I found this article while searching through lists for Banned Books Week, but it brings up many frustrating and personal issues. Please read (or skim) the article before reading this blog so you understand the context of my post.
As someone who never received curriculum based on a multi-ethnic heritage (did the school board ban all the books written about people with multiple ethnicities?), I somehow survived. Probably because it is harder to rally all those JapaSpanIriPolFrench people out there to create such a curriculum, you just take what you get and accept that your heritage is going to be what you create every day. I had some incredible history and literature teachers growing up, and even with their intelligence and appreciation for representing diverse populations, there were gaps. As a student who has always been completely full of myself, I took the initiative to fill those gaps with family history and the research I could accomplish with the books and websites available to me.
This is why I feel personally insulted when I hear that resources are banned for their controversial nature. Just because I'm bringing it up, some government official is going to ban Sherman Alexie, Haruki Murakami, James Joyce, Wislawa Szymborska, and Victor Hugo--just in case I start getting ideas. I don't usually wax political, but when people mess with the books in a country founded in ideals of freedom, it's just not cool. I'd rather live in a country in which multi-ethnic literature studies is possible, even if it remains an idealistic dream, even if I conduct and create it myself, than a country that bans books so we can avoid standing up for the teachers who share such books or the rights of the creators to write them.
If people do not have the personal strength or education to retain their ideas and values without forcing those ideas and values upon others, there are many countries in the world that do enforce silence and appreciate cultural homogeny, and perhaps such people belong in such countries. If we in the United States are not willing to support an education system that teaches people how to critically analyze information representing multiple viewpoints, even if those viewpoints do not represent our own--if we can not somehow teach our future generations to agree to disagree while coexisting in the same space--then we deserve all the one-dimensional, egregiously exaggerated caricatures that represent us.
For those interested, here are some banned book links.
The official website for Banned Books Week
A Google map of the most recent challenged/banned books
Frequently Challenged Books of the 21st century
