American libraries have long been a battleground in the culture war, with the children’s section on the front lines. But my home state, New Jersey, just took the power back from censors and gave it to those best suited to decide what books are right for our kids: local librarians, teachers, parents and students themselves.
Why was this necessary? Despite our national commitment to free speech, book banning is as American as apple pie. For more than a half century, communities have famously fought over classics such as “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Of Mice and Men,” “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and more.
The nation’s predilection for banning books has even become the stuff of pop culture legend. In the films “Field of Dreams” and “Donnie Darko,” two of my personal favorites, killjoy parents seek to ban classic novels they consider “filth.” In “Field of Dreams,” it’s the works of Terence Mann — a stand-in for “The Catcher in the Rye” author J.D. Salinger — that are said to promote “promiscuity, godlessness, the mongrelization of the races, and disrespect to high-ranking officers of the United States Army.” In “Donnie Darko,” Graham Greene’s “The Destructors,” an allegory of the division between England’s pre- and post-World War II generations, is blamed for the destruction of school property.
One need only turn on the news to see similar meetings and accusations occurring across 21st century America.
In October, following a closed-door meeting, a Texas library board labeled as fiction a children’s history book about early U.S. colonization told from a Native American perspective. The episode echoed last year’s removal from Florida schools two children’s biographies about American sports heroes, Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron, because the books described historical racism in baseball. The Steinbeck classic, Of Mice and Men, is perennially challenged and removed from “left coast” school curricula for its characters’ use of profane or racist language. Even the Bible too was banned by an Utah school district for its “indecent” subject matter.
While most of these decisions were reversed, government officials should never have been able to ban books because they didn’t like what they say. That violates core First Amendment principles and is antithetical to our nation’s belief that ideas are meant to be aired and debated, not silenced.
Enter the Garden State. Last Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law the Freedom to Read Act. The FRA stops public officials from allowing their personal preferences to dictate what library books students may read. Instead, community-based book review committees must anchor any removal decisions in previously determined policies, thorough review of challenged books, and meaningful community input from the best experts: librarians, teachers, parents and students. Challenged books must be considered as a whole and will remain on the shelves during any review process. Books slated for removal will be limited to appropriate-age students, rather than banned outright.
Granted, many books are not meant for children and will make for easy removals. Just about everyone can agree that books like “American Psycho” or “Requiem for a Dream” do not belong in the children’s section. But that is not where the national debate lies. Many of the books under discussion at censorial school or community meetings are not even mildly indecent, especially by today’s cultural standards. “Julian is a Mermaid,” for example, may buck cultural norms of boyhood masculinity, but it’s just the story of a boy putting on a costume to go to a local parade with his grandma — what could be more decent?
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In “Field of Dreams,” when a few Dyersville, Iowa parents decry the Salinger-esque book in question as “pornography,” one character, comes to the book’s defense, electrifying the auditorium (and the film-viewing audience) by asking, “Who’s for the Bill of Rights? Who thinks freedom is a pretty darn good thing? Who thinks we have to stand up to the kind of censorship that they had under Stalin?” Everyone raises their hand.
New Jersey has raised its hand high, rejecting the all-too-easy slide into books bans that tend to arise during contentious cultural moments. The other 49 states should do the same; mandating transparent, objective, and honest decision making to ensure our children are not deprived of their literary, historical and cultural heritage.
Jay Diaz is a civil rights lawyer and father, raised in Hillsdale, NJ. He now lives, works, writes, and plays in Vermont.
