By Sunayana Prabhu
RED BANK – Whether it’s potty humor for children or classic literature, book bans are rising at an unprecedented pace across the country, with record-high demands to remove books from schools and libraries.
The Red Bank Public Library (RBPL) led a discussion, “Banning Books Silences Stories,” last week about the phenomenon to bring attention to how it negatively impacts a community.
“ ‘Gender Queer,’ ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ‘The Hate You Give,’ ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘Captain Underpants.’ What do these titles have in common? They’ve all been banned” somewhere in the United States, said Eleni Glykis, RBPL director, addressing a packed meeting room at the library May 10.
“A lot of people say, ‘Oh, banning books is not a problem in New Jersey. It happens in Florida, Oklahoma or Texas.’ That is not the case,” said Linda Hewitt, the library’s circulation supervisor and outreach and programming coordinator, as she introduced attendees to the growing trend of book censorship. “Banning books is a problem across the country,” Hewitt said. “We have had incidences in New Jersey where books have been banned.”
And unfortunately, getting a book banned doesn’t require a lot.
“It really only can take one voice to create a problem for a library,” she said.
A sampling of banned books – some young adult books that are considered too sexually explicit, or ones that discuss racial and LGBTQ+ issues – were displayed at the meeting, including “Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie, Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mocking- bird,” “Flamer” by Mike Curato, Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls,” and many more.
Hewitt asked the audience if they knew why books like “The Great Gatsby,” “The Lorax” and “Captain Underpants” are challenged and then explained that many of the people who want to ban books claim they are doing it “to protect our citizens.”
“But whatever their reasons may be, book banning is censorship,” Hewitt said.
She emphasized that good libraries must provide books and materials for everyone in the community and encouraged patrons to use their voices to empower readers everywhere “to stand together in the fight against censorship.”
The American Library Association (ALA) released new data on its website March 22 documenting 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The challenges to books nearly doubled from 729 in 2021.
Censorship of books “silences voices,” “marginalizes” communities, and “causes people to hold back their artistic expression,” Glykis said, explaining that book banning is a form of “censorship that occurs when private individuals, government officials or organizations remove books from libraries, school curricula or bookstore shelves because they object to their content, ideas or themes.”
“Challenged books are materials that someone has attempted to remove, but was unsuccessful,” Glykis said. “Both book bans and challenges are the most widespread form of censorship in the United States, with children’s literature and young adult literature being the primary target.”
From the first reported book ban in the United States, Thomas Morton’s “The New English Canaan” or “New Canaan,” published in 1637, to “Gender Queer,” a memoir by Maia Kobabe that topped banned book lists last year, censorship on books is an old practice. But its growth is concerning to many, especially within school libraries, the only place many young readers can access books. The most recent update on book bans released by PEN America for the 2022-’23 school year shows expanded censorship of themes centered on race, history, sexual orientation and gender.
Glykis included in her presentation a recent poll by the ALA that showed strong opposition to removing books from public libraries – 71% of Americans are against banning books. The poll also showed that this stance is nonpartisan – 75% of Democrats, 58% of Independents and 70% of Republicans were opposed to banning books from public libraries.
“What is going on lately?” Glykis asked. “Who is coming for the books and why?”
Glykis said both ALA and PEN America and other anti-censorship groups have seen an increase in the “significant role of the right-wing advocacy groups in organizing parents (to) challenge books that contain characters or references to LGBTQIA and people of color.” But Glykis noted book censorship is happening across party lines. “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Huckleberry Finn,” two of the “most challenged” books of our time, she said, “have been banned on both sides of the aisle for their language.” In 2022 both were removed from required reading lists in a school district in Burbank, California.
“While Florida and Texas are strongholds” of book banning, Glykis said, New Jersey is catching up to censorship methods. Celebrated author and New Jersey native Judy Blume made the list of esteemed writers like Mark Twain, William Shakespeare and Harriet Beecher Stowe whose books are banned from classrooms for content that is deemed controversial or obscene. According to Glykis, Glen Ridge, Westfield, Wayne Township, North Hunterdon, Old Tappan, Lower Township and Sparta Township are among those municipalities and school districts in New Jersey that have battled book banning attempts or have banned books.
“I’m interested in the root causes of this, the rise in this now,” said Ed Butler, a program attendee who wanted to know if political extremism is at the center of the issue. Glykis attributed many of the bans to “fear,” noting that when people are uncomfortable they get “scared.”
Rev. John Mack from Holy Trinity Church, Red Bank, was curious if there was “any type of overarching group that determines, or makes a decision on what books are banned? Or is it just a group of individuals in a closet who’re just doing it all willy-nilly?”
“They’re coordinated efforts,” Glykis said, “by certain right-wing advocacy groups and one of them, a big one, is the Moms For Liberty.”
Considering most banned books fall in the young adult category, Blake Wattenbarger of Fair Haven said, “It seems to me that to get a teenager to read a book, the best thing you could do is to ban it.”
Something else all these banned books have in common?
“They’re all available for checkout, either digitally or in person, at the Red Bank Public Library,” Glykis said. “One of the great tenets of librarianship is supporting intellectual freedom and all librarians know great libraries contain something to offend everyone,” noting “There is a shelf of Patterson here that I can’t stand.”
The article originally appeared in the May 18 – 24, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
