“Today, some of the books that shaped my life—and the lives of so many others—are being challenged by people who disagree with certain ideas or perspectives… And librarians are on the front lines, fighting every day to make the widest possible range of viewpoints, opinions, and ideas available to everyone.” So begins former US President Barack Obama’s letter to librarians today, defending free speech and challenging book bans. “It’s no coincidence that these “banned books” are often written by or feature people of color, indigenous people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community,” wrote Obama. “. there have also been unfortunate instances in which books by conservative authors or [those] containing “triggering” words or scenes have been targets for removal,” he wrote, adding, “Either way, the impulse seems to be to silence, rather than engage, rebut, learn from or seek to understand views that don’t fit our own.” Obama cites American writers like Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman and James Baldwin as inspirational, and credits them with teaching him “something essential” about America. Twain was considered by many the greatest American writer of the 19th century. Based on his memories growing up next to the Mississippi river, he penned classics like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its darker more socially-inclined sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Both books have faced frequent bans in American schools for prolific use of the n-word (a slur common for Black people in Twain’s time) and regressive depictions of Native Americans. Whitman was a contemporary of Twain’s and his poem collection, Leaves of Grass, is considered a classic ode to American democracy as a project of inclusion, revolution and entrepreneurship. It contains a popular verse imagining the generations leading up to and out of the slaves at an auction. His work has passionate critics and advocates, often differing on how the poet depicted race and diversity. Morrison won both the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote many acclaimed works, including Beloved, about a slave who fled her owners and, upon facing recapture, killed her daughter to save her from the fate of slavery. Morrison was a frequent commentator on the political status of Black Americans, as well as the lasting legacy of racism and the power of storytelling. Baldwin was a close friend of Morrison, and became a powerful icon of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. He penned many famous works which explored sexuality, race and imperialism, among them Giovanni’s Room, about an American man in Paris reflecting on his country and the men of his life. He also wrote Go Tell it on the Mountain, about a young Black teenager observing the migration of former slaves from the American South for better living and working conditions. In his letter, Obama mentioned that religious texts are often the first to be banned in authoritarian regimes, even though their defenders cite them when seeking book bans. He cited the American Library Association, the largest non-profit in the world working for libraries, which has reported 1269 attempts in the US to ban “library books and resources” in 2022. The number is the highest in 20 years and a sharp jump from the previous year’s 729. Some books are very frequently challenged in the US for featuring stories on queer identity, sexuality, gender and racism. They include popular works like Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series, John Green’s Looking for Alaska and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
