Censorship is bad. Censorship, it’s the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered harmful, sensitive or inconvenient to a specific group of people. It’s also the use of power to control the freedom of expression. People who try to censor books and what they contain and/or authors and what they say are misguided. But what about the people who try to combat censorship? Are they sometimes misguided too?
As I wrote in a Book News post, the Humble (TX) Independent School District decided to rescind YA author Ellen Hopkins’ invitation to their Teen Lit Festival, based on a few complaints from middle school parents and librarians. The Humble ISD folks were wrong – they acted out of fear and ignorance.
Amazingly, a group of other YA authors decided to boycott the festival in support of Ellen and in opposition to censorship. And initially, I was really impressed by these authors, people willing to walk away from a good publicity opportunity, all to stand up for what they believed in.
Of course, then author Laurie Halse Anderson had to go and make me think. (Damn them when they make me think!) Anderson wrote a really thoughtful blog post in which she praised Hopkins and her writing, but questioned the effectiveness of the boycott.
Her point – and it’s a good one – was that boycotting means the other authors lose an opportunity to speak out against censorship at the very event that tried to censor a fellow author. More importantly, they lose the chance to bring that message to a lot of teen readers, many of whom may not have thought about the many different forms censorship can take.
This whole debacle raises an important question - just how do you fight censorship? How do you combat fear and ignorance in a way that’s productive and helpful?
I find myself torn because I don’t think either solution is wrong. I think the boycotters are sending a very public message by refusing to attend the festival: censorship is wrong and when you try to censor one, you’ll end up losing more than one. The silencing on one voice will just make the others louder. But Anderson also makes a good point – incidents like these need discussion and the only way to discuss it with the people who need to hear the message the most is to attend the festival.
It doesn’t seem like there’s one “right” way and that’s the tricky part. How do you figure out which way is the “right for this situation” way?
However this censorship attempt by the Humble ISD ends up working out, the one thing I think most people will agree on is the fact that, regardless of which solution people think is best, the good thing – the most important thing – is that people are talking about. They’re talking about how censorship can happen and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s starting conversations and creating knowledge and that, ultimately, is the greatest weapon against fear and ignorance.
What about you, bookworms? How do you think censorship should be handled? What’s your take on the whole Humble incident?
[Photo Credit: Getty Images]
