Reading is more than a leisurely pastime. Books allow readers to slip on the shoes of another, expose them to a different way of life, challenge their world view and provide an opportunity to learn and grow as a person.
This seems to be exactly why books are under attack.
In the last six months of 2022, PEN America recorded 1,477 individual instances of book bans, which impacted 874 unique titles — a nearly 30 percent increase from the first six months of that year. Thirty-seven states saw book bans, and the top five with the highest number of bans includes Southern states Texas, Florida, and South Carolina.
“It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library, or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students,” says PEN America in their April 2022 report, “Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights.” “Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, teachers, or even politicians, on the basis of a particular book’s content.”
When books are banned due to “questionable content,” without considering how that content serves the work as a whole, the opportunity for the exchange of ideas and expanding one’s realm of thinking is suffocated.
Literature exists not solely as a means of entertainment, but to start conversations and provoke critical thinking. In many instances, this experience is life-changing. Here are seven books from banned lists across the South that have had such an impact on my life.
In one of the most frequently banned books, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison captures the arduous experience of three Black girls reconciling their appearance and identity against the racist white supremacist standards that surround them. Told through several points of view that reach back into the girls’ heritage, Morrison exposes the deleterious effects of racism, especially when internalized, and the way generational trauma gnaws at possibility. Reading this novel requires one to sink into the undertow of racism that sucks its victims away from their dreams and challenges each reader to look deeply inward and examine the ways we contribute to churning the waters that maintain this violent current.
It’s impossible to accurately write a book set in the period of chattel slavery and avoid graphic and violent images. Beloved is certainly both, every word of it worthy of required reading, namely because Morrison also captures so much more, displaying also the love and the joy and the humanity of each Black character. Set in Ohio in the years before and after the Civil War, the novel is told from the viewpoint of three formerly enslaved women: Sethe, a mother who shepherded her children to freedom, killing her youngest child, born free, to prevent the girl’s capture when their enslavers tracked them down; Denver, the daughter who lived; and Beloved, the daughter who didn’t. It does more than spotlight slavery, grappling with familial and romantic relationships, betrayal and loyalty, perseverance, and the human desire to be free.
Author Angie Thomas puts you in the front seat of the car with Khalil Harris, an unarmed Black teenager deemed a threat by police and executed during a traffic stop. The story is told by Khalil’s childhood best friend, Starr Carter, who navigates the aftermath having been the sole witness. The title is abridged from iconic raper Tupac Shakur’s acronym for “Thug Life,” which to him meant, “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everyone.” “Meaning what society gives us as youth, it bites them in the ass when we wild out,” Khalil tells Star just moments before he’s shot and killed. The Hate U Give humanizes the headlines of lives shattered when police violence from unchecked racial bias strikes.
When banning this YA novel by John Green, one Tennessee school system called it pornographic, likely due to the main character’s physical infatuation with Alaska Young, though no sex actually occurs in the book. An imperative question to ask when assessing literary content is whether it’s there for salacious reasons or to bring depth to the characters. Few 16-year-olds don’t see each other as hips and pecs, and part of the coming-of-age element of this story is how main character Miles “Pudge” Halter’s view of Alaska develops as his relationship with her changes – long before the end of the book, Pudge sees Alaska as far more than a body, but a soul.
The title of this novel is also its first words, spoken to main character Piadad “Piddy” Sanchez by a girl Piddy only recognizes from having seen her around school. Piddy doesn’t even know who Yaqui is, and she can only guess why this student has it out for her. Drawn from author Meg Medina’s own experience of being bullied, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass captures the internal — and external — spirals Piddy experiences as the target of intense bullying, ultimately empowering readers by showing Piddy’s courage and bravery in the face of brutal harassment. In case you’re wondering, it seems to be banned solely because the title says “ass.”
Banned for its graphic nature of drug use and the many activities that serve to further the habit, Crank follows Kristina Georgia Snow to visit her estranged father in Albuquerque, where she tries methamphetamine and falls in love with both it and the boy who supplied her. It is graphic in its nature, but so is addiction. Kristina returns home to Reno as “Bree” and furthers her descent into addiction, destroying relationships and herself along the way. My only complaint is it toes the line of painting a happy ending for Kristina, almost as if things were hard but they sort of work out. An added bonus of this novel is it’s written entirely in verse, which in particular warmed me to an art form I had previous resistance to.
Weird, loner kid Charlie Kelmeckis is welcomed in his first year of high school into a group of seniors, each rejected in their own way but deeply loved by each other. The freedom to be himself in their presence leads Charlie to face for the first time in his life — and heal from — a trauma he didn’t know he’d experienced when he was younger, a trauma causing the struggles he was having in his attempts to belong. The novel is a collection of letters Charlie writes to an unnamed person that neither Charlie nor readers meet, letters that read like a diary and recount everything from failed attempts at dating to falling out with the group to his best friend’s experiences in a gay relationship. What feels like a hopeless experience at the beginning becomes an encouraging, although challenging, display of courage and bravery in the face of mental health struggles.
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