Just a Little Censorship Can’t Really Hurt, Can It?

I’m a bit angry—no, really, really angry—so I’m going to rant for a moment. In Tucson, the school board has banned books by very important and wonderful writers. Pardon me, they say they’re not banned (even though one of their members publicly said they were). They just boxed them up and carted them out of the classroom mid-lesson while teachers were teaching from them and students were reading them and doing projects using them. And teachers have been told they face termination if they’re caught using these books or teaching anything else about “race, ethnicity or oppression.” This is a part of a war on Mexican-American studies, though it bans James Baldwin and bell hooks and Native American and white American authors, even Jane Yolen.

They’ve banned, or “boxed,” Civil Disobedience by Thoreau. They’ve banned, or “boxed,” The Tempest by Shakespeare. They’ve banned, or “boxed,” Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and The House on Mango Street by my dear friend Sandra Cisneros. They’ve banned, or “boxed,” The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie and Bless Me, Última by friend Rudolfo Anaya. They’ve banned eight of my friend Luis Alberto Urrea’s wonderful books. They’ve banned, or “boxed,” United States Government: Democracy in Action by R.C. Remy! And many, many more—the complete list fills two single-spaced pages.

Many of these books are classics and have won major national literary awards, but Tucson wants them kept away from their high school students. It reminds me of the recent news stories about Texas and Tennessee trying to have slavery erased from their history textbooks. How frightened are these small-minded people who want to censor the world of history and literature from their own children? But then, it’s not their own children’s educations they want to censor. It’s that of the children of people their ancestors oppressed, children of people that they may have discriminated against themselves. As if they can remove the reality of it, perhaps even continue with it, if they don’t allow these children to know about it.

Their silly substitution of “boxed” for “banned” is a way of saying, “See, it’s only a little censorship, not the full thing, and a little censorship can’t really hurt, can it?” Actually, when I see the complete, very long list of titles banned, I have trouble seeing it as a “little” censorship, but even if it were, I oppose censorship. Books and the range of ideas and experiences they bring us are one of the treasures of a free society.

Fortunately, there is a movement against this discriminatory censorship. It’s called Librotraficantes, and you can read about it, see a video, donate, and sign up as a volunteer here. www.librotraficantes.com A caravan of books and writers and readers will start from Houston and proceed to Tucson throughout the Southwest, stopping along the way for readings and to pick up yet more authors. They will be smuggling these forbidden books, “wetbooks,” into Tucson, where there will be readings and teach-ins and a public effort to open closed minds.

Yes, even a little censorship, even if you call it “boxing” instead of “banning,” hurts our free society and the students of those schools. My writer friends are doing something about it. I’m doing something about it. Will you?