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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Let's talk about this new wave of book banning that's been in the news. For example, the American Library Association, quoted in the New York Times says in a preliminary report that it has received an unprecedented 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books since last fall.
In Virginia, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin the newly elected governor partly on the grounds of that there are divisive things being taught in schools that he calls critical race theory, even if they're not. Governor Youngkin has rolled out a tip line for parents to report divisive practices in their schools, as he calls it.
This very much relates to what kind of history, what kind of literature, what kind of books are being taught. Elsewhere, there have been efforts to press criminal charges against school librarians, criminal charges, and there are more stories that we could tell. The whole Whoopi Goldberg thing. This gets lost in the telling of that controversy. It started on the view in a discussion of some part of Tennessee banning the book Maus, which is commonly used to teach the Holocaust to children of a certain age.
Who suffers when children are denied access to books that tell the stories that are different than their own life experiences? Why are book bans back in style well into the 21st century should that not be, was that not a relic of the past, a relic of the past? With me now, we're very happy to have Suzanne Nossel Chief Executive Officer of PEN America, the free speech organization at the intersection of literature and human rights. Suzanne, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.
Suzanne Nossel: Thanks so much, Brian. Great to be here.
Brian Lehrer: Give us the big picture landscape, as you see it. How much is new here? How much is this just a cyclical people getting upset about questions being raised about books in schools?
Suzanne Nossel: Yes, sure. Look, book challenges are nothing new. They've happened throughout US history. We can think of historical moments, the teaching of evolution, where there were pitched debates over what children were being taught. Here at PEN America, we've consistently dealt with book bans and challenges writing letters to school systems around the country, usually a few times a year, asking them to restore a book to the shelves. Normally, oftentimes, they would do so.
What we're seeing now is of a different order of magnitude. I think it comes from a different place, and that's important to understand. The numbers are not really collected systematically on a rolling real-time basis. We're trying to do that here at PEN America, but the statistics that you cited, the 320 books banned at the end of the year from the American Library Association is one reflection of this dramatic upsurge in more than 75 book bans in the state of Texas over a period of just a couple of months compared to one such challenge in the prior year.
All that points to a dramatic escalation in these battles. It really grows out of this controversy over the teaching of race and history and the implications of slavery for present-day American society. What we saw first last year was a whole spate, it's numbering now more than 120 efforts to ban certain curriculum from being taught in schools curriculum about issues of race.
Some label this critical race theory, although it's really not critical race theory, that's a theory that's taught in law schools, we call those measures are educational gag orders. They are efforts to exclude certain ideas, perspectives, and viewpoints from classroom discussion in both elementary and secondary schools, and in some instances in higher education depending on the bill.
Growing out of that wave have been these book bans that I think are motivated by a similar impulse to try to yank back control over what is discussed in the classroom and a sense of alarm that as our society becomes more diverse, that as we take steps to reflect greater inclusivity, greater representation to tell different kinds of stories, to show characters who traditionally might not have been seen in literature, some people feel like something's being lost, that there's a purity being lost or an ideal American narrative that is being challenged or undermined, and they're pushing back harshly.
One form that's taken is this spate of book bans which take on different forms, sometimes challenging an individual book, sometimes they're taking a whole list of books about diversity, a set of resources that are put together to educate on diversity and saying, "We're going to just ban this entire list wholesale without even reading the volumes that are on it or making an individualized argument." Then in some cases, as you mentioned this is coming down as legislation. Actually, lawmakers clamping down on what students are allowed to read and what teachers can teach.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can open up the phones in the segment, too. I'm curious if anybody listening right now has any recent experience with book banning or attempted book banning, or for that matter if there's a book that you didn't want your child to be exposed to in your school district. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. For any personal experiences of this issue, as it's been expressed recently, or any questions for Suzanne Nossel from PEN America. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.
Let's take a few examples. You wrote on Twitter, people blast Whoopi Goldberg for not knowing the basics of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, within a week of a Tennessee School, banning Art Spiegelman's Maus, the graphic novel that has provided generations of students with their first education on the Holocaust. That was your tweet. Talk about Maus, and what's happening with that. That's a decade's old book so why now?
Suzanne Nossel: Sure. Well, the grounds that the school board gave were that there was profanity in the book, that there was imagery of naked animals, and that the subject matter was disturbing. While the subject matter is disturbing. It's an account of Art Spiegelman's experiences during the Holocaust and it's very vivid and alarming. It really portrays the gravity.
It does throw through animals, and in a graphic form that is accessible for young people, but it is meant to rattle and to expose, and to raise profound questions, as the Holocaust inevitably does. I think it got caught up in this movement of really asking questions about what should be happening in the classroom in a notion of a sanitized view of history that certain communities want to preserve. It's a little bit unusual in that overwhelmingly, the books that have been targeted in these bans are books, by and about authors and characters of color and or LGBTQ identities. Those seem to be the things that are most threatening.
If you think about kids growing up, a child who's questioning their own sexuality, or gender identity, it's extremely important to have resources, particularly in some communities, where those sorts of questions are not encouraged or embraced, to be able to look at a library shelf, read a story about somebody you can relate to, realize there may be a pathway for you, there's some affirmation for you.
To exclude that, to sort of say the only stories kids should be able to read are, by white authors about white characters in a very mainstream cisgender vein, really forces a huge segment of our population to have to imagine for themselves on their own what their participation in the society can look like. That's what's at stake here. It's really how we come together as a culture and whether we can embrace a breadth of narratives that reflects the span of our population.
Brian Lehrer: I imagine that the people advocating for some of these bans would push back on what you just said and say, "No, we're not saying at all that the only authors our kids should read are white or male or heterosexual or cisgender, we're saying we don't want them to be exposed to things that say that white or male or heterosexual or cisgender people are bad or inherently biased."
Suzanne Nossel: I think they would say that, but if you look at the numbers, it's really impossible to overlook the pattern here and see, and this isn't actually not new. Historically we did a report about six years ago and come overwhelmingly, it has been books by and about characters of color and LGBTQ that are targeted by book bans.
What I would hope to see is some self-reflection in terms of what this is really about. I think it may not be absolutely conscious in terms of going after those authors and stories, but that is the implication. If people are trying to exclude what they don't like ideologically, these are of the voices that are ending up being silenced.
Brian Lehrer: We took Maus as one example, another one cited in the New York Times article the other day is, All Boys Aren't Blue, which it says, has been targeted for removal in least 14 states. Are you familiar with that one?
Suzanne Nossel: Yes, it's a book. It’s more one of these books that fits into this paradigm. It's a memoir. It's very personal, quite dark in terms of queer life and what that's like for a Black kid growing up, grappling with family issues. There is molestation. One of the complexities here is there are decisions to be made about when children are ready to come to grips with certain topics, and that can be quite personal. It may depend on the maturity level of an individual child, but we feel very strongly the people best equipped to make those decisions are educators, individual parents in terms of a library book that can be taken out from a shelf. It shouldn't be missing and unavailable but parents obviously can have some measure of control over that. We just don't think these books like All Boys Aren't Blue should be taken off limits for everybody.
Brian Lehrer: Jeremy in Stanford, you're on WNYC with Suzanne Nossel from PEN America. Hi Jeremy.
Jeremy: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I just want to echo the sentiment that it is alarming that a book like Maus becomes banned. As the grandson of Holocaust survivors, it literally brings me to tears to think that people are not going to be exposed to this story because others find it alarming or offensive, and especially taken in context with Whoopi's statements a week later. I am not one of those people who's calling for her being canceled. I am a strong proponent of education and taking those two incidents or facts together, it makes me sad and depressed.
Brian Lehrer: Jeremy, thank you for expressing that here. One thing that might make Jeremy a little happier. I read, Suzanne that sales of the book Maus immediately skyrocketed after the publicity about this ban in which I think might have even been in just one Tennessee school, correct me if I'm wrong but do you think that these attempts to prohibit certain books usually backfire or backfire a lot?
Suzanne Nossel: Well, look, it may when it's a book of that prominence and certainly that incident surrounding Maus got an enormous amount of publicity, but in the more average case, these are not famous authors at the level of an Art Spiegelman. There are authors of color, sometimes younger, authors who are breaking through with different kinds of stories and narratives. When their books disappear, there is no upsurge of that story. People don't hear about it.
I think we cannot content ourselves with the notion that bans inherently fail and that these books are going to surge and be more available than ever, especially when it's happening systemically like this. We all know about Maus, but there are hundreds of books that are right now being banned in school systems across the country and very few are experiencing the surge that Maus did.
Brian Lehrer: Lucy in Hackensack, a librarian who has a story to tell, I think Lucy you're on WNYC, thank you for calling in.
Lucy: Ah, thank you for taking my call. Yes, I was a public librarian in New Jersey for 38 years or so. My first stint was as a children's librarian. I remember this is way back in the '70 and '80s when parents would come in and not want books about, I have two fathers or anything about gays and lesbians and somebody having parents and this was pre-marriage of two men or two women, but they would come into my office and they would say, "I don't want that book gone the shelf. I don't want my child seeing it."
We also had things like that about any sexuality, because there was something called, Where do I come from? Which was a book that was discussing sex for kids with cartoons and things, but parents went crazy about this because in those days they didn't discuss that, but my director came down and he said, "There's no censorship here."
Our library also let kids take out books from any department. If I wanted to take out a book about an adult department that might have pictures or anything like that, we didn't do any censorship. The only other thing I remember is the policeman coming in. I'm sure you remember the Sendak book, where the police were called pigs or they were pictures of pigs and they wanted that book off the shelves also but again, I had a director that said, "We don't censor." At that point, it stopped but again, this was around 1975, '80. It wasn't like what's going on today and things and [crosstalk] quieted down.
Brian Lehrer: How did it make you feel as a librarian, even as compared to how a teacher might feel? Book banning is not good in any case, but its one thing if a book is being assigned by a teacher to every student in a class and they have to read it, that might start one conversation among parents, but it's a whole other thing to merely have a book on a shelf in a library as available.
Lucy: Well, I didn't agree with any of it. I'm pretty liberal-minded. I did have, I shouldn't discuss it, but we did have a librarian who was extreme in certain issues and would not tell anyone where the Da Vinci Code was because it was anti-Catholic or whatever it was. I'm not exactly sure which of course he shouldn't have been doing. Then again, it's that personal thing. He didn't believe in certain things and he didn't want people to look for them. If I were in charge who wouldn't have been there, but [crosstalk] I didn't know. I didn't like it. I just thought this is ridiculous. This is what goes on and these people would be angry and scream and yell, and it might--
Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Suzanne, I think we've had you on the show in the past to criticize attempts at censorship on the left and these book banning incidents that we're talking about are coming from the right, there's of course been so much talk about things you can't say or things you are not supposed to read anymore on college campuses or elsewhere that the right criticizes the left for as politically correct cancel culture. Certainly there's at very least hypocrisy. You can't cancel me, but I can cancel you, but how do you see the big picture in terms of the political spectrum?
Suzanne Nossel: Yes, there's a disturbing interplay at work and you're absolutely right. We've done an enormous amount of work on issues of speech on college campuses. Most of which does deal with issues like save spaces, trigger warnings, speaker cancellations that are impulses of sensoriousness coming from the left. A lot of them do have to do with the tension between the campus becoming a more equal, inclusive environment, rejecting racism, making sure that hates speech doesn't interfere with people's ability to feel a sense of belonging and to get an education. The thrust of our work has been about the importance of the campus becoming more diverse, equal, and inclusive, but the imperative that not be at the expense of robust protections for free speech, my book, Dare to Speak, Defending Free Speech for All offers a real blueprint for how to reconcile those competing, but extremely important and ultimately interlocking principles.
What we see now coming from the right, they would say is a reaction to this orthodoxy from the left and to the notion in their minds that these curriculum or these books are being rammed down people's throats, that they exclude other kinds of narratives that children are being taught a certain version of American history that put slavery at the centerpiece that perhaps demonizes white people and is intended to instill a sense of guilt. Look, that is a matter of debate. I think there can be different perspectives about how to go about instruction on these issues.
I think it's probably fair to say there are instances where it does go too far in terms of the messages that students are getting, or a perspective on history that is too limited, that is looking at things through a single lens and presenting that lens as if it's definitive or authoritative.
As we know the study of history necessitates using multiple lenses, there could be a Marxist lens. There can be a conservative, a Keynesian lens. There can be a lens that focuses on racial justice. All of those lenses ultimately are things that we want students to be exposed to. I think what's essential to remember is that as much as we may object to, and we do at PEN America sensoriousness coming from the left, it takes the form of Twitter mobs sometimes it's academic administrators who are heavy-handed and don't uphold the precepts of academic freedom.
What we see here, particularly in the curriculum bans. This is legislation. These are laws that are being passed that impose ideologically-based, viewpoint-based restrictions on what can be taught and what can be learned. If you're going to make a hierarchy of infringements on freedom of speech, when it's a legal matter, that is at the top of the pyramid. If you look historically, we do work at PEN America all over the world, and we focus a lot on authoritarian regimes, book bans, curriculum bans, these are the tools of authoritarians. This is right out of that playbook in terms of how to control thought, how to dictate what narratives are acceptable, how to exclude dissenting ideas. That's part of why we see this as so alarming.
Brian Lehrer: Lisa in Manhattan you are on WNYC with Suzanne Nossel from PEN America. Hi Lisa.
Lisa: Hi, Lisa Sullivan.
Brian Lehrer: I don't know your last name. But I see you as Lisa in Manhattan and you're on the radio.
Lisa: Yes. Okay, great. I don't even know where to start. I think kids are so traumatized by COVID right now in their lifetime they've got a whole lifetime to learn history. Adults fighting over the curriculum is just stressing them out. They find out we're not telling them something they will just go look it up on the internet. Book bans to me in the age of the internet are not very alarming. What's alarming is that people are not taking the age of children into consideration. I wish that you guys would speak about this in primary school or high school, make those definitive. Otherwise, it's a waste of time.
There's everything that we don't want to tell our children at a young age. Even if my child, I wanted to explain to him about the Holocaust I ended up and no one's more liberal than me, I ended up teaching my child first communion years ago with all of his friends, because I didn't want anyone else to explain it to him because I thought it was too traumatizing. That guy I told you to pray to, we put him up on a cross, nailed him there and killed him, threw things at him. I wanted to be the one to explain that because he was a very sensitive kid even at 12. I wish these conversation were about age and we weren't just talking about it. We're trying to keep information from human beings. We're trying to regulate when a child is able to hear about certain things. That's my point.
Brian Lehrer: Lisa, thank you very much. Let's talk about age, of course. I can't let it go unremarked on that Lisa was very casual about, "Oh, book banning doesn't matter much in the age of the internet because anybody can look anything up. Suzanne, I want to give you a chance to react to that. [crosstalk] Do that first and then we'll talk about age.
Suzanne Nossel: Sure. I see these bans really as a reflection of just how much books do matter in our society, how essential books are that they've become this kind of battleground. When you hear people talk about the bans, they speak so personally of the effect that different books have had on them. Seeing themselves in a book for the first time or reading a narrative that speaks to them, a book that shaped their life's trajectory. There's a reason that we don't have kids sitting on the internet or their phones at school. It's because books are essential to the nurturing of future generations. I think it's a real mistake to downplay the significance of this battle just because kids have access to other media.
Brian Lehrer: On age, we should also point out that in Florida, Republicans are advancing a bill which opponents have dubbed the, don't say gay bill. I'm looking at a CNN report that describes it as school districts may not encourage discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that, sorry, this just flashed off my screen. Here it is, or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students. Can we unpack that? I think that was an issue in the book banning instance with Maus, also about the Holocaust that supposedly, it wasn't that they didn't want children to learn about the Holocaust, it was certain age kids seeing material that was disturbing in a certain way as our caller Lisa described about teaching her kid about the crucifixion. How do we unpack the attempts at bias from the attempts at age appropriateness?
Suzanne Nossel: Yes. Look in the Maus case, the book was embedded in a curriculum that had have been used over a number of years that seemed to work, that kids seem to understand. This impulse I think is hard to separate from this larger wave of questioning what's going on in the classroom. Is there subversiveness in the classroom. I think we have to ask ourselves what is fueling all of a sudden these calling into question of curriculum and approaches and teachings that have been accepted for a long time. Of course, there are legitimate questions about age appropriateness.
It's going to be a cultural debate in terms of LGBTQ identities, is that something that kids should be introduced to or talking about from a very young age? It's drastically different than when I grew up. I have kids who are in high school and they are absolutely familiar with and have been since elementary school with the idea of gay families, the idea that people have different sexual orientation. That's something that for me, even in high school was not out in the open., In my own view, it's a positive thing or more accepting of different kinds of identities.
People don't feel like they have to be in the closet to suppress who they are. They don't go through the traumas that people of prior generations had to endure. I do understand that for communities that where those identities are not as accepted and embraced, you know, there's a feeling that it should be gradual. I think there are stories that talk about same sex relationships in the animal world, this famous the children's book about penguins.
I think they're very delicate gentle ways of doing it, but the reality is we live in a pluralistic society where these identities exist. They existed now in our politics, they exist in our world of culture and entertainment. We're coming to accept them. We've accepted gay marriage. I think we should see ourselves as being on a trajectory of normalizing the whole breadth of American identities and life stories and narratives. Exactly what form that takes in schools, I think is a fair subject for debate and discussion. I would hope educators would be given a strong voice within that.
Brian Lehrer: A listener who identifies as Black writes, "At 12, I was harassed by the police for the first time. The age thing has some merit, but kids even younger than 12 experience all the things these school boards and legislators object to in these books. We're going to let that be the last word in this segment with Susan Nossel, CEO and President of The Free Speech Organization, PEN America. She is also author of the book, Dare To Speak, Defending Free Speech for All. Suzanne, thanks a lot.
Suzanne Nossel: Thanks so much, Brian, take care.
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