Local opinion: Book challenges shine spotlight on censorship

When I was a kid, my Saturday job was to clean my book-loving grandpa’s room, the only place in the house he was allowed to smoke his cigars. He had a shelf of forbidden books, and every Saturday I’d read another chapter of an age-inappropriate book. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” required extensive dusting time in Grandpa’s room.

In high school, our book-passionate English teacher assigned “Catcher in the Rye.” The parents cried out, until finally he agreed to call it optional reading. Of course, we kids were desperate to get our hands on it.

As it has for more than 40 years, the American Library Association notes, “Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read and spotlights current and historical attempts to censor books in libraries and schools.”

The Arizona Senate has passed Senate Bill 1700, joining other states in book banning and censorship. In schools, books would be banned “that are lewd or sexual in nature, that promote gender fluidity or gender pronouns or that groom children into normalizing pedophilia.” It doesn’t take an English teacher to define “gender pronouns”: those would be “he” and “she.” Book banners are going to have their work cut out for them if they go on a case-by-case basis.

PEN America, a nonprofit defending free expression, notes that books most often challenged in this country now explore themes about race, history, sexual orientation and gender. The Arizona Senate obviously got the memo, even if they ineptly tried to put it in their own words.

Books banned in Arizona include the award-winning and beloved “Bless Me, Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya, “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros and “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie. Also on the list is “The Devil’s Highway” by Luis Alberto Urrea, whom we can claim as our own because every March he joins our grand celebration, the Tucson Festival of Books.

The American Library Association documented twice as many book challenges in 2022 as in 2021. We’re seeing more book challenges than in the last 20 years. But those challenges can lead to some hope for book lovers. They shine a spotlight on censorship and its dangers to education and democracy. They should invite those protesting books actually to read them and articulate their reasons, preferably in thoughtful writing. Okay, they should insist, say I.

And they can bring fresh life to new literature and old favorites. For instance, when a Tennessee county decided to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus” by Art Spiegelman, the profound and brilliant book bounced to the top of the Amazon bestseller list and, unsolicited, boxes of copies showed up at the local public library, where students rushed to share them.

D. H. Lawrence’s novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was banned in the U.S. for obscenity until 1959. I am here to attest that sneaking reads in my grandfather’s cigar smoke-drenched room did not lead the young me to lewdness nor to gender fluidity. Nor did it groom me. It led me to think about class, gender roles, nature, industrialization, love, and the ways language can be lyrical and intense.

We need not go on a case-by-case basis in defense of banned books. Let us instead defend the power of books. Challenged or not, books can help us see ourselves and others in all our complexities, can lead us to empathy, to know and face our human nature. To be alive to the suffering and to the beauty of our world, to be open and brave and adventurous and vital in this life, remember this year’s Banned Books Week theme, “Let Freedom Read.”

For more information about Banned Books Week, visit the American Library Association at ala.org/bbooks. There, you’ll also be able to sign up for the initiative Unite Against Book Bans.

Now, excuse me while I go pick up a banned book, even if has a whiff of cigar to it.