Opinion: I taught English in Iowa. Here's what I know about 'controversial' books.

An old expression offers, “May you live in interesting times.”  It’s not intended as an expression of good luck, but as a curse.

These are very interesting times. “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,” the poet William Butler Yeats wrote during a period of similar anxiety over a century ago. This nation, and perhaps the world, seems on the brink of unraveling, of flying off the rails. Reflecting on the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, which he witnessed, the Lakota shaman Black Elk observed “…the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered, and there is no center any longer.” Black Elk’s words and Yeats’ observation seem disturbingly relevant in these “interesting” times.

America is no stranger to censorship and book-banning in the name of ideology, usually cloaked in the self-righteous guise of “Christian values” and “decency.” In the past, book-banning has appeared in cycles.  Sadly, the movement to ban books from libraries and school curricula has gained momentum in recent years, an outcome of America’s disturbing shift to the far right’s radical fringes. As a result, students and the public are being denied access to ideas and experiences that will open minds and promote understanding, compassion, and tolerance. Among other things, knowledge is awareness, and awareness is in danger of being pushed back into the pitch-black abyss of ignorance.

I taught English and history for nearly 30 years. Many of the books now being censored were part of my curriculum, so I suppose I stand accused. I was very fortunate, though, to only face two or three instances of a parent or administrator objecting to a book  I was always able to defend the book’s value, or to offer a student an alternative reading if a parent or student was completely opposed to the book.

More: Iowa Legislature passes education bill that bans books with sex and limits LGBTQ instruction

Literature offers us gifts to accept or deny

Students typically either responded favorably to a given book or resisted kicking and screaming. Those who resisted did so not out of any sense of idealism but usually because they lacked the discipline to read the assigned book. But in my experience, students who read a book I assigned nearly always gained new insights into their world and their place in the world from their interaction with that book. Great literature, even good literature, can provide valuable lessons on how to live, or how not to live one’s life.  Literature does not indoctrinate, as many of the zealots would have us believe.  Literature simply offers its gifts to the reader to accept or deny according to his or her personal value system.

Below is a very short list of books currently banned that were part of my curriculum or taught elsewhere in my district.  I’ve placed asterisks by those that were part of my curriculum and a pound sign by those that were taught elsewhere in the district:

*"Maus"

*"The Grapes of Wrath"

#"The Handmaid's Tale"

#"Fahrenheit 451"

*"Of Mice and Men"

#"The Hate U Give"

*"The Great Gatsby"

*"Catch-22"

*"1984"

*"The Scarlet Letter"

#"Animal Farm"

#"The Things They Carried"

*"Slaughterhouse-Five"

*"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

*"Lord of the Flies"

Hundreds of other books are being pulled from school and public libraries and from classrooms. Currently, literature dealing with LGBTQ issues appears to be the primary target of censors.  Since I have no experience with those books as part of my curriculum, I feel obliged to address only those with which I have experienced with my students.

Those familiar with most or all the books in the list should notice a certain pattern in terms of theme or subject matter. At least six of the books examine the trauma of living in a repressive society. Seven include characters who are outcasts or have-nots, living in poverty. The American Dream, or the struggle to attain that dream, is a major theme in at least four titles above. Four books include characters of color and their experiences as minorities living in a white-dominated society. One book depicts a young Black girl’s quest for justice after her best friend is inexplicably shot and killed by a policeman. The psychological effect of war on ordinary soldiers is explored in three books in the list. At least half the titles in the list depict corruption and the abuse of power by people of influence or authority. So, considering the titles in my brief list — just a handful among the hundreds that have been deleted — what is it that the censors are trying to keep from students? I believe that question was answered earlier in this paragraph.

The value of the books on this list

Let’s consider the value of a few of the books I listed.  “Maus” is a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel that tells the story of the author’s father, who survived several concentration and death camps during the Holocaust.  Not only does “Maus” show how author Art Spiegelman’s father was affected by the experience, but the book also shows that growing up as the child of Holocaust survivor presented its own set of challenges.  For the Jews in “Maus” the noose gradually tightens until the Nazis finally take the last step and send them to the camps.  These days, the “noose tightening” theme is very relevant. But beyond the Holocaust subject matter, “Maus” also shows the importance of family.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” imagines an America in which the government has been taken over by religious zealots, who rename the United States as the Republic of Gilead.  Women are stripped of their financial assets, rights, and freedom.  In this book, women are objectified as nothing more than child-bearing vessels and assigned to members of the ruling oligarchy to have babies.  The women are given new names that strip them of their own individuality, for example “Ofglen” (meaning “belonging to Glen”).   Margaret Atwood’s novel has always been a target for the censors since its publication in the 1980s.  “The Handmaid’s Tale” has drawn fresh scrutiny from censors in recent years.  Interesting timing, considering the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.  Again, zealots want to deny readers access to a book about a worst-case scenario for women, one that doesn’t seem too far from reality now.   Despite their dark content, the value of the two books just described shows the power of hope, as the characters use their wits and determination to cope with terrible circumstances and eventually emerge from the darkness.

“1984” is set in a dystopian world.  In “1984,” privacy is non-existent and individual thought (“thought crime”) is forbidden.  The world’s competing superpowers engage in an endless state of war, to distract the masses from their real problems.  Posters and images of an entity known as “Big Brother” (“Big Brother is Watching You!”) are everywhere, presented under the guise of security, but in fact reminding the people that they are constantly under surveillance.  When the facts of history become inconvenient to the dystopian State, they are simply erased or altered to meet the State’s ends. Does this sound familiar in our America where schools are prevented from teaching this nation’s true history?  When an alarming number of districts mandate that the sometimes-unpleasant facts of slavery, bigotry, poverty, and persecution be erased?  Teachers are now routinely fired for daring to enlighten students about the truth.

In “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury describes a world in which books are forbidden. To own a book is a crime and the job of firemen is not to extinguish fires but rather to burn books or entire houses in which books have been hidden.  The citizens of this dystopia lose themselves by watching hours of mindless entertainment on wall-sized TV screens. I wonder if the censors realize the irony of banning a book about a society that bans books.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t describe all the books on the list.  Readers will either be familiar with these titles or are free to learn more about them on their own.

A good teacher can explain a book's value to students

There are common threads running throughout all these books: the search for meaning, a desire for justice, challenging the status quo, a longing for a better life, and the determination to overcome adversity. Reading these books helps students to examine their own life experiences and identities and perhaps to expand their view of the world. A great book or literary character can inspire young readers to achieve their own personal goals and dreams. Or to re-think the priorities in their lives.

There’s a troubling assumption on the part of the censors that teachers are trying to indoctrinate students via literature or are simply incompetent to make educated choices about the books they include in a curriculum.  In my own experience as an English teacher, I first considered what value a book might have for students in terms of relevancy to their lives and took into consideration the book’s readability, length, interest level, and content. I always advised students in advance if a book included profanity or content that might be considered offensive by some.  I encouraged students to approach such material within the context of the story and reminded them that they were completely free to accept or deny any ideas offered by the book. And I offered an alternative reading if they or their parents could offer a valid reason why they should be given that option. Most English teachers would certainly follow similar guidelines.

As with anything, a certain amount of common sense is necessary.  Should just any book be included as part of a curriculum across the board?  Of course not.  Just as movies and television shows have restrictions, books should also be determined by how age-appropriate they are for a particular grade level.  There are many books in which the content is simply too complex or mature for elementary or middle school children, and beyond their ability to comprehend at a given age.  Competent teachers and administrators are qualified to decide the value and appropriateness of books included in a curriculum.  And a good teacher should always be able to explain a book’s value to students.  If a teacher is unable to justify it, then he or she shouldn’t be teaching that book.

The radical fringe — call them what you will: MAGA, Q-Anon, Proud Boys — sprinkle their rhetoric with the word “freedom,” as though they’re being denied whatever their definition of freedom is.  Their hypocrisy is staggering.  These fascist elements want to deprive people of their sexual identity, deny minorities their basic rights and equal protection under the law, deconstruct our electoral system, dismantle public education, and ban books in schools across America.  It seems the only freedom they truly value is the right for anyone to own a gun.  Thus, our schools become killing fields.  A question to ask the radical right is this: What reading curriculum would you offer to public school students?

During my tenure in public education, I recall students moved to tears at the conclusion of "Of Mice and Men."  Some were inspired by Jay Gatsby’s romantic vision of the American Dream or outraged by how the Joad family was driven from their home during the Great Depression.  Students, on their own, made clear correlations between the dystopian police state of "1984" and recent events in America.  At the end of one school year, a senior girl posted a list of “thank yous” in the school newspaper.  Included in her list, she wrote “Thank you for making us read 'Catch-22,'” a complex satire of all aspects of American society that this student found challenging but in the end rewarding.

Vonnegut: 'Books are sacred to free men'

Kurt Vonnegut, author of "Slaughterhouse-Five" and one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century was often the target of censors.  In 1973, a North Dakota school district voted to remove "Slaughterhouse-Five" from the district curriculum. And they took it a step further and sanctioned the public burning of some thirty copies of Vonnegut’s book.  Vonnegut, a World War II combat veteran and prisoner of war, was not one to back down from such an outrage.  He wrote a letter to the board president of that North Dakota district.  Here’s an excerpt from Vonnegut’s letter:

“I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.”

Sadly, as Vonnegut suggested, the censors rarely take the time to actually read the books they want to suppress.  Their actions are based on hearsay or perhaps one or two profane words in the book, without knowing the full context of the language.  Their actions aren’t based on some twisted definition of morality or freedom or “Christian values.”  The censors’ actions are about control and power for its own sake.

When I think about books pulled from library shelves or from classrooms, tossed into a garbage bin or even burned, I hear an ominous sound, increasing in volume.  It is the sound of jackboots marching in the streets, of bonfires, the sound of doors being kicked in, and ordinary citizens dragged away into the night.

And if history is any indicator at all, we know what happens next.

“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.” ― Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Don Parkhurst is a retired teacher living in Storm Lake. He taught English and history at Storm Lake High School from 1993 to 2019 and now creates literature study guides as a hobby.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Restricting books from Iowa students benefits nobody