Book Censorship

Words are powerful things. And books are full of them. Words can start wars, a friendship, lead to love. Within their words, books contain ideas, memories, voices.

When books are banned, a voice is silenced. A voice is declared, "You are offensive," or, "You have no place here."

How can someone tell a voice that they have no place? Who is the judge of that? Who are we, to tell our children, the world's future, what they can or can't enjoy, just because it makes us look bad? They might not be able to handle it? They can't separate fiction from reality?

If you can't tell, I lean more or less towards the opinion that no books should be banned. In my opinion, telling people what they can and cannot read, what words they can and cannot see/hear, is trying to control their lives in more ways than anyone has authority to do. In today's post, I want to give you a list of books that have been banned, for one reason or another, and the reason behind it. Primarily, I'm going to be talking about books that have been censored but are considered an important piece of literature today, or should be. I want to shed light on the fact that book censorship is something that has been around for a long, long time, and it continues today in schools and libraries all over the country. When we are banning books and telling people what they can and can't read, we are silencing the freedom of speech. Books take us places; on adventures, through time, and teach us important lessons. These lessons should not be silenced.

Book censorship has been a topic on my mind lately, due to the fact that it was brought up in my diversity and equity class a couple months ago. A blog post was posted in a Facebook group about books that are good to use to educate children on the struggles and history of Native Americans and some books that are not good to do so. On the "do not read" list, Little House on the Prairie was mentioned, for being overtly racist towards Native Americans. 

I decided to do more research on book banning. 

There are many reasons why books are banned. The top 5 that I discovered were racial issues, sexism, political bias, explicit sexual content, and language. We ban books for these all the time. However, movies and TV shows contain the same, if not more, of these "explicit" contents, yet they are never banned, and children are allowed in many households to watch movies and TV shows that they can't even begin to understand, might be considered inappropriate, but never banned. Why is this? What is different about books that prompt banning and censorship?

While I don't agree with letting every child of every age get access to books that might have content too mature for them, I do think it's incredibly silly that we have been so quick to ban books and yet our TV shows and movies have incredibly explicit content and are never challenged or censored. These days, children and teens don't read nearly as much as they watch TV or movies. They have access to incredible technology that thirty years ago we could've never dreamed of. And yet before we would censor a movie or social media app or tv show...we ban a book. 

Keep reading,

Holly