To the editor:
Conservative activists and politicians are increasingly restricting access to books and even removing certain titles from the catalogs in schools and public libraries across our country. Censorship projects are currently active in thirty-seven states. More titles become threatened with each passing year. In Ohio 79 book titles have faced challenges. Our state ranks ninth among states for numbers of attempts at restricting or banning books.
Why is this happening in America? Well, book banning as a practice aligns with the politics of fear. When books are ordered off the shelves, it is also likely that seriously polarized forces in the society are in volatile conflict. The nearly explosive polarization in our country today suggests why the book banners are so furiously engaged.
The first 100 banned or restricted-access books concern gender, sexuality, and race more than anything else. Many of the targeted books focus on or contain supportive reference to LGBTQ identities (David Levithan’s “Two Boys Kissing”). Some of the attacked writings acknowledge and validate nonnormative genders (Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir”). Others are challenged for sexual content as such (E. Lockhart’s “Real Live Boyfriends”). Some provide nonflattering histories about our society that threaten the traditional American narrative, especially
accounts of racial oppression (Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds’s “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You”).
In communication, there is a kind of string connecting the message sender to the receiver. Book banning ties a knot in that communicative cord. The writer is not read; the writer’s identity and the identities represented in the book are not revealed. To refuse stories, facts, and opinions from a feared world is to exert power through silencing and erasing that world. Book banning disappears ideas and identities. It is a force keeping us apart and ignorant about each other.
One of the books that drives the book banners wildest is Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.” Here is a black woman writer, saying uncomfortable things, word painting scenes whose truths some would rather not acknowledge. It is not only what is written that frightens the censors, but also who is writing it. It is the increase in social inclusion, diversity, and the acceptance of these in recent decades that threaten those who support book banning.
SE Ohio and the state broadly are promoting awareness of censorship threats and resisting attempts at book banning. Banned Books Week, the first week of October, was noted throughout the state in 2023. When titles relating to gender and sexuality issues were targeted locally last July, the Athens County and Nelsonville libraries and their patrons responded with determined support for the freedom to read. We must keep this up, as book banning efforts are increasing nationwide. Our job as book lovers is to insist on reading with curiosity and without fear. We need books kept on the shelves. Spread the word.
Birch Moonwoman
Nelsonville, Ohio
