Freedom to Read
Feb. 20th, 2023 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterHappy Freedom to Read Week, everyone! And just a reminder: most libraries and bookstores in Ontario are closed today. Indigo's site is not available for online shopping. You may be able to buy the odd paperback novel, the kind that the drugstore sells.
I recently bought the following two books that the American Library Association (ALA) produced in 2022:
1. Read These Banned Books: A Journal and 52-Week Reading Challenge
2. 52 Diverse Titles Every Book Lover Should Read: A One-Year Journal and Recommended Reading List
For each title, there's a brief summary of what the book's about, followed by a question to stimulate personal reflection and then some blank pages for the reader to review the item and record a star-rating and the date they finished the book.
Of the titles listed in book #1, I've already read quite a number; I've only read one or two of the 52 Diverse Titles. While I don't plan to embark on the Reading Challenge in quite the way the ALA may have intended, I do intend to use both books as a kind of reader advisory tool for myself and my friends. A title that particularly caught my eye was Quichotte, by Salman Rushdie. Here's the first sentence of the blurb:
In this homage to the revered satire Don Quixote, a mediocre Indian American crime writer using the pen name Sam DuChamp believes that his spy novels have put him in actual danger.
Most of the titles listed in these two books are contentious for all the usual twentieth-century reasons: sex, violence, coarse or otherwise offensive language, religion, politics, racial tension, being antithetical to "family values"... I'm sure you get the picture. But this century has ushered in a whole host of new and different reasons for restricting access to books. Consider, for example, the following:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828?cmp=rss
So: Is editing or censorship, if done for reasons of cultural sensitivity, avoidance of hate speech and alt-right polemic and promotion of politically correct values, somehow more justifiable than editing or censorship based on real or perceived racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and all the other -isms and -phobiae that are generally offensive to most segments of modern-day society?
Or maybe context is everything?
This is rather timely for me, as I recently attended a performance of "Is God Is" at the National Arts Centre (NAC). Most of the actors in this play are black. A majority of the audience members (myself included) were not. February is of course Black History Month, which I have always assumed is meant both for black folks to learn about and celebrate their heritage and for lighter-skinned people to gain a better understanding of what Black people have endured and accomplished over the course of the centuries, while being largely erased from our history books.
Originally, the NAC planned to hold a couple of performances open only to black people although they later walked that back, stating all people were welcome:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/national-arts-centre-ottawa-play-black-audience-theatre-1.6735929?cmp=rss
I'm personally a little conflicted on the matter of whether or not this kind of Apartheid for All the Right Reasons is reasonable. Certainly I understand and applaud the rationale behind women's centres and women's shelters, given the appalling stories we hear of intimate partner violence, usually perpetrated by men.
In conclusion, however, I want to re-emphasize that Freedom to Read is not just freedom from censorship. Above all, it's a question of accessibility.
In the early days of the pandemic, libraries were closed. Schools were closed. So what about people without extensive personal book collections, people who could ill afford to buy their own books, people in rural or remote areas where internet access was spotty and unreliable, people without computers who relied on public libraries for what little online time they could get?
That's the kind of information-poverty and literature-poverty that even now continues to fly under the radar.
I recently bought the following two books that the American Library Association (ALA) produced in 2022:
1. Read These Banned Books: A Journal and 52-Week Reading Challenge
2. 52 Diverse Titles Every Book Lover Should Read: A One-Year Journal and Recommended Reading List
For each title, there's a brief summary of what the book's about, followed by a question to stimulate personal reflection and then some blank pages for the reader to review the item and record a star-rating and the date they finished the book.
Of the titles listed in book #1, I've already read quite a number; I've only read one or two of the 52 Diverse Titles. While I don't plan to embark on the Reading Challenge in quite the way the ALA may have intended, I do intend to use both books as a kind of reader advisory tool for myself and my friends. A title that particularly caught my eye was Quichotte, by Salman Rushdie. Here's the first sentence of the blurb:
In this homage to the revered satire Don Quixote, a mediocre Indian American crime writer using the pen name Sam DuChamp believes that his spy novels have put him in actual danger.
Most of the titles listed in these two books are contentious for all the usual twentieth-century reasons: sex, violence, coarse or otherwise offensive language, religion, politics, racial tension, being antithetical to "family values"... I'm sure you get the picture. But this century has ushered in a whole host of new and different reasons for restricting access to books. Consider, for example, the following:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/roald-dahl-censorship-allegations-1.6753828?cmp=rss
So: Is editing or censorship, if done for reasons of cultural sensitivity, avoidance of hate speech and alt-right polemic and promotion of politically correct values, somehow more justifiable than editing or censorship based on real or perceived racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and all the other -isms and -phobiae that are generally offensive to most segments of modern-day society?
Or maybe context is everything?
This is rather timely for me, as I recently attended a performance of "Is God Is" at the National Arts Centre (NAC). Most of the actors in this play are black. A majority of the audience members (myself included) were not. February is of course Black History Month, which I have always assumed is meant both for black folks to learn about and celebrate their heritage and for lighter-skinned people to gain a better understanding of what Black people have endured and accomplished over the course of the centuries, while being largely erased from our history books.
Originally, the NAC planned to hold a couple of performances open only to black people although they later walked that back, stating all people were welcome:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/national-arts-centre-ottawa-play-black-audience-theatre-1.6735929?cmp=rss
I'm personally a little conflicted on the matter of whether or not this kind of Apartheid for All the Right Reasons is reasonable. Certainly I understand and applaud the rationale behind women's centres and women's shelters, given the appalling stories we hear of intimate partner violence, usually perpetrated by men.
In conclusion, however, I want to re-emphasize that Freedom to Read is not just freedom from censorship. Above all, it's a question of accessibility.
In the early days of the pandemic, libraries were closed. Schools were closed. So what about people without extensive personal book collections, people who could ill afford to buy their own books, people in rural or remote areas where internet access was spotty and unreliable, people without computers who relied on public libraries for what little online time they could get?
That's the kind of information-poverty and literature-poverty that even now continues to fly under the radar.
