There is a plague in America—an infection. The impulse to censor books “for the children” has gripped Americans. It makes me feel physically ill, but I feel powerless to do much about it (except to vote against all Republicans in all elections). But Dave Eggers isn’t going to sit by and let this bullshit happen unanswered. I was reading McSweeney’s, expecting their usual wry, clever, absurdist humor, when I came across this:
The school board of Rapid City, South Dakota, plans to destroy about 400 copies of the following books: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel, How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, and Dave Eggers’s The Circle. All of these books had been assigned to English 12 classes for local high school seniors. The books have been pulled from reading lists, and designated for destruction based on their content.
There is no irony or humor here. Just the sober relating of horrifying facts. What can you do when the Nazis start burning books?
In response, Dave Eggers is offering any Rapid City-area high school seniors free copies of any of the books that are going to be destroyed. These students can get the books at their local bookstore, at no cost. Students can head over to Mitzi’s Books (510 Main St, Rapid City), and just ask. Or they can write to amanda@daveeggers.net and we’ll ship you the books.
“The mass destruction of books by school boards is an unconscionable horror," Eggers said, "And the freethinking young people of South Dakota shouldn’t be subjected to it. For every copy the school board destroys, let’s add a new one to the local circulation.”
This is the problem with book burning. Unless you control the publishers, printers, the internet, and the authors, some banned books will slip through. But the other thing that puzzles me is why books are the subjects of the ultra-right’s ire. I still read a lot of books, but as a means for disseminating subversive ideas, books have not exactly been on the cutting edge for a long time. There is a theory that because certain books are banned from your local school library, they’ll be more attractive to teenagers as “forbidden fruit.” That sounds good, but I just don’t believe it.
But that said, I don’t know about teenagers. I passed that milestone decades ago, so for all I know, there may be teens in Rapid City surreptitiously poring over copies of The Perks of Being a Wallflower or Fun Home as we speak. I hope so.
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While condemning the movement toward removing people and ideas from the public square, we need to remember it goes two ways. Remember these very prominent recent victims of "book burning."
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Dr. Seuss books
Booksellers have taken to refusing to sell books that shrieking interest groups object to. Here is a recent example:
Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shirer
This is an intelligent, well-researched discussion of the explosion of gender dysphoria and the radical physical treatments of young girls. The book was removed from the Amazon and Target stores. It was eventually restored by both establishments.
Interesting that a publisher’s decision to no longer market specific Dr. Seuss books is equated with literal book-burning.