In the club for Banned Books Week

Yesterday was the start of 
 Banned Books Week, which takes a look at the battle against censorship in this country (as well as around the world) and sadly, the fight for the right to read freely is all too real these days.

With school boards being invaded by partisan activists (many of whom don’t even live in those communities or have school age kids), the undercutting of school libraries to the point of a severe shortage of librarians that our public education system is being undermined and public libraries for the general public under attack to boot, the state of our reading nation is under serious threat.

Fortunately, there are many ways to combat this rising tide of literary repression and one of those is specially themed book clubs.

For over a year now, journalist Ali Veshi has run a Banned Book Club not only as a podcast but regular segments on his weekend show on MSNBC, featuring profiles on why particular books and subjects are the targets of controversy from those with clearly political agendas and/or prejudicial bias. 

He also conducts interviews with writers under fire such as Nikole Hannah-Jones of The 1619 Project, Margaret Atwood for The Handmaid’s Tale and David Levithan, who wrote Two Boys Kissing, one of the far too many books for young members of the LGBTQIA community that are making up a large portion of the list of most challenged books for the past two years:

He also covers classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird , The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (yep, even the Bard is not off limits here!).

 One of the modern classics highlighted recently was the 20th anniversary of the graphic novel memoir Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which showcases the struggles of a young woman growing up in a repressive regime that seems to worse by the minute.

I rewatched the animated movie adaptation of the book this past spring (it was shown at an Alamo Drafthouse Theater) and that real life story is just as compelling today as it was back then; perhaps even more so now:

There are others out there, even Joy Behar of The View has her own Banned Book Club and it’s great to see someone on such a mainstream morning show use that platform for an important subject like this:

What’s most important of all is that we maintain a united front against this wave of deliberate ignorance that is targeting our children and other vulnerable citizens in the name of alleged “decency “ and “parental rights.” 

One of the major sticking points of democracy is that no one person or group has the absolute power to decide what is good for us all. That includes education and freedom of thought as well as speech. It’s why we have separation of church and state, a line that too many people are doing their best to erase nowadays.

The freedom to read is a fundamental principle of our democracy and Banned Books Week is a solid stepping stone towards maintaining that spirit of independence for this and future generations. Let’s keep fighting this good fight in the hopes that such dire threats start to become fearful figments of the past that don’t haunt us in the years to come: