Students at Vandegrift High School in Leander, Texas read Y: The Last Man, an acclaimed graphic novel by screenwriter Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra. The plot revolves around a mysterious plague of unknown origin that kills all beings with a Y chromosome. The only exceptions are the protagonist, Yorick Brown, a young New Yorker apprentice as an escape artist, and his pet, a capuchin monkey named Ampersand. Vaughan’s successful book series received three Eisner Awards and in 2021 was adapted into a television series for Disney’s Hulu platform. But in the state of Texas, the book was banned and removed from school shelves. The only opportunity students have to read it is clandestinely, through the Banned Books Club. “Right now we have about 30 members,” Ella Scott, 17, one of the founders of the club, tells La Vanguardia. Two years ago, Ella and her friend Alyssa started noticing a lot of books disappearing from the shelves of her school library. “Some were classics, but above all, many of the new publications that deal with topics such as gender identity, racial discrimination, political abuses or with characters from the LGTBIQ community were missing.” Others were dystopias like Vaughan’s or Alan Moore’s in V for Vendetta. The case of Vandegrift High School in Texas is not isolated. During the current school year, 1,557 books have been banned from classrooms and libraries in public schools in the United States.
“In the last two years there has been an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression in public education,” explains Sabrina Baeta, a consultant for the Freedom to Read program, of the non-profit organization PEN America, created to protect freedom of expression. expression in the United States. “This is happening and students have begun to organize to fight back.” In its latest report, PEN America detected 5,894 censorship attempts that resulted in nearly 3,000 titles being withdrawn from public schools in more than 41 states. At the top of the list are the books Gender Queer, an autobiography by Maia Kobabe about the meaning of being non-binary and asexual, and Blue Eyes, by the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize winner in literature, Toni Morrison. Morrison’s novel tells the story of Pecola, an African-American teenager who lives in Ohio at the beginning of World War II and feels that the only solution to her problems is to have blue eyes, the stereotype of white beauty. Both Morrison and Kobabe, along with other authors, have been marked with “The Scarlet Letter,” meaning their publications are “dangerous” and schools should reconsider having them on their shelves.
Vandegrift High School’s banned book club has generated controversy in the state of Texas, but the responses were mostly positive, according to Ella Scott. “Especially from the teachers and librarians from other districts, who offered us their support by lending us books, as well as the students themselves.” They are not the ones advocating censorship. At Vandegrift, the bans began in the Covid 19 pandemic. “During board meetings, some parents would come up and say, ‘my children are reading this book and I think it is inappropriate.’” Which led the district to form reconsideration committees to decide whether the book remains or is retired. “It is unfair because students do not have a say. “Our club seeks to promote a more equitable process, so that we can at least make our voices heard.” Although book censorship in schools occurs throughout the country, it is more present in the Republican states, the most conservative. The state of Texas used to top the list with the highest number of bans, but in the last two years, Florida has surpassed it by tripling its number of bans.
“Sixteen of my books? “I must be doing something right,” writer Stephen King posted on The decision came after the signing of legislation by its governor and candidate for president of the United States, Ron DeSantis, requiring school libraries to solicit community input on the materials they make available to students. . The list of banned books includes works such as Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. DeSantis is known for promoting other controversial laws such as “Don’t Say Gay,” which prohibits teachers from addressing topics such as gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom, or the “public safety” law, which empowers residents of Florida to carry weapons in public spaces without needing a government-issued permit.
In response to literary censorship in Florida, activist and poet Adam Tritt created the 451 Foundation, which purchases banned books and distributes them in public places. In collaboration with PEN America and Books bookstores
Students in other states have started banned book clubs like the one Ella Scott founded in Texas. In those places where the banning of books does not mean a crisis, students organize to send books to other young people who are suffering from the problem. “They have communicated with us about it, asking us what they can do to feel empowered, with decision-making capacity over their education.” Beyond the books, this is a fight for the students, explains Baeta. “These books are important and have been selected by librarians as educational and entertainment materials that they should have access to.”
Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association (ALA), explains to La Vanguardia that what is striking about this wave of literary censorship “is the organized political effort that supports it.” Although, according to Drabinski, “it is normal for there to be people concerned about the books that are part of a library collection,” behind these attempts at censorship “there are political organizations that support and promote this crisis by creating lists of books.” Some of them are Moms for liberty, an American conservative political organization that advocates against school curricula that mention LGBTIQ rights and discrimination based on race, or MassResistance, an association against “attacks” to traditional values ??of family, religion and society. In her opinion, none of these organizations should be behind the selection of books in libraries: “Librarians should be the ones making decisions about what books are in our collection,” explains Drabinski. “We are professionals. We have university degrees. We have a professional association that convenes us periodically to discuss best practices for collection development. “We build collections for the communities we serve and the responsibility of creating those collections must live with us.”
Amid the wave of censorship in conservative strongholds, Democratic states like Illinois are passing laws to protect the right to read. Governor JB Pritzker signed legislation that “bans banning” books, making Illinois the first state in the country to oppose the censorship crusade in red states. “Here in Illinois, we don’t hide from the truth, we embrace it,” Pritzker said in a speech about the legislation that will take effect on January 1, 2024. In New York, the city’s public libraries temporarily offered the public several banned titles for free, allowing anyone over 13 to access them through the library app without needing to be a member or resident of New York State. For Ella Scott in Texas, it is extremely frustrating when education is affected by political ends or something as trivial as a campaign. “We really have no political affiliation as a club. “We just want to get these books back on the shelves so we can learn.”
“Go ahead, ban my book. To those trying to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale, good luck with that. It will only make them want to read it even more,” Canadian author Margaret Atwood wrote in February of this year in the literary magazine The Atlantic. Her novel is censored in multiple states and was declared “unacceptable” by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin for containing sexually explicit material. “My book is much less sexually explicit than the Bible, and I doubt the school board ordered its expulsion.” The book talks about resistance, the fight against oppression, machismo, racism, injustice and violence at all levels. It is a work that has gone around the world (it was adapted into a television series by HBO) and is considered one of the most acclaimed novels of recent times. Due to repeated attempts at censorship, as a protest, the author launched a special publication of The Handmaid’s Tale in 2022 with Penguin Random House. Made with a flame-resistant black dust jacket and heat-protected pages, this edition is resistant to a flamethrower. “Hopefully some books will prove unburnable, that they will travel underground, like the banned books did in the Soviet Union,” Atwood said.
Ella Scott discovered the pleasure of reading from a very young age. “My father is a librarian, so we have always had a lot of books at home; “It’s something I grew up with.” What she is most passionate about reading is the possibility that her books give her to live other lives. “Whether it’s for an hour or a week, or however long it takes you to read the book, they introduce new perspectives and worlds that you might not otherwise explore. They make you think in ways you would never be able to otherwise. That’s why I love reading so much; “It has given me the possibility of living different lives in one.”
The Vandegrift High School Book Club managed to get two banned titles returned to its library shelves: Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir by Nikki Grimes, and Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable. “I see the light at the end of the tunnel,” says Sabrina Baeta of PEN America. “The amount of support and people fighting for their right to read is encouraging.” However, she says returning the books to the shelves will be “a long, difficult battle,” taking longer than it took to remove them.
