of what a reader can expect to find in the book. Put it on the back flap by the bar code.

    Then let the parents decide what their kid is ready to be exposed to. Because really, it’s nobody else’s business.

  • Who Moved My Book?

    It bothers me that the year is now 2012 and book-banning is still a topic of conversation. Shouldn’t we, as a society, have moved past this by now? We have not. And as long as we have individual thinkers, censorship will exist. There will never be a time when everyone agrees on everything.

    For most people the term “book banning” causes a knee-jerk reaction of outrage. And it should. But maybe the term is over-used. “Censorship” is probably more accurate. To my knowledge, there’s no big government agency out there insisting that all copies of an “offensive” book be destroyed and that no one is allowed to read it. Most of the reports of book banning are in regards to schools across the country. Parents and/or school boards find something inappropriate for the kids under their protection, and they insist on having it removed from the curriculum and/or the school library. (more…)