For as long as humans have made art, people have tried to censor it. There are all sorts of reasons – some of them understandable, some of them malicious, and some of them, quite frankly, stupid. The written word – books, poetry, the like – are frequent marks, occasionally with reasoning so bizarre it has you wondering if anyone even read the book before calling for it’s banishment. Let’s talk about some of those justifications today, and some of the most popular banned books throughout history.
Despite censorship’s ultimate goal to erase many of these books and their existence, bans are frequently hard to enforce, especially on wide scales. Because of this, bans are actually very well documented. Everything from the American Library Association to random book-enthusiast blogs have some top-10 list somewhere.
I bring that up because in this day and age, it’s important to make your own judgments. Take a peek at some of those lists, see if any of those books interest you, pick it up, make your own judgement. Being well informed on these kinds of matters is important in our modern world.
Now, moving on to the list!
Animal Farm by George Orwell
This, to me, is probably one of the funniest pieces of trivia I know. Animal Farm was written by George Orwell in 1945, and has been contested and banned since release. It’s a political commentary, and a very dense one at that – there are themes of dictators, references to early 1900’s Russia, inspiration from the World Wars. The main message though is anti-authoritarianism. In the United States, it was banned for promoting communism. The CIA even got in on the action, thinking it a real, genuine threat to homeland security.
The USSR, over in Russia? They banned the book for promoting capitalism.
More than anything, I think this just shows how much the US and USSR were at each other’s throats – they were seeing propaganda in anything, a threat around every corner. Animal Farm was never really about the political structure of farm animals – it was about when one man got too much power for his own good. You’d think the CIA would have the collective critical reading skills to get that one, but apparently not.
The Diary of Anne Frank
Okay, so we banned a girl’s diary that shows her growing up through puberty for (checks notes) depicting puberty? Really? The Diary of Anne Frank is usually assigned in middle school or high school – you know, when kids are going through puberty, and by that point I sure hope they know what it is.
A running trend in many of these book bannings is doing them “for the kids” – when the kids aren’t asking for them. Yes, broadly speaking, adults have more wisdom than children, but that doesn’t mean they’re all knowing. They might think topics like murder or sex to be too mature, but are unaware their kids were exposed to that via internet, or friends, or even just adults that aren’t their parents.
Ignorance does not mean safety. Kids and teens will always be kids and teens. The best way to make sure they’re safe is to make sure they’re informed – and banning books only pushes ignorance.
Feels like we got a bit off topic from Anne Frank. To summarize – we can agree banning a book for showing a basic biological process is dumb, right?
Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
This is a popular one to bring up, partially because of how popular the series is as a whole. Harry Potter got a lot of flack from intense Christian groups, largely claiming that the witchcraft in Harry Potter would persuade kids out in the real world to try it themselves.
Storytime, but I was one of those kids. After reading the first book circa age 10, I was so excited and convinced maybe I could do magic that I nabbed a stick from the yard and starting waving it around, clumsily pronouncing spells. The most that happened that day was a splinter and our dog getting a bit too excited because she thought I would eventually throw said stick. That was all that came of it, a ten year old playing make believe in her backyard.
While, yes, there’s a lot of controversy surrounding Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling nowadays, none of that’s been about kids trying to learn witchcraft or commune with Satan. The kids were smart enough to know it was fantasy. Some adults were dumb enough to doubt them.
The Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein and Edmund White
I give you three guesses as to why this one was banned, and the first two don’t count.
Okay no, but genuinely, this gives me an excuse to talk about two topics at once – books getting banned because they’re queer, and books being banned because they contain explicit material.
Just as art has always been censored, queer people have (almost) always been hidden. Books about queer characters, written by queer people, or even just flirting with the idea of queerness used to be very frequently targets for banning and censoring. To be frank, they still are, but it’s falling out of favor a bit as the LGBT+ community gains acceptance in mainstream spaces.
In lieu of banning books because “it has gay people and I don’t like it”, people have begun banning those books because they have “explicit themes”. This can range from discussions of sex to even showing it in the story. The implication here is that queerness in any sense, from a teenager’s “first time” to a schoolyard kiss, is somehow deeply sexual and unsuitable for children. It skates by because of the phrasing – of course we don’t want to expose young children to sexual themes! That could be deeply uncomfortable and confusing for them!
Would it though?
From birth, we see romantic relationships in some form or another. You see adults holding hands or kissing. By the time you’re 11 or 12, you’re just starting to go through puberty, and this is around the time when many schools in the US have a basic sex ed course. By that time, you’re in middle school, and (barring learning disabilities or language barriers) you’re reading chapter books.
Nearly every book banned for “explicit subject material”, usually banned under the guise of “being too dangerous for kids”, is above that reading level. A few of those books are at that sweet spot reading level, but you wanna know what those books are? Kid’s sex ed books. The books specifically written for kids to get a better sense of what’s happening to their bodies. They’re education, not exploitation.
Besides, even if it was raunchy, explicit, and with adult themes – do kids deserve to be uneducated? Do adults deserve to be uneducated?
Partway through list, I saw an entry I wasn’t immediately expecting: Mein Kampf, more broadly known as the book that Hitler used to help take over Germany. That seemed like the one book that deserved to be on there – it’s about Nazis, of course we should ban it.
But aren’t those unaware of history doomed to repeat it? By banning this book, banning any knowledge of it, are we dooming ourselves to ignorance? The book is full of hate speech, fearmongering, anti-semitism and racial purity – but those still make it a useful cautionary tale, a valuable teaching device of why these things are bad. It was that train of thought that made me realize no book, no matter how hateful or explicit or uncomfortable it may be, deserves to be banned. There is always knowledge to be gained from them nonetheless.
You’re welcome to disagree with me on this stance, I know it might seem a bit extreme. But then again, Mein Kampf was a book that helped rob people of their ability to think for themselves. So, make your own decisions. Read your own books. Be your own judge. But don’t disregard something just because you don’t understand it, or fear it, or think it’s wrong. Understand why it’s wrong, why it makes you uncomfortable or upset. Think for yourself.
Emma Pegram
(Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash)
