Kids Will Still Read Banned Books
It seems a harsh and frankly hopeless errand to try to keep literature away from young people because you fear they will be exposed to opinions and experiences you do not share.
I wasn’t surprised when my 14-year-old began borrowing my books; if anything, I’d expected her to start doing so earlier, but then I suppose she has a lot of books of her own. It’s still a bit funny to watch her peruse my shelves, skimming jacket copy with an expression of intense focus, as if she’s trying to choose a book to bring home from the library. “Can I read this?” she’ll ask, holding up Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic or Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad or Tommy Orange’s There There—all books on her high school’s recommended-reading list. We talk about what she reads, and I’m always interested to note how her taste aligns with mine, or doesn’t: She loved Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Charlotte Higgins’s Greek Myths: A New Retelling, and Emily St. John Mandel’s latest, Sea of Tranquility, but she wasn’t as wild about Pride and Prejudice on her first read—did I build it up too much? Seem a little too keen to introduce her to it?—though she thoroughly enjoyed watching the 1995 BBC miniseries with me.
When I was growing up, my family didn’t have much money, and my parents were anti-cable TV and video games and unlikely to pay for them even if they’d had more to spare. But there were always books in our house: a permanent collection—childhood classics and Christian texts, some poetry and some Shakespeare, the high fantasy and thrillers and Westerns my dad loved, my mom’s Jane Austen box set and her favorite English murder mysteries—as well as the rotating stacks of titles we’d checked out from the library or traded for at the used-paperback shop. My bedroom boasted a half wall of plywood shelves my grandfather had rigged up after my personal library outgrew several smaller bookcases, stuffed with everything from Nancy Drew to Edith Hamilton, The Baby-Sitters Club to The Lord of the Rings. I borrowed from my parents’ collection, too, without asking and without comment—nothing was off-limits. They never objected to any book I brought home from school or from the library. Sometimes I would bristle when an adult, usually one who didn’t know me well, commented on the size or scope of the books I toted around—Is that yours? Do you even understand it? Do your parents know you’re reading it?—as if I were the first kid in the world to pick up The Odyssey or The Joy Luck Club or The Screwtape Letters; as if my family should have known better than to let me read books not explicitly written for my age group. As if I had to understand every word and idea, the way a grown-up might, in order to get swept up in a story.
Occasionally, people are surprised to hear that I grew up in a conservative religious household with parents who encouraged me to read and listen to most anything I liked. I find their surprise a bit sad, though I understand it better than I once did. My white adoptive family were far from liberal politically, but they were liberal in their trust of me, and they certainly had better things to do than attempt to control my book consumption. They expected me to read widely, probably because they did, and they knew (as parents should) that there was far more to learn and think about in the world than what they alone could tell me. If I read a book that contained something they did not necessarily approve of or agree with, their reaction would have been to have a conversation with me about it, not take the book away—they were never shy about sharing their views with me. It’s hard for me to imagine what my childhood or our relationship would have been like if they had felt threatened by ideas I got from a story or a classroom discussion and not from them; if they hadn’t generally let me read what I wanted, ask questions, and make up my own mind.
Back then, I did not recognize their blanket approval of my reading as the gift and advantage it was. I do now. So many books, particularly those by queer and trans writers and Black writers and other writers of color—books that have helped countless young readers think critically about the world, glimpse some of their own experiences, better understand the experiences of others, or just know the specific pleasure of getting lost in a good story—have been targeted and in some cases removed from school recommended-reading lists and community libraries. A friend who is now retired after spending their entire career in public education recently told me that they are relieved to no longer be teaching, given the pressures educators are under now. Librarians are being harassed, driven to quit, even fired for simply doing their jobs: making sure those in their communities have more equitable access to books that cover a broad range of subjects and perspectives.
It seems a harsh and frankly hopeless errand to try to keep literature out of the hands of young people because you fear they will be exposed to ideas and opinions and experiences you may not share. Those who call for the removal of these books from school reading lists and libraries not only lack the right to force their values and beliefs on everyone else, including all the students in their school or wider community; ultimately they also lack the ability. They might make it harder for some children and teens to find stories by and about Black or brown, queer or trans people, or to find meaningful representation in literature; they might make it harder for some students to read and learn more about history and racial inequality and LGBTQ+ rights—and this is an unequivocal shame, one I do not minimize—but they cannot make it impossible, and they cannot challenge or ban everything. Kids are naturally curious, overflowing with questions they want and need to ask (and personally, I can think of little that would have made me more eager to read a book as a teen than hearing that some parents had campaigned to have it removed). Many are still going to learn and be exposed to new ideas and viewpoints, find their people and their stories, grow into who they are meant to be—even if they are forced to do so without all the support and affirmation they deserve.
As a Korean American adoptee, I had to write a book before I could see my own experience reflected in literature. But long before I did, unfettered access to books at home and at the library helped shape my values and beliefs, helped me begin to know who I was and imagine a world beyond the one I saw growing up in an overwhelmingly white community. As a parent, I want my children to have even greater access to illuminating, life-giving stories than I did, and the chance to experience and discuss them with their peers. I support and am deeply grateful to the librarians, educators, and authors who’ve helped expand their thinking, their imaginations, and their worlds.