A Few Words on Banned Books Week

I’ve been struggling a bit with this one. Which seems a little odd. Years before, as Banned Books Week rolled around, I instantly posted my support of reading and having continued access to banned books. I wrote of all the banned books I’ve loved—Judy Blume’s works and To Kill a Mockingbird, etc. Outside of Banned Books Week, I have joined the fight against censorship. I became a member of Authors Against Book Bans. I was part of a group of authors who petitioned congress to condemn book banning.

And yet…

This year, after reading so many legal challenges to reading material, I just couldn’t get past this question:

What is so dangerous about a book?

Right on time, I was reading this particular collection this week—my brother’s shelves are a great place to find vintage sci-fi and horror:

It includes “Friends and Enemies” by Fritz Lieber. The first scene depicts a futuristic society (ahem, 1993) in which a scientist and a poet are being ostracized. This is a piece of dialogue:

“Talk to a woman about ideas, and pretty soon she gets some.”

The thing is, stories are incredibly powerful. Entertainment is not merely a way to spend the time. It shapes our vision of the world—and ourselves.

That little line of dialogue made me remember that a few years ago, I picked up a copy of a vintage comic aimed at girls. DC and Marvel both had them—they didn’t have anything to do with superheroes. These featured real-life scenarios, often romantic in nature. My copy was totally sexist. In each story, a successful woman gave up whatever she wanted for herself in order to get herself a man.

I don’t have a picture of it, because I must have thrown my copy against the wall. Or driven the car over it. Or torched it.

That comic was basically meant to teach young girls that being with a man is the very most worthy pursuit she can have.

Stories can absolutely be vehicles of social control. By portraying a very narrow vision of life—and success—and happiness, you make sure people envision a life for themselves that maintains the status quo. Or even goes backward a few steps.

That’s why it is so incredibly important to publish stories by writers from a variety of backgrounds depicting main characters also from a variety of backgrounds. When we read about people who are different from us, we learn empathy. But it also assures readers who find themselves reflected in the pages that they can be superheroes.

Professional writers aren’t the only people who tell stories.

We all tell stories. We tell them to the people we love the most. We tell them in the jokes we repeat. We tell them in the anecdotes we share (and how we choose to shape them). We even tell them in regular conversation, when we choose to ask a young girl if she has a boyfriend instead of asking her what her favorite subject in school is.

We tell stories. Every one of us. We can tell stories of social control, or we can teach people how to dream. We can teach them that their very wildest imaginings are possible and worthy of pursuit.

Let’s teach people how to dream.