Freedom to Read Week Review #3: Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

(Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_Potter_Books_1-7_without_dust_jackets,_1st_American_eds._2.JPG)

Where do you even begin to discuss a magical series that inspired a generation of readers all over the world? I can’t speak for all readers, but I think that J.K. Rowling and her characters taught us a great deal about love, loss, power, and the forces of good and evil. Unfortunately, there have been many zealous attempts to keep young people from learning about these things from her novels in the very places where learning is supposed to take place: our schools.

I won’t even get into censorship attempts of the Harry Potter series in the United States, because there have been so many that I could write a graduate-level thesis on them. No wonder it’s ranked #1 on the ALA’s Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books for 2000-2009. We’ve had far too many attempts to censor Rowling’s works in Canada as is. If our country had a similar list (CLA, take note), it wouldn’t surprise me if J.K. Rowling’s beloved seven-novel series topped the rankings in the Great White North, too.

According to the Freedom to Read Challenged Works List, the year 2000 was a very hard year for poor Harry and company here in Canada. In Corner Brook, Newfoundland, a parent complained about the novels’ presence in an elementary school. As is the case almost everywhere this series has been challenged, the parent took issue with its depiction of wizardry and magic. The principal ordered that the books be removed from the school, but here’s the real kicker: Neither the parent nor the principal had ever read a single book in the series. And it’s not like they had a shortage of Harry Potter novels to inform their thinking, since four out of seven had been published by the end of 2000.

A similar complaint, with a different outcome, was made to the Durham Board of Education here in Ontario. Initially, the board decided to withdraw the books from the classrooms, but keep them in the library. However, in a hard-won battle, the board reversed its decision. Nevertheless, in some areas, like in Corner Brook and at Rockwood Public School in Pembroke, Ontario, teachers are prohibited from using the Harry Potter books in the classroom.

But alas, Harry’s trials and tribulations didn’t stop there. Two years later, in the Niagara Region here in Ontario, a parent asked the school board to remove the books from the areas’ schools, on the grounds that they contained violence and promoted Wicca. Again, had she read a single one of the books? No. Thankfully, the Niagara District School Board turned down her request.

You see, as a librarian-in-training, attempts to ban books naturally bother me – but what bothers me most of all is when people try to keep other people from having access to books without ever reading the books themselves. To me, it comes down to treating others as one would wish to be treated. You wouldn’t want some stranger to decide what you can’t read, especially when their opinion isn’t an informed one, right? So why do that to others? If a parent wants to believe that the Harry Potter series promotes Wicca, then that’s fine, so long as a) his/her opinion is an informed one, and b) that person lets intelligent young people decide for themselves what Rowling’s novels are really about.

Finally, all of this opposition to Harry Potter on the basis of its inclusion of witchcraft and wizardry assumes that those forces must be used for evil purposes (although a viewing of The Wizard of Oz would prove otherwise). Throughout the series, Harry, Ron, and Hermione combat dark magic and dangerous creatures. Souls and mortality are prominently featured. Maybe I’m missing something, but I would argue that those kinds of themes ought to appeal to Christian readers, rather than drive them away. None of the three major characters support Voldemort, the widely feared dark wizard, also known as “He who must not be named.” They don’t spend a lot of time hurting other people; in fact, a lot of their time is spent trying to avoid getting killed or keeping other people’s souls, or lives, from being taken away from them. In many ways, Harry and his friends just want to make their magical world a better place – an admirable goal, really, regardless of your religious beliefs.

LIS students and librarians: What censorship attempts of the Harry Potter series have you encountered, personally or professionally? How did you (or your employer) respond?

Freedom to Read Week Review #2: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I know what you’re thinking: That cover is awful. That thought once ran through my mind, too. But thankfully, I didn’t get the chance to judge this book by its cover, as this Margaret Atwood novel was one of two required novel studies Grade 12 English (the other being Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles – a very interesting pairing, if I do say so myself).

For those of you who haven’t read the book, The Handmaid’s Tale is a work of speculative fiction. It takes place in the not-so-distant future, in what is currently known as Massachusetts, (part of the Republic of Gilead in the novel). In Gilead, women are valued exclusively for their ability to procreate. The law even officially states that there is no such thing as a sterile man; there are only fertile women and barren women. Sex is no longer an expression of love – it is simply a means of sustaining life in a nation that is eager to increase its birth rate. Women are forbidden from reading (unless they are “Aunts,” who train the Handmaids), holding jobs, or maintaining their own bank accounts. Freedom of religion has been outlawed. And you can forget about interracial relationships, since African-Americans have been transported to “National Homelands.”

How could this have come about, you may ask? When Atwood was writing this novel in the 1980s, feminists and evangelical Christians obviously didn’t agree on very much (and they still don’t). However, they did find common ground on one issue: pornography. Feminists derided it as degrading to women, and evangelicals argued that it promoted sexual immorality. When this alliance is taken to its logical end, the result is a theocracy – with fragile roots in the Old Testament – in which women are legally “protected” from the “dangers” they face as objects of sexual desire, either within or outside of the context of marriage. Be careful what you wish for, Atwood seems to be warning us. You might get it.

Because this book deals so frankly with sex and religious fundamentalism, The Handmaid’s Tale has been an easy target for censorship attempts through the years. In the United States, it holds the dubious honour of making the ALA’s Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books list for both the 1990s and the 2000s. According to the Freedom to Read Challenged Works list, it was formally challenged here in Toronto, Canada in 2008 by a parent who objected to its use in a Grade 12 English class. The novel’s profanity, “anti-Christian” stance, “violence,” and “sexual degradation” were points of contention. The parent’s teenage child was assigned another book, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (which I think is a clever choice on the teacher’s part, since parallels have often been drawn between Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale), but ultimately, The Handmaid’s Tale was retained as an appropriate resource for Grade 11 and 12 English courses. (You can read more about the controversy here.)

Now, I’m not anti-religion. I think that faith, in and of itself, is a beautiful thing. But fundamentalist interpretations of sacred texts are, well, not so beautiful. You don’t need to look far to find out how much damage they’ve caused over the course of human history – although you can if you want to, and you’ll find religious fundamentalism’s scar tissue all over the world. Christian fundamentalism was used in The Handmaid’s Tale not to specifically attack Christianity, but to discuss the most widespread, influential fundamentalist religious movement in the United States. I somehow doubt that Atwood is promoting the sexual degradation of women like Offred – literally, “Of-Fred,” to denote her status as a man’s property – simply by including it in her novel. Rather, the oppression of women like Offred serves a logical intellectual purpose: to remind readers that when fundamentalism of any kind joins forces with feminism, women are seriously in trouble.

Of course, you may disagree with me about all of this, and that’s fine. But a fundamentally different understanding of the purpose of a book’s “objectionable” content doesn’t entitle anyone to prevent others from developing interpretations of their own.

LIS students: Have you ever encountered this book or any controversies surrounding it? If so, what were your thoughts on it?

Librarians: How have you approached, or how would you approach, any challenges to The Handmaid’s Tale and similar works?

Freedom to Read Week Review #1: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Let’s kick off Freedom to Read Week with one of those classics that’s caused a whole lot of fuss through the years: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

I was assigned this book in my Grade 9 English class, and with the exception of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (another controversial work, in its own time), it was my favourite novel study in my high school English career. Before we began reading the book, we had a class discussion about the racial slurs that Lee opted to include. Our teacher explained to us that the use of racist language, while shocking, did not make Lee a racist author, nor did it make To Kill a Mockingbird a racist novel.

And yet, time and again, we see To Kill a Mockingbird condemned for being a “racist” text. According to Freedom to Read’s Challenged Works List, there have been several high-profile challenges to the book here in Canada. In 1991, the book was challenged, along with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, by a black community group in Saint John, New Brunswick. Two years later, a parent’s complaint prompted the book’s removal from a Grade 10 reading list in Hamilton, Ontario. Most recently, in 2002, black parents and teachers in several Nova Scotia towns targeted To Kill a Mockingbird, along with Barbara Smucker’s Underground to Canada and John Ball’s In the Heat of the Night, for removal from the curriculum. If you search the Nova Scotia School Book Bureau – a database which contains all of the approved texts across the different subject areas – you will no longer be able to find To Kill a Mockingbird.

What lies behind the novel’s appeal to young people (and the 1961 Pulitzer Prize jury) is its confirmation of what they already know: that we live in an unjust world, that social change is a slow and painful process, and that treating others as we wish to be treated is easier said than done. The characters who perpetuate a racist point of view – and use racial slurs most frequently – are also those with whom we, as readers, are not meant to sympathize. Atticus Finch, by contrast, is a worthy nominee for the Best Father in Literature Award. He takes full advantage of the “teachable moments” in his children’s lives, most notably in his decision to defend Tom Robinson, an African-American who is falsely accused of raping Mayella Ewell, who is white. But does he go far enough in advocating a world in which we are treated as equals? Does Lee go far enough when it comes to Calpurnia, the Finch family housekeeper? Is she the victim of her creator, or is she a strong and worthy role model for young Scout? Some people think these questions are worth debating. Fair enough. But debate can’t happen if students, parents, and communities don’t expose themselves to the novel in the first place.

As a woman, I naturally object to insults that are specifically intended to degrade women. But a book that uses sexist language isn’t sexist simply because those words appear in the text. In fact, some books may use misogynistic insults not to promote a sexist worldview, but rather, to argue that the world in which the novel is set is unfair to women. It’s not my place to consider a novel sexist unless I’ve actually read it and carefully considered its content, because until then, I don’t know everything there is to know about the work at hand.

I’m not trying to tell you how you should read To Kill a Mockingbird. Perhaps because I’m white, I really am missing something. I’m just saying that there is no excuse for judging a book to be racist without reading it first and thinking, hard, about the deeper purpose that its controversial language may serve.

LIS students: Was this book freely available to you when you were in school? Did censorship issues play any role in your decision to pursue a career in librarianship?

Librarians: Have you personally dealt with any challenges to this book? If so, how did you handle that situation?

You Know What I Love? Reading Banned Books.

I read banned books. In fact, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day (albeit belated), I can honestly say that I’ve read, and loved, plenty of widely banned books. Through the years, I’ve looked on sadly as people charge some of my favourite literary works with being racist, anti-Christian, profane, and/or obscene, just to name a few accusations. As a librarian-in-training and as a Canadian, the topic of censorship has been close to my heart, since for us, here in the Great White North, Freedom to Read Week – which runs from February 23 to March 1 – is right around the corner.

According to its website, Freedom to Read Week, the Canadian equivalent of the ALA’s Banned Books Week, “encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” It’s a time of year when I look around and see all of the places in the world in which reading, writing, or saying the “wrong” thing can land you in jail, in a torture chamber, or even on death row, and I realize how long a road intellectual freedom fighters still have ahead of them. Granted, I can’t think of a single case in Canada where that has occurred, but the reality is that librarians, teachers, and principals in this country are regularly pressured to keep books out of the young people and the general public simply because they make someone (or some group) uncomfortable. The stakes may not be as high here in Canada as they are elsewhere, but frankly, in a country as free and prosperous as ours, this is a reality that I find mind-boggling.

So, here’s how I propose to celebrate Freedom to Read Week: Every day that week, I will write a post about one challenged book – what it’s about, when, where, and why it was challenged, and why (in my opinion) it should be freely available to all Canadians. Some will be Canadian books, some will originate elsewhere, but all of the books will have one thing in common: They’ll all have been challenged somewhere, at some point, within Canadian borders. Chances are that these books will have aroused some controversy, regardless of where you live. Who knows what kinds of conversations this start?

So, a happy belated Valentine’s Day, and let’s get ready to spread the love for banned books.

A Universe of Possibilities! The Highlights of OLA Super Conference 2014

I love conferences. It’s so energizing to get out of my routine and meet new contacts, hear inspiring speakers, and soak up new ideas. And I managed to do all of those things at the OLA Super Conference for 2014, fittingly themed: “A Universe of Possibilities.”

I won’t go into all of the details, but here are some of the highlights from this great event.

1. The Expo. This is the perfect place to learn about cool new gadgets, find out about publishers’ offerings for the upcoming year, and get a ton of free stuff. Who knows – you might even win some free stuff, too 😉

(A small sampling of the awesome loot I got at the Expo.)

2. A panel entitled, “Fast Track to Management: How Four New Librarians Learned to Manage.” I may not even be out of library school yet, but chances are, many (dare I say most?) library school students will become managers within a few years of graduation. It was great to hear these four women discuss how they found their feet on the job, since (in my opinion) library schools don’t do enough to prepare us for managerial roles . But that’s a topic for another day.

3. David Usher’s inspiring speech on creativity. This was jam-packed, and with good reason. (I ended up with really lousy photos from being way in the back, unfortunately.) I completely agree with his key point: that anyone can be creative. And even if you don’t have a “Eureka!” moment one day, that’s okay, because creativity isn’t about waiting around for a genius idea to come into your head; it’s a ton of work. I believe that as librarians, creativity is central to everything we do. We don’t just inspire creativity – we embody it. We don’t have to have lightbulbs going off in our brains all the time, but we do have to always keep working at taking ideas and using them to make something new. That creativity is what keeps us relevant in today’s world.

4. Wendy Newman’s speech on library advocacy. I had heard her speak about this before, but I jumped at the chance to hear her again, because she is so passionate and eloquent when talking about her work. She said a lot of great things, but I think her most important point is that people do things for their reasons, not ours. We may think the library deserves funding simply because…well…it’s a library…but not everyone agrees. It’s our job, as library advocates, to make a case for a library that aligns with their interests.

5. Chris Hadfield’s talk at the closing luncheon. This is one accomplished, hilarious man – and he happens to be perfectly suited to a library conference themed, “A Universe of Possibilities!” His key point? Plan for failure – because when you plan for failure, you ensure your success in even the most difficult situations.

A cousin of mine who works in another part of the country couldn’t make it to OLA this year, but told me that it was on her “bucket list.” My first thought was: It absolutely should be. Along with all of these great speakers, and all of my free stuff, I met some wonderful people in Library Land that I hope I will cross paths with again. So, if you’re thinking about going to a library conference as a library school student, I say: If you can get to it, go for it. The people and ideas you will discover (often for a very low price, I might add!) can only help you as you launch your career.

Library students of the world: How do you feel about conferences? Do you find them stimulating, or overwhelming? Useful, or not so useful? And for librarians: What kind of role have conferences played in your careers?