Featured essay
Bad books—don’t read these
FEAR AND LOATHING:
Censorship in All Its Glory
By Pamela Hayes-Bohanan
It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real losers.—Judy Blume
Fear has always been a powerful motivator. Marketers use it to persuade new parents to buy a hoard of baby products. Governments use it to manipulate citizens into giving up civil rights. Fear is often the motivator behind the censoring of books as well: fear that we may have to discuss a sensitive issue with our children, fear that we may have to confront an offended party, fear that someone may not understand. We might fear that a book could corrupt an impressionable young reader if it fell into the wrong hands, or simply that someone may have an idea that is different from our own.
These fears can motivate a censor to challenge a book that is available in schools, bookstores, and libraries. Fear can also manifest itself at any stage of a book’s production. Authors may compromise their writing; publishers may be afraid to publish, libraries afraid to purchase, teachers afraid to assign.
Ever since there have been books, there have been censors. The Library of Alexandria, established in the third Century BCE, was one of the first great temples of books. Legend has it that when the Caliph Omar conquered Alexandria in 641 CE, he said of the books in the Library: “If what is written in them agrees with the book of God, they are not required; if it disagrees, they are not desired. Destroy them.”
In 213 BCE, all Confucian books were burned during the Qin dynasty in China (except one copy of each kept in the Chinese State Library). Books were considered the enemy of the State. It was feared books would lead to intellectual thought and, therefore, to revolution.
When the sixteenth-century Spaniards conquered the Mayans in what is now Mexico, the Franciscans destroyed the religious idols and books of hieroglyphs they discovered that were part of Mayan history and culture. Those were seen as a threat to their work in converting the Mayans to Christianity.
The Nazis burned books that were deemed to be “un-German.” These included works by Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jack London, Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger, Marcel Proust, and H.G. Wells, among many others.
These historic examples tell of whole collections of works being destroyed. It is, however, quite common for censors to challenge individual titles, making their actions seem less drastic than the annihilation of an entire library.
The Boston Watch and Ward Society was established in 1873 to shield immigrants and farmers who entered the city from vice. The notorious phrase “banned in Boston” originated in the 1920s when the Boston Booksellers Committee, an offshoot of the Boston Watch and Ward Society, was founded and began removing from stores novels that were considered obscene. Some of those works included Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry; Upton Sinclair’s Oil!; An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser; Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence; and James Joyce’s Ulysses. Although the Watch and Ward Society dissolved in 1931, book banning in Boston was far from over. In 1965 William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch was removed from bookstores and deemed to be “obscene, indecent and impure...and utterly without redeeming social value” by Judge Eugene Hudson. The Supreme Court reversed his decision in 1966.
Books with themes of homosexuality are often targets of censors. Fear of censorship prevents some of these books from being written or published in the first place. Author Julie Ann Peters says that it took her a full year to work up the courage to write Keeping You a Secret, about a lesbian relationship, even though her editor asked her to write it. E.M. Forster wrote Maurice, about a gay young man in England, in 1913. Knowing, and fearing, the climate of the time, he never saw the book published during his lifetime. It was not published until 1971.
Of course, homosexuality is only one reason that books are censored. In recent weeks readers may have heard about the controversy at Ballantine Publishing regarding The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones. The novel, about the wife of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, was cancelled by publishers weeks before it was to be released for fear that it might be offensive to some in the Muslim community and would incite violence. Fear of offending the Muslim community also prompted one nursery school in Yorkshire, England, to remove The Three Little Pigs and other children’s books about pigs from its classrooms. Islamic leaders were quick to point out that a prohibition from eating pork does not extend to reading books about pigs.
The Harry Potter Series topped the list of most challenged books list for 1999. The Cedarville, Arkansas, high school moved to restrict the books based on the fear that the books might promote disobedience and disrespect, and that such books should “not be allowed in the school” and indeed may “lead to anarchy,” although there was no evidence that the books had incited any student into being disobedient. Furthermore, there was concern from three of the Cedarville school board members that the books promoted witchcraft and the occult. This objection is often cited by Christian groups looking to have the book removed or restricted.
Authors of young adult literature, in particular, find themselves caught between wanting to write honestly and not wanting to confront censorship. They know that librarians and teachers will ultimately be called to task for what they write. Judy Blume, one of the most challenged authors, tells of removing a passage about masturbation from her book Tiger Eyes, based on her editor’s recommendation. “I’ve never forgiven myself for caving in to editorial pressure based on fear, for playing into the hands of censors,” she said. As it turns out, removing this passage has not kept the book out of the censors’ radar. The book still made it to number 78 on the American Library Association’s list of Most Frequently Challenged Books for the decade 1990-2000.
Fear of discussing sensitive topics prompted one middle school to cancel a visit by Norma Fox Mazer, winner of the Newbury Honor for her book After the Rain. Ironically, there had not even been a challenge made to the school regarding the visit. The decision was driven simply by the fear that the visit might spark some controversy. Mazer refers to this as “silent censorship.” We will never know how frequent “silent censorship” is. How many times have authors compromised their work? What didn’t get published? What got published, but not purchased. When there is a formal challenge of a work, at least it forces a discussion of the issue. When things are quietly removed, this does not happen.
We are never aware when authors may have censored their own writing out of fear or concern that it will offend. The fear is certainly understandable when one considers the case of Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. Rushdie remarks that “the day I start censoring myself, I’ll stop writing.” But at what cost? Rushdie was forced into hiding for more than a decade following the publication of his book when Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a call for his execution.
Certainly, no one library can purchase every book. For this reason it is important that libraries have collection development policies in place as well as reconsideration policies. Collection development policies guide librarians’ purchasing choices so that money can be spent effectively on materials relevant to their collections. Reconsideration policies help to guide librarians in making decisions once challenges have come forward. There are times when it may be suitable to restrict a book in an elementary or middle school if it is considered to be inappropriate to certain age group. Decisions of this nature should be reached with input from librarians, teachers, parents, and administrators.
One important lesson I learned in library school is that everyone is offended by something, and there is something to offend everyone. There are no books so innocuous that they can be published without concern of being challenged; both The Holy Bible and Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species have been attacked by censors. This lesson was made real to me in 1995 while I was working in a public library in Texas. A patron called to complain about the filthy book his son had brought home from our library. The book? The Cat in the Hat. Who knew Thing One and Thing Two were gay? After reconsideration of the book it was determined that all six copies would be kept in circulation.
If fear is to dictate what we can read, today’s censors will have been as effective as those who burned the books in Alexandria and in Nazi Germany. There will be nothing left.
Pamela Hayes-Bohanan is a librarian and Spanish instructor at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She is an avid reader, plays the recorder, and loves cooking and eating good food. Her website can be found at http://webhost.bridgew.edu/phayesboh.
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