If you have been paying any attention to news over the last several years, you are no doubt aware of the concerted effort by extremist right wing groups to reduce or eliminate access to books that challenge their worldview.
In addition to trying to repress books that illuminate the issues of gender, sexuality, systemic racism, and systemic misogyny; these efforts disproportionately attempt to silence certain kinds of authors. Specifically, non-white authors, women, and LGBTQ people.
So far, the efforts have mostly been directed at schools, attempting to remove books they disagree with from school libraries and curricula. However, there are also ongoing attempts to limit access to these books at public libraries, and even in a few cases, stop bookstores from selling them.
These are the open efforts, but even when these challenges fail, they still have chilling effects.
For example, a school may choose not to purchase books that might draw a challenge, hoping to avoid a costly and time consuming fight.
Or, publishers might turn down books by authors of color, or LGBTQ authors, to avoid “controversy,” or risk a fight with these extremist groups.
Unfortunately, this is a real problem, and we are seeing the results already.
So the question is:
What can we do about it?
As a person who cares deeply about books, free speech, and the importance of diversity of experience and perspective, I have thought about this, and explored ideas that others have proposed. Here are my suggestions for what we ordinary citizens can do:
1. 1. Realize that most people do not support book bans.
Because the bigots tend to be loud and obnoxious, it is easy to feel like they are the majority. They are not. Not even close.
I think this is a key to the rest of the strategy. Realize that most people will be on our side, particularly if we frame the issue accurately: right wing bigots want to silence people they disagree with.
2. 2. Read.
I would think this would be obvious, but it is still shocking how many people literally do not read books after they finish school.
More than anything, if books do not get read, they will cease to have an impact. You want to see the voices of minorities, women, and LGBTQ people heard? Read what they write!
If you have children, read these books to your children as well.
If you want ideas, this blog has highlighted a number of excellent children’s books by and about authors of color, women, and LGBTQ writers. There are a lot more, of course, and there are places to find lists. I personally find LitHub and NPR to be good sources. I have also searched for lists, although I forget all of the different ones I have run across. The internet can be your friend here - and it doesn’t hurt to give traffic to sites devoted to diversity in literature.
Bottom line, though, is that you will not hear these perspectives if you don’t read. So find the books that are being targeted and read them!
3. 3. Share books with others.
I do this in part through my blog, but you don’t need a website to do this. Talk to your friends about the books you read. Share recommendations on your social media of choice.
A book that nobody knows about won’t get read. Don’t rely on marketing to create a market for these books. We have to do it ourselves.
Oh, and give books as gifts. Lend out the ones you own. Encourage your friends and family to step away from the screens and the doomscrolling and read. A great side effect of this is that you will have something interesting to talk about together.
4. 4. Join a book club.
One of the fascinating things about how totalitarian systems work is that they are threatened by civic organizations. Anne Applebaum wrote about this in Iron Curtain - fascinating book.
Book clubs, like other groups, are a way that we humans can band together against power, against evil, against attempts to control.
But also, there are few things better than getting together with friends and talking about books, ideas, and everything else. I am part of a local book club, and also an online one with a couple of friends. I greatly enjoy this, and have learned a lot by listening to other people’s thoughts on what we read.
One of the few sad things about book clubs is that most are female only. This reflects in part the narrowing of culturally approved “masculinity,” where education and reading are seen as “female” things, and thus beneath a real man’s attention.
This is stupid, of course. There is nothing unmasculine about books - hell, throughout history, literature was mostly the realm of men, and there are plenty of male writers today.
So guys, grab a book and read it!
I would also encourage book clubs to be open to all genders - we need to encourage men to engage in healthy ways.
5. 5. Support and use your local library.
It has been said recently that public libraries would never be approved now - they would be considered “too socialist” for our current political climate. There is some truth to this.
A low-water mark in my own community was several years ago, when our District Attorney literally said that she believed that every library in the county should be shut down before her office lost one dollar of funding.
Yeah, that’s seriously horrible, and reflects the idea that the police state is the only government function that matters. Fortunately, she took some well-deserved heat for this, and our libraries were not defunded.
In any case, libraries are a public good, and if we want to keep them, we have to support and fund and use them.
I have, since the beginning, noted on my blog which books I borrowed and which ones I owned. I want to make it clear how much I rely on our local library for many of the books I read, despite my rather large personal library.
So, go to your library. Borrow books - particularly the ones targeted by censorship. Read them. Talk about them. Remind your friends and family of the benefits of libraries.
And, when budget time comes, consider speaking up in your local government meetings in support of our libraries.
The same applies if you have kids in school. Make sure you support and use the school libraries, and express your desire to see the voices of women, minorities, and LGBTQ people among the books they stock.
6. 6. Buy books.
Publishers aren’t going to publish books if they can’t sell them. So, if you want to hear diverse voices, you need to buy their books.
It does no good to complain about all the trashy pulp novels that dominate many bookstore displays if you aren’t willing to purchase the better stuff.
If you do not have room for much of a library, you can still buy books. Many used book stores will take them in trade, and you can also donate them after you read them. Your local Friends of the Library can then re-sell them in order to support the library. It’s a win-win.
7. 7. Support your local bookstore.
I will admit, I do buy stuff from the big box and online sellers. Sorry. We do also have a local independent bookstore, and we support them when we can.
This may surprise you, but the locals can order anything you can get online, and often charge the same amount for it.
Throughout history, it has been the little guys that best defy censorship. If you read the important “obscenity” cases of the 20th Century, where book bans were ruled unconstitutional, you will invariably find that it was some brave small bookseller who defied the ban, and took the issue to court.
Likewise, it was small booksellers like City Lights who championed controversial books like Howl, and even published works that the big guys wouldn’t touch.
So, support your local bookseller whenever you can. And also, even on Amazon and similar sites, there are a lot of used books re-sold by smaller stores - for a lot of my own collection, I have looked for used, and am happy to support the little guys that deal in the trade.
8. 8. Speak up against censorship.
This goes back to #1: most people oppose book bans. Don’t let the loudest, most bigoted people take up all the time and attention. Get out there at your local government meetings and make your voice heard. Write to your representatives. Write to your local media. You know the drill.
It also can’t hurt to write to authors who need support. The amount of hate directed at authors by bigots is a lot, even before you get to the murder attempts directed at writers like Salman Rushdie. I bet they like to hear good stuff too. Most have websites where you can send a message, and it is not a bad idea to do so. I have had two authors get in touch with me after I blogged about their books, and it is always a good time when that happens.
9. 9. Make connections with other readers.
People who read tend to be more empathetic, more educated, more informed, and more open to ideas and experience. You want to be friends with these people. Particularly in our era where ignorance and stupidity are celebrated and praised.
One of the best things about the internet for me has been making those connections. (I have met several people in person later, and guess what? They are the same good people they are online.)
However you find them, make and maintain these connections. We are going to need each other, and a willingness to learn and grow is probably the most important commonality we need. Perspectives will vary, experiences will vary, beliefs will vary. But a willingness to learn and grow in connection with others can bring us together despite differences.
10 10. Keep an open mind - and heart.
The reason for reading these books, for hearing these voices, is so that we keep our minds open to other perspectives. And even more important, so we keep our hearts open.
The biggest evil facing our nation, and our world, is closed hearts. It has become all too easy to simply ignore the voices of those who are hurting - indeed, our national sin of white supremacy has always been about ignoring the cries of those we hurt. At the root of every evil, you will find this hardheartedness, this lack of caring for the wellbeing of others. (That’s why the love of money is so toxic - it renders us incapable of loving our neighbors.)
If we instead keep our hearts open to the needs and the pain of others, we can also keep our minds open to perspectives that can lead us to better solutions to our problems.
Humanity’s superpower is our ability to communicate and form social networks. When we fail to listen to communication and to open our networks to others, we are diminished as humans.
As human inventions go, language is the most killer app of all time. Books are our way of preserving communication over time, and spreading that communication over distance and time. It is the way that our conversations, our knowledge, our shared humanity, can connect us even if we haven’t met.
So, read. Support the institutions that preserve our shared knowledge. Bond with your neighbors and share the words that heal. And understand that those who would abuse others rely on the suppression of knowledge and truth. Don’t let them succeed.
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For more, I recommend the Zinn Education Project. Both because it has good information and resources, and because the godawful history professor my kid endured - the one who unironically threw the seig heil in class - had a vendetta against the late Howard Zinn.
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