Throughout 2023, American educators have faced a rising tide of organized thought police whose aim is to remove texts from libraries that question or challenge their worldview. Their challenges to these texts often falsely label those who read provide access to the texts as pedophiles and deviants who are harming society. The texts that are targeted often feature characters from marginalized communities, are people of color, and/or are part of the LGBTQ+ community or these texts force the reader to tackle difficult issues like coming of age, mental health, and exploitation. My goal is to provide information and resources about challenged texts so that you, the reader, can make informed choices about what you read–because that is your RIGHT! In a society that relies on an educated citizenry for the survival of our way of life (a saying often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson), literacy–READing–is a fundamental RIGHT. Reading for deeper meaning is essential to civic life. Jefferson did say that people could not “approve what they do not understand.” Banning books is promoting ignorance and a threat to intellectual freedom and healthy civic engagement. It keeps people away from understanding. Hence, banning books is a danger to civic life in a democratic America. So, my Project 2024 is to help provide that understanding and to be a fREADom RIGHTer fighting to help others access their rights to read freely and make up their own minds. I will review books that have featured frequently on book ban lists. Some of these texts are classics that are commonly taught in schools. Most of these texts are NOT taught in schools but are merely made accessible for students to make their own choices in reading material.
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
“Atticus said to Jem one day, ‘I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know that you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.'” –Chapter 10, To Kill a Mockingbird
This is probably one of the most famous quotes in American literature. It relays the central theme of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1960 novel: that we have a moral obligation to protect the innocent in a world fraught with evil and harm.
So, why would a novel about protecting innocence make the American Library Association’s top 10 most challenged books list four times in the past 15 years? Well, it’s complicated. The short answer is that the novel often is seen as racist because of its use of the n- word, its portrayal of black people, and its portrayal of Atticus Finch as a white savior thereby echoing and underscoring white superiority and colonialism. Another short answer–at least when I was growing up in a southern state– was the sympathetic portrayal of blacks and the shining of a light on systemic racism in the south.
Either way, I was never exposed to anything other than old, dead, white guy writings in high school. Any exposure to characters of color was still written by white men (The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron comes to mind). Even in college at the University of Oklahoma, my exposure to diverse voices was somewhat limited. At least I was exposed to indigenous writings and some LGBTQ+ writings. However, I was not exposed to writings by or about blacks. Now, I was in college over 35 years ago. I had high hopes that we had come a long way in that time. With laws adopted in many states and book challenges in many more, I am now sadly disabused of that notion.
When I graduated college, I began to pick up books about injustices and dystopias written by those who lived it. I read Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s works. His words from Stride Toward Freedom about acquiescing when one sees injustice as cooperating with that system and saying “to the oppressor that his actions are morally right,” have provided me with guidance over many years now. I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and was utterly devastated by the vision of what women had come from and what they were again being reduced to being–breeders. But To Kill a Mockingbird was something I came to a few years after I started teaching in Oklahoma and noticed that it was missing from not only my own education but that of my students as well. I wanted to understand why those in power thought I should not have access to this book.
It started with me reading Lee’s acclaimed novel. I loved the novel on first reading. I identified so strongly with Jean Louise “Scout” Finch. I found her so empathetic and understanding of the wrongs going on around her. I remember thinking as I read the novel that Scout being the storyteller supported the central theme about innocence–seeing the world through a child’s eyes can show us how far we stray from good as adults. I sympathized with Tom Robinson and Boo Radley–both of whom were otherized and faced injustice but with very different outcomes that are probably based on race. The novel presented difficult questions and made difficult statements about society.
As a Southern Gothic novel, Harper’s themes of decay, corruption, decline, violence, and class and racial tension brought morality and how it’s defined into question. Even if Atticus Finch was a white savior, he ultimately failed at that salvation. The decay and corruption of the system won.
While I never taught TKAM myself, the novel was and still is on the core reading list of the school district in California where I taught for 24 years. Because I saw this book as the white perspective of injustices in the Deep South, I felt that the best way to present this novel to today’s students would be to pair it with the voices of those who suffer these types of injustices. For example, readings from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou or Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison as companion pieces might help students to better understand life for people of color in the South during the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Passages from modern writers like Walter Dean Myers, Ibi Zoboi, and Angie Thomas could help as well. Teaching texts for me always entailed including multiple voices and perspectives to help students with their lines of inquiry and engagement with the texts.
In a recent Washington Post story, one black student, Joy Matthew, wrote that to remove the book from classrooms “would mean ‘silencing Tom Robinson and every black man who has been unfairly persecuted.'” Another black student, Dyonte Law, cited the novel as important in helping him understand how whites do not recognize their own implicit biases. Others are promoting teaching more books by authors of color to hear the story of their persecutions from their own perspectives, that Lee’s novel has served its purpose, yet doesn’t address the complex race relations in today’s society.
One thing is certain, 64 years after its publication, the novel remains a flashpoint for conversations about what books and whose voices we should share in classrooms. The novel can still play a role in furthering those conversations.
PS Harper Lee followed up her lone novel with a sequel in 2015. Go Set a Watchman picks up with Jean Louise at the age of 26.
Be a fREADom RIGHTer: join the fight against banning books! Here are some resources to learn more:
Little Free Library fighting book bans.
Banned Books Week resources.
Unite Against Book Bans talking points.
American Library Association resources.
Oh Yes Jules Did 