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Censorship is a dirty word in my house. There are many things in this world I disagree with, but the same protections that allow people to say or write those things allow me to speak out against them. Something that is sure to push my buttons is any attempt to ban books. Each February during Freedom To Read Week, I am reminded that my freedom to choose what I want to read is something that is frequently threatened and that I must continue to be vocal.
Freedom to read can never be taken for granted. Even in Canada, a free country by world standards, books and magazines are banned at the border. Books are removed from the shelves in Canadian libraries, schools and bookstores every day. Free speech on the Internet is under attack. Few of these stories make headlines, but they affect the right of Canadians to decide for themselves what they choose to read.
Freedom To Read
I write about banned books regularly. I point out attempts that have been made to ban books from classrooms and libraries. I read banned books. I encourage others to read banned books. And yet I still take my ability to be able to read what I want for granted. I still forget that there are books that are stopped at our borders. I remember being astonished when hearing from the women's studies professors I encountered in a previous job that it happened to them quite regularly. And still, I forget.
I forget, too, how lucky I am to live in a society where I can, for the most part, read whatever I want without being questioned about it. I don't have to be part of a secret (and potentially dangerous) private study group to read English classics like Azar Nafisi's students in Reading Lolita in Tehran. Canadian writers and journalists are not imprisoned or exiled the way that the writers that PEN Canada support are.
Albertamama reflects on some of the questions raised by her library on Freedom to Read Week. What does it mean to read?
They ask "what would you do if you weren't allowed to read?" Honestly, I'd be quite angry if someone just said to me, "you're not allowed to read that anymore" What?! Knowledge is my right and the right of our kids...reading is knowledge, reading is answers, reading is broadening of the mind, reading...without it where would we be?
Lisa M from All About Books works the library field. She's using Freedom to Read Week as a time to reflect on what she's observed about book challenges.
Often I find the desire to ban a book is less about the book itself and its contents and more a desire to control the thoughts and minds of individuals. If you remove books like The Handmaid’s Tale, or In the Heat of the Night, or To Kill a Mocking Bird from school reading lists and school libraries, you also remove the ability to foster critical thought and the exploration of new and different ideas and perspectives from our children's classrooms. Do we want to become an Orwellian society circa 1984? Or do we want to encourage critical and innovative thinking in the up-and-coming younger generations?
Reading books, banned or not, isn't just about the content. It's about what we do with that content. What we learn from that content. When I read I can get inside another person's head, live in another time, be another race or sex. I learn to look beyond my own experiences.
When I was a kid, I was what I describe as a "free-range reader." No one censored my reading. Yes, I absolutely read things that were above my age level. I didn't always understand them, mind you, but I read them anyway. I read banned books then without knowing it. Heck, half the assigned books I read in high school have been banned or challenged someplace. Most of us have read books that have been banned or challenged and well, we all turned out OK, didn't we?
How can you celebrate your freedom to read? You can read. Read a banned book. Maybe take part in the Pelham Public Library's Banned Book Challenge. Not sure what to read? Check out these resources:
- Freedom To Read's website has a list of books challenged in Canada (PDF).
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