Banned Books

In my inaugural article, I discussed the why and how of challenging and banning books. In this article, we’ll start the process of examining some titles, authors, awards, reasoning, and the deliberate attempts by the elite in our society to retaliate against certain segments of our population, silence voices, distort truths, create upheaval, exclude many of the voices that add to the narrative, perspective, and diversity of what it means to be Americans and global citizens.
This week, I’ve chosen the following two titles, one from contemporary young writer and poet Elizabeth Acevedo, titled “Clap When You Land” and the second a classic considered Southern Gothic fiction from deceased writer Harper Lee, titled “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
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Elizabeth Acevedo, an American writer and poet, born in Harlem. An Afro-Latina, Acevedo an award-winning author raised in a conservative devout Catholic family, the youngest child and only daughter of immigrant parents. Their trips to the Dominican Republic during the summers gave this dynamic young writer inspiration for her novels.
Acevedo’s novel reflects and explores subjects such as self-identity, everyday life experiences in the Dominican Republic, the resistance of colonial powers, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the devastation of loss. Her writing in the genre of adult fiction has won her the National Book Award for Young Peoples’ Literature, Carnegie Medal for Writing, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpre Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the Walter Award.
The first of the 2022 Young People’s Poet Laureate’s is titled “Clap When You Land,” the story of two sisters who have no idea the other exist, and whose Father has recently unexpectantly passed away in a plane crash, after which the sisters find each other.
“Clap When You Land” explores themes of connection with a sibling you didn’t know you had, how grief is experienced in different ways in different countries and cultures, and the bonding with and finding common ground with a stranger who is your blood family.
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The second selection for this week is a classic book, once required reading in middle and high schools, now banned in several schools around the country. “To Kill a Mockingbird” by American author Harper Lee is the story of attorney Atticus Finch’s defense of a Black man falsely accused of raping a Caucasian woman, as told through the eyes… of his young daughter Jean Louise Finch (“Scout”). This coming-of-age story explores the root causes and consequences of racism in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the great depression.
This book explores the themes of single fatherhood, as one of the major characters in the book is Atticus, a widowed father to Scout and her brother Jeremy Finch (“Jem”), as he navigates the challenges of defending a wrongly accused Black man and, ultimately, his character and career amid the day-to-day challenges of raising two children. The depths of the bonds of a friendship, the innocence of childhood, the duplicity and brutality of a criminal justice system that caters to one domineering race, and ultimately, the triumph of what is right are also prevalent themes not to be ignored in this classic piece of literature.
The main reasons for banning “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Lee’s first novel, are said to be its sexual content and other adult themes, profanity, racially charged language, and the Caucasian savior complex. Keep in mind, Lee won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961 for her very first book. Her second book, “Go Set A Watchman,” was published in 2015, a year before her death, and though it has not been banned, it did receive controversial reviews.
It’s difficult to rationalize, let alone comprehend, the reasoning for banning these novels. The writers are beyond prolific at their crafts, spinning heartfelt, realistic, and relevant stories that speak to humanity’s goodness, fragility, self-confidence, self-centeredness, infallibility, trust, sense of pride, accomplishment, desires and the depths of beauty in all of us that makes us human. I can only surmise that banning these novels is only meant to divide us and strip us of our ability to see one another’s perspective on issues that affected our society in the past and continue to do so today.