Book bans are on the uprise and Texas is standing strong taking the crown of first place. In 2022, Texas was the leading state in making an effort to ban over 2,300 books… 93 times. With it being National Book Ban Week this week, discussing these attempts to ban books is more important now than ever.
Prohibiting such vital pieces of life and knowledge is repressive and exclusionary, especially to young adolescents.
Without having access to all books, the youth will have a harder time learning and understanding the versatility of other people’s lives. From July 1 – Dec. 31, 2022, PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans listed 1,477 occurrences of individual book bans, which affected 874 unique titles. Of those 874 titles banned, 30% contained characters of color or discussed race and/or racism. These books hold unique perspectives and experiences that not all people can relate to. Additionally, these points of view can help individuals that don’t share these experiences be more mindful that others come from different backgrounds and live contrasting lives. People should recognize the variance of the world, and reading a variety of books gives them the ability to see diversity. Just because a person can’t relate to someone else’s experiences, doesn’t mean they should stay in their personalized boxed view on life.
On the other end of the spectrum, people who have distinctive experiences in the world won’t have any representation of their day to day life. Diverse people would be overlooked compared to the majority of society that is portrayed in literature. Without a spectrum of characters or stories, young people could give up reading altogether. A study commissioned by Wonderbly surveyed 1,000 children between the ages of 6 and 12, along with their parents, on their thoughts of representation in children’s books. More than a third of children didn’t feel represented in books due to their gender or ethnicity. Sixty-one percent of parents disclosed they felt the lack of representation of race and gender put their kids off of reading in general.
Those who are in favor of book bans just want to protect their children from inappropriate topics that are in particular books; however, there is always an option to choose what they and their children read. In any other situation where people aren’t keen on a new potential read they picked up, they put it back on the shelf they got it from. There is no reason for people to prevent others from reading a book because it does not affect them.
Books are a way to share information and stories to everyone, and they have been incorporated into society for centuries. The freedom to read anything shouldn’t be stripped away from everyone strictly because individuals don’t want to see it on shelves.
