This is your brain on banned books
From someone who would know
I was around sixteen the last time I got a spank. It was because of a book. As long as I can remember, my grandparents had garage sales nearly every weekend as a way to supplement their Social Security income, so there was always a rotating assortment of books, clothes, toys, and the like in their garage. I don’t really know where a lot of this stuff came from, but I do know the garage was full of stuff that was not originally theirs. We spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house when they were having garage sales. It was something to do and there was always new stuff to look at.
Being an eager reader with limited access to the public library, I always dug through the box of slightly damp, spider web-covered books shoved beneath a folding table littered with assorted knick-knacks. The box was packed with paperback dime novels about cowboys and discarded cookbooks from diets long out of fashion, but one day I unearthed a book titled Around the World with Auntie Mame. My travel-hungry heart was drawn in by an illustration of a fabulous looking woman in front of the Eiffel Tower. I flipped it over and saw it was about this spinster aunt who, after a stint as a burlesque dancer, travels the world. The phrase “diamonds in all the right places” sticks in my mind. But the cover also mentioned Venice! London! I shoved the book under my shirt and sneaked it home.
Living in a three-bedroom house shared by eight people, I never had much time alone. Despite not knowing what this book was actually about, I intuitively knew I should not be caught reading it. I spent a lot of time reading in the bathroom. The only place I could reliably be left alone. One Sunday, I got reckless. Everyone was buzzing around getting ready for church and I thought I had a few minutes to myself. The book was riveting, though not for the reasons I expected. It was funny and charming and unexpected. I was eager to see what Auntie Mame would get into next and thought I could sneak a few pages in before I had to leave for Sunday School. I had just cracked open the book when my Mom came into the room. I made the rookie mistake of shoving the book under my pillow, which immediately roused her suspicion. She asked what I was doing and I reluctantly showed her the book. She got one look at the phrase “diamonds in all the right places”1 and decided that I needed to be punished for polluting my mind with such sinful material.
For the last eighteen years, I’ve been mildly obsessed with and desperately curious about Auntie Mame. Who was this woman? Why was she so transgressive? Last year, I decided to find out for myself and headed to the library. I borrowed both the books in the series and along the way discovered that there is also a Broadway musical adaptation starring Angela Lansbury and two movies based on the novel. I am happy to report that the books are just as charming and funny and non-scandalous as you would expect a book published in 1955 to be. Yes, Auntie Mame is irreverent. Yes, she defies cultural norms: single, wealthy, childless. Yes, she had a brief stint as a burlesque dancer, but that happened in her wild and misspent youth. All she wants to do now is raise her orphaned nephew to be a well-traveled, world-wise person. How quaint.
Every time a new banned book makes its way through the news cycle, I think about Auntie Mame. Though never banned formally (to my knowledge), it was banned for me along with many other books that were deemed too indecent for my young, impressionable mind. My parents truly believed they were protecting me. They had been told that this was the best way to keep their kids from being corrupted. All it did, however, was make me wonder what was so bad about these books. It made me want to seek them out.
The minute I could drive places alone (in college), I started making trips to my local library, borrowing whatever caught my eye. I borrowed Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America, not because I knew anything about robber barons but because the title was so evocative. It’s one of the greatest books I’ve read. I sat on the floor and read “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” in its entirety before placing it back on the shelf, tore through A Wrinkle in Time, and generally read every book I had heard of but wasn’t allowed to read. It opened my mind. It taught me how to read. It taught me how to think. Exposed me to ideas I didn’t know I needed to know about.
It was shocking to me how little in these books were offensive. The adults in my life were concerned about the influences of sex, magic, and language. These, I was told, were corrupting influences that were sure to ruin me. In reality, they barely registered in my brain. Despite what I had been taught, it was easy for me to separate myself from what I was reading. Reading about robber barons didn’t make me one – just like reading about mass murder in the Bible didn’t make me a murderer. We all pick and choose what we want to believe.
The library became my lifeline. President Barack Obama spoke about this in a recent thank you letter he wrote to librarians. In this letter, he talks about how important books were shaping his own worldview and how with the increased prevalence of book bans; “The impulse seems to be silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own.” This was my experience with why I was banned from certain books. It was a form of mind control; if someone doesn’t know what I’m reading, how can they possibly keep out ideas that don’t align with the Fundamentalist party line?
How different my life (and my relationship with my parents) would be if instead of punishing me for reading content they deemed “objectionable”, if they had instead been curious. Or volunteered to read it with me and had a discussion about the parts that dealt with more adult themes. It would have created a connection instead of building a wall. I was told that I was being taught to think critically, unlike public school kids, but I was never taught that I don’t have to agree with someone just because I read something they wrote. I was never taught to disagree.
Banning books is censorship. There’s no way around it. It doesn’t protect kids from whatever “agenda” Republicans are most worried about that voting season. I’m thankful for safe spaces like libraries and the librarians who keep them that way. As President Obama so aptly put it,
“In a very real sense, [our nation’s librarians] are on the front lines – fighting every day to make the widest possible range of viewpoints, opinions, and ideas available to everyone. [Their] dedication and professional expertise allow us to freely read and consider information and ideas, and decide for ourselves which ones we agree with.”
Books are only as dangerous as you make them and some of my favorite books carry a scarlet letter. Auntie Mame is one of them. You should read about her sometime. I think you’d like her, but you don’t have to take my word for it.
Apparently the actual phrase was “wearing nothing but wolfhounds”, but I like my memory of the phrase better.
Love this.