Banning and removing books in schools and public libraries is a timely discussion topic, but it is nothing new. The first book banned in the U.S. was New English Canaan, by Thomas Morton. The year was 1637, in Massachusetts. The Puritan government banned the book because it was critical of Puritan customs and power structures. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the first book to be banned on a national scale. The Confederacy banned it for its pro-abolitionist agenda.
Recent studies have reported that currently the reasons for book banning in the U.S. are loosely grouped into four categories: depiction of sex, violence, books written by or about a member of the LBGTQ community, and history that shows the U.S. negatively.
Other countries have different criteria for banning books. For example, Salman Rushdie’s book Satanic Verses was banned because it was considered disrespectful of Islam.
The recent increase in book-banning in the U.S. presents not only an education problem but also a logistical nightmare. Examples of this emerged in Tennessee, where a new law bans books in school libraries that contain any mention of nudity, sexual conduct or excess violence, no matter how brief. The administration of a high school, realizing that sorting through thousands of books looking for violations was a gargantuan task, closed the library until the vetting and removal could be completed.
An Iowa school official tried to give librarians help with their huge task by using Chat-GPT and other AI software to comb through books looking for offensive passages. Unfortunately, the AI software was faulty, and several books having no illegal content at all were inadvertently slated for removal.
NBC reporter and former librarian Brandy Zadrozny said, “Artificial Intelligence really isn’t the main problem here. The book banning is the real problem.” In a recent interview, Zadrozny also commented that ironically, some parents who had once supported bans because they thought parents should have the decision on which books their kids could access are now changing sides. They feel that the idea backfired, and that the state is now making that decision. In hindsight, they feel that librarians and reading specialists should be trusted to use their educational training, and make the right decisions.
In 1982 the American Library Association established Banned Book
Week to draw attention to the harms of censorship. This year it is celebrated during the week of September 22-28 and the theme is “Freed Between the Lines”
As authors, we all have our own feelings about banning books in
libraries and schools. We hope you found this history of book banning
interesting.
Rita Goldner
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