Help Stop the Book Banning!
Girl, Woman, Other, the 2019 joint Booker Prize winner created by the articulate and brilliant writer Bernardine Evaristo, has recently become another casualty of banned books in the USA. The phenomenon for banning books was started by zealous and fundamentalist far right parents to 'protect' their children in the mid 1980's. Today the voices of "the banners" has become a monstrous attack on black, LGBTQ, female, trans, liberal, critical and questioning writers.
With several thousand books challenged in recent years, it has become an uncanny and uncomfortable debate forged by those whose minds are, in my opinion, infected by self serving hypocrisy.
Of course book banning and burning is not new. The McCarthy era, Hitler, Mussolini, and Qin Shi Huang all encouraged and revelled in book burning to 'protect others', which was in reality to protect themselves. Classics such as The Great Gatsby and Lady Chatterley's Lover gained prominence in part because they were once banned by those who wanted to protect and preserve a rather questionable moral authority.
One would have hoped that by the twentieth century we would have evolved, learned from history even. Today, an improportionate number of the books being banned include the voices of women, black and other ethnic writers, LGBTQ voices and books which offer different social and religious points of view.
This is not cancel culture this is cancel race, identity, the rights of individuals and young people who should have the opportunity to read freely and learn about different opinions to those of their parents.
If you are a reader, book lover, believer in free speech please speak up, follow the banned writers, publicly support their work. Let's make our voice louder than those who want to ban the books and encourage reason, exploration and creativity. Reading a book doesn't harm a person, it inspires thought, stimulates debate, offers an opportunity for critical thinking. Perhaps that last point is what "the banners" fear most.
For more information about book banning please check out these websites and articles:
https://guides.lib.de.us/banned
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/07/book-bans-pen-america-school-districts