I Read Banned Books

 As a subscriber to the New York Times, I get an e-mail each morning with the top stories in the news.  This morning, one of those stories was headlined:  "Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the US."  Frankly, it sent a chill up my spine.  It's nothing new, of course.  Banning books, especially in schools, has been going on for decades--centuries even!  In recent times, banned books have often been books about race, LGBTQ issues and stories about the Holocaust (as is the recent effort to ban Maus). 

When I was in what we called back in the sixties Junior High, I developed a taste for romance novels.  You know, the Harlequin-type stories about love lost and gained.  The ones with muscled men and voluptuous women on the covers.  Not porn--at least not technically--but hardly good literature.  But our local library had several shelve of them, and I started checking them out and devouring them.

One morning my mother got a phone call from our local librarian.  She was appalled that a thirteen-year-old boy was reading such things.  Did my mother know I was into such material?  Didn't she think it important that I restrict my reading to those volumes found in the children's room?

Much to her credit, my mother said, "No."  And in no uncertain terms told the librarian I was free to check out and read anything I might find in the library.  Even if it was rather lousy literature.  I, ultimately, wasn't going to harm me.  And probably, she said, I'd grow out of it.  Which I did.  In just a year or two I was reading Graham Green, John Steinbeck, Willa Cather, and more controversial writers like J. D. Salinger and Herman Hesse. 

I sometimes wonder if Mom had restricted my reading if I would have turned away from it altogether?  I don't know.  But I do know her permission allowing me to "read at will" resulted in a greatly expanded worldview.  

Banning books is not the answer--and Mom knew that fifty plus years ago. 
It's a lesson I'll never forget--and I hope others will soon learn.

I have a pin at home that says, "I Read Banned Book"--I guess (sadly) it's time to dig it out again.