Greenville County Politicians Really Lean Into Banned Books Week
They Should Ask Themselves, AITA?
Last week was the American Library Associations’ Banned Books Week, an annual event now in its 40th year that encourages the entire book community to support freedom of access. The ALA has an Office for Intellectual Freedom and it tracked 726 challenges to library, school and university materials and services in 2021. Most of the books targeted were by Black or LGBTQ authors.
Continuing in their unoriginal mimicry of the cultural wars that the national GOP is trying so desperately to wage (to distract us, I guess, from their anti-democratic and flaccid policy platform that does nothing to address actual problems), the Greenville GOP recently asked the Greenville County Council to remove books with LGBTQ content from the children’s section of the County libraries. The Greenville County Library Board, and its chairman Allan Hill, has a history of anti-LGBTQ bias and harassment, something on full display when Allan Hill himself decided to harangue the Travelers Rest library staff about its Banned Book Week display (a display that included, among other things, the Bible).
Because the people harassing the library staff are essentially their bosses, it creates a tense environment for staff to push back. At the Traveler’s Rest branch, not only did the Board chairman show up in person, but days later an armed police officer, investigating complaints of obscene material. If you’d like to send a message to the Board asking them to end their anti-LGBTQ actions, here’s a link.
One of my senior English capstone students is writing her research essay on book banning in South Carolina, and I hope she’ll share the results of her work here in a future newsletter. I’ve also decided to refocus my Introduction to Literature class next semester on banned books, because if there is one thing for certain, you can get young people to read by declaring it forbidden.
In some ways, the book bans are pointless, because Internet. In other ways, they contribute to the hostile environment the GOP seems intent on creating in public spaces like schools and libraries, not just for our LGBTQ children, but for all children and young people who have questions about gender, sex, and sexual identity. While the book bans themselves may have little effect on book access, it nonetheless creates an unsafe environment for a group of children and young people who we know are at higher risk for suicide and depression. Playing politics with children’s lives seems, unfortunately, to be a common trend among GOP politicians. Maybe one day they’ll actually read the books they’re so intent on banning and have a change of heart. Here’s hoping.
In the comments, let me know if you have any suggestions for my Intro to Lit banned books reading list (I’ll focus on LGBTQ writers and content)!