Censorship and Banning Books

Mark Twain himself once said: "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it."

Every year, during the last week of September, I get downright giddy (no, not because it's my birthday), it's because at this time the library world celebrates "Banned Books Week." During this week, libraries all over the country celebrate our freedom to read and have open access to information, and serve to educate patrons about the importance of the First Amendment, specifically drawing attention to the harms of censorship.

Take the current controversy to “sanitize” the story of Huckleberry Finn, a blistering critique of the hypocrisy and brutality of slavery and the norms and values of white society, as seen through the eyes of an innocent, Huck Finn. The book is actually an anti-racism work of the first degree: a white boy realizes that a black man is human. While today, the use of the “N” word is absolutely unacceptable, in its proper literary content - as if Twain was poking us with a very sharp stick just to see us squirm - it adds to the time period and issues in the story. To edit it out would be insulting to the writer and to the potential reader (imagine “Roots” without the beatings and racial slurs).

It is dangerous to rewrite history in this way. How can a person, especially children & young adults, know how far we have come if he/she does not know where we came from? One of the most important aspects of education is learning how to think critically and sanitizing "Huckleberry Finn" will take away provocative discussion and analysis. We need a novel like Huck Finn to understand a more modern novel, like “Beloved” for example, in order to think critically about why a mother would murder her own child rather than see her suffer a life in slavery.

We’ve truly lost our sight & our vision when we want to take apart literary works that have had such historical significance.