As efforts to restrict access to certain books increase throughout the country, educators, activists and readers are pushing back, arguing that limiting perspectives in literature is a dangerous step toward silencing entire communities.
“I think you can’t really fight book bans without taking a larger approach to thinking about community defense and liberation because book bans aren’t really about books, right? They’re about people,” said Libertie Valance, a co-owner and community events coordinator at Firestorm, a local anti-fascist bookstore.
According to Valance, the far right has initiated a personal attack on access to literature related to black history as well as queer and trans-life experiences. She said ultimately, the conservative segment of the political body wants to see those groups of people further marginalized or even fully erased from society.
“One of the things that books allow for is a sort of unmediated experimentation and exploration of ideas,” Valance said. “We feel that restriction and banning of ideas and books is sort of an initial step in efforts to attack or even kind of erase whole groups of people.”
President of the Student North Carolina Association of Educators Noah Barone said these book bans really limit what educators can teach.
“Oftentimes the way that we are able to connect with students is by using books that relate to their personal experience, books that give them a new broader perspective on something they didn’t previously have,” Barone said.
According to Barone, parents should recognize that their one opinion on something isn’t the whole perspective of all parents and educators. Barone said it is a parent’s responsibility to figure out what’s best for their own child while also not telling other people how to parent their children.
“There’s a lot of reactionary politics happening right now, for one reason or another, it’s an issue we typically see from right wing, conservative crowds, banning books that talk about more progressive issues or whatever they want to label as woke or DEI,” Barone said.
Kimberly Nava Eggett, the educational innovation coordinator for UNCA and previous K-12 school librarian, said the root of banning books is a fear of something different historically.
The UNCA alumnus said reducing the number of viewpoints limits the possibility for students to see not only other perspectives but also themselves reflected.
“People feel so emboldened in restricting and limiting because there’s a fear of not knowing,” Nava Eggett said. “I think right now it’s a political strategy that is being used to target and disempower certain groups of people.”
According to the American Library Association, the number of library books and resources targeted for censorship surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels documented in more than 20 years of tracking.
According to the section “Censorship by the Numbers“ on the ALA’s website, titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47% of those targeted in censorship attempts.
“I do think that media literacy is a key component of us trying to grapple with this new wave of information we’re getting. I don’t know if we have a great strategy on how to deal with that as a society right now,” Nava Eggett said. “It’s easy to create your own echo chamber on social media that will help people believe that a certain issue is the only right answer to something.”
Nava Eggett said if people aren’t able to make those choices or critically think about why these books are written, it can disempower students from learning more about the world around them and figuring out who they are on their educational journey
“As an educator right now, the climate doesn’t feel like folks have got our back,” she said. “They’re professionally trained, and yet they’re being told that their professional judgment is not good.”
According to Nava Eggett, book bannings can sometimes have the opposite effect and increase the number of people reading them as a protest.
“My hope is that we’re in a time of change that’s headed in the right direction,” Nava Eggett said. “As we continue to hear from those marginalized voices, we can help support those perspectives as much as possible.”
