Into the Dark
I detest censorship and I’m grateful that in America, freedom of expression is protected; I do not live in a totalitarian or fascist country where I might be punished for my writing. Despite any debate about where free expression can become harmful or lead to violence, there seems to be a slippery slope coming from several angles upon which we are descending, leading us into the dark.
Perhaps a person needs a certain perspective to be as alarmed as I am these days and that perspective needs to be imbued with an understanding of history. In one instance, my view as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, gives me enough pause to question a burgeoning and disturbing trend in the literary community: the targeting of Jewish authors. I see it as the result of dangerous thinking that conflates the politics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Judaism and the general Israeli population. It also stems from the lack of any knowledge about the history of Israel and the Middle East. Put this alongside another very disturbing trend of banning books from classrooms and libraries, and I wonder if the future is the past.
Writer friends of mine first alerted me to instances in which Jewish authors are being blacklisted—canceled, as the case may be, from scheduled appearances in bookstores or on panels where they would be discussing their books. These cancellations, which continue to this day, are the result of protests against what is labeled as “Zionist” authors. Example: this summer, City Lit, a bookstore in Chicago, withdrew Gabrielle Zevin’s bestseller “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” from consideration for a book club pick. The reason: Zevin was a “Zionist” and yet she has never spoken publicly about Israel or the war in Gaza.
Aggressions against Jewish authors also take the form of boycotts. Author Sally Rooney has spearheaded a petition and gathered 1,000 signatures from authors who pledge not to “…..work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians” and pledge not to cooperate with “…Israeli institutions including publishers, festivals, literary agencies and publications that are complicit in violating Palestinian rights, including through discriminatory policies and practices or by whitewashing and justifying Israel’s occupation, apartheid or genocide, or have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law.” This was published online at Literary Hub.
I applaud author Lionel Shriver’s response to the petition. He wrote on “The Free Press” (October 27, 2024) that this was indicative of “an age of aggressive groupsterism.” He asserts the petition aims to intimidate all authors into withdrawing work at Israeli publishing houses, and he invited a translation of his latest novel into Hebrew, writing, “Publishing in translation sure beats prissily refusing to allow my precious sentences to be corrupted by the language of Jews.” I say ‘bravo’ to Shriver and agree with him that independent thinking is a rare and much needed commodity these days, one that I assume is a basic tenet of good writing.
Some of my colleagues, members of the Authors Guild, are calling out continued instances in which Jewish authors are targeted. Several are not satisfied with the Guild’s formal statement condemning the blacklisting of authors, which they complain implies (without evidence) an equivalent effort to cancel pro-Palestinian writers.
On the subject of writing and censorship, I never believed I’d see the day when books like Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” or Walker’s “The Color Purple” or Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” were banned from libraries and classrooms. In my days as a high school English teacher, my most effective lessons were tied to student discussions of books like Orwell’s “Animal Farm” or Golding’s “Lord of the Flies.” I wonder if those who support book bans know who they are protecting and from what exactly?
In 2019 “American Dirt” by Jeanine Cummins caused a literary storm. It was an Oprah book club pick and I thought it was worthy of that distinction and of its best-seller status. However, I was in the minority when the writing community on Twitter excoriated Cummins and sided with prevailing harsh criticism and the sweeping social media uproar against the book. The criticism began after a few Latinx writers and readers asserted Cummins was not of Mexican heritage and the book had inaccuracies about Mexico and stereotypes of Mexicans. Following this, major publishing houses were subject to needed scrutiny as largely white businesses where decisions about who gets published are skewed against BIPOC writers, but scrutiny does not mandate censorship. Introspection can be beneficial for necessary change, but I maintain language should not be policed, and authors should not have to self-censor or claim their right to create a work of fiction. I admire Henry Louis Gates, Jr. the literary scholar and Professor who told his audience at a Pen America award ceremony, “…when well-meaning people treat an identity as something to be fenced off from those of another identity, we sell short the human imagination.”
Back in 1807, Thomas Bowdler, an English physician, published “The Family Shakespeare” which he believed would be more appropriate for 19th-century women and children. That edition changed Ophelia’s death in Hamlet to an accidental drowning, not a potential suicide, and "God!" is replaced with "Heavens!" Thus emerged the term Bowdlerism: the removal from a book (or any work of art) of elements considered unacceptable today.
Expurgation is practiced today by those who would erase some past events or language from books because they are uncomfortable to accept; that’s like not wanting to know the truth (which may help you navigate the present) because it hurts your feelings or sensibility, or perhaps destroy your child’s innocence. In 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced it would cease publication of six books by Theodore Geisel because of racist and insensitive language. More recently, a decision to edit Roald Dahl’s books by eliminating language deemed offensive (words such as ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’) met with enough of a public outcry for the publisher to decide to keep the original texts in print. New editions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books have been published with racist language removed. History can and often is offensive. We can’t learn from past mistakes if instead of contextualization and discussion, words are changed and sanitized to appease present sentiment.
I caution those who may suggest a correlation can be made to the issue of leaving in public places statues that honor men who fought to preserve slavery. You have a choice whether to read or support an author whose words you find objectionable, but you may not have the option to avoid walking under the shadow of a monument that celebrates slavery and serves to rally proponents of racial segregation. These monuments belong in museums where historical context becomes a learning tool. Different perspectives and ideas intrinsic to freedom of expression should be guarded as a principle of democracy that benefits all of us, in the context of past, present and future.
When I was a young teen, I got in trouble for stealing books. I had just read “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel and, like a knight on a crusade, I declared all books should be free. With the help of a friend, we went into a local bookstore and “lifted” a few books. Looking back, I cannot say what neurons were pulsing in my adolescent brain to allow me to think this was okay. I know I wasn’t considering the shop owner who was trying to make a living, or libraries that allow unimpeded access to books and knowledge. It was the story that Bradbury wrote, a story of a society in which books were burned to keep people from forming their own opinions—in the name of societal harmony. Bradbury once said he wrote “Fahrenheit 451” in response to the burning of books by Nazi soldiers during World War Two.
It is ironic that “Fahrenheit 451” is among banned or censored books for references to drugs and words deemed vulgar.
According to the American Library Association, preliminary data for the first eight months of 2024 show 414 attempts to censor books and materials in public, school, and academic libraries covering 1,128 titles. PEN America recorded 10,046 instances of book bans during the 2023-2024 school year, more than half of them written for the young adult reader.
Books depicting LGBTQ characters, books about people of color, teen suicide, racism or the holocaust are among those that well-meaning parents feel are harmful because they are sexually explicit or contain objectionable language or provoke guilt or induce shame. I’d say harm comes from not being able to discuss shameful events in the past, confront confusing topics in the present, and learn how to be a well-educated free thinking adult in the future.
There is something frightfully amiss if we cannot learn about history, good or bad, shameful or honorable, in order to confront controversial topics and ask questions. A book can not only educate, but it can save a life—unless we continue down that slippery slope into the dark.