Banned Book Week tends to frustrate me. Every year, I find myself explaining that it’s not literally about banned books; it’s about celebrating how they’re not. The event lands on the last week of September annually, and has been awesomely going strong since 1982. Every year, Banned Books Week posts the top ten challenged books of the previous year and states why. This year’s winners included Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, E. L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, and let us not forget, the ever scandalous, Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey.
Last week I did my best to get my hands on all top ten, and if I wasn’t able to acquire one of the books, I still sought after something by the same author. I do it every year, and have since I was 14 – it’s my way of toasting to our freedom from censorship. There is a lot to consider that branches out from Banned Book Week. It’s a reflection on social acceptability and sheds light on our responsibility to keep a strong voice and defend what is right.
The list’s specific complaints hung on homosexuality, religious viewpoints, drugs, sex, violence, offensive language… blah, blah, blah. Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower made the list for handful of the aforementioned reasons. The book centers on teens, feeling awkward about accepting their true selves – a genuine “coming of age” tale. Perhaps, it shouldn’t be slighted for inappropriateness, but accepted for relatability.
What’s ironic about these situations, I don’t think the people who challenge these books to be banned realize that challenging the book itself is a freedom, is a right. It’s also ironic that the people who want to ban these books would have had to have read them to know exactly what they’re about. And isn’t it a lovely freedom to acquire these books with ease?
A glorious thing about Banned Book Week is a more public unity amongst the booklover community. It amazes me how smoothly a large, diverse population can come together because of a story. We may not see eye-to-eye on religious beliefs, but hot damn can we giggle in a gathering about vampires for hours on end!
Fear stems from having to admit or face truths that do not want to be revealed. Banning books that make some break out in a sweat means there is something gritty, there is something real, and relating to that grit is relating to the not so pretty things in life, or society. A lot of the books on the more infamous list on bannedbooksweek.org span from late 1800’s to about the 1960’s, where authors and poets and philosophers and romantics, and every day people like you and I, called society out on their B.S.
And what is absolutely so beautiful about it, not only did those pieces of art help push society forward, but we’re doing those authors proud by still pushing.
That’s what Banned Book Week is really about – celebrating the freedom to keep pushing forward.