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?
No Library is an Island 