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?
