I want to thank the activist in Township High School District 214, in Arlington Heights, who recently tried to ban Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and other classic works of literature. You have made my job as a high school English teacher a lot easier.
Usually, I have to prompt students to read some of those very books you wanted to ban. It’s tough work, believe me. But I’ve learned one invaluable fact: Banned books are hot.
Every June, I warn my students about the violent and explicit texts on our summer reading list. The scandalous works include Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.” These novels are standard fare for most college-prep high schools, but nobody has to know that straight off. It’s an obvious ploy, but once I mention severed heads on sticks and teenage pregnancy, students suddenly begin jotting down titles.
Don’t get me wrong: I sometimes yearn for blander classroom reading. I say this as someone who recently had to explain the term “maidenhead” in “Romeo and Juliet” to 28 giggling freshmen. Certain scenes in “The Canterbury Tales,” which I read with the seniors, could not be fully described in a family newspaper. If you’ve read “The Miller’s Tale,” you know what I’m talking about.
But I refuse to leave my students ignorant of some of the landmark works of English literature, as well as the techniques the authors used to engage their audiences. Shakespeare used bawdy language to capture the “groundlings” in the cheap standing room section of the Globe–and in truth, we all have some groundling in us.
You can’t take sex and violence out of the high school curriculum any more than you can remove it from the 9 o’clock news. The best books often use this material to explore the morality and consequences of characters’ actions.
I teach in Pilsen, a low-income area of the city that has suffered more than its share of youth violence. One of my most gifted students was shot to death at age 17. This weighty backdrop frequently influences classroom discussions. Several years ago when I read “Antigone” with one senior class, a student asked why Antigone and her siblings did not leave Thebes after “everything happened.”
We spoke about it a while and ended up comparing the ideas in “Antigone” to the way some modern families continue to live in their homes after a son or nephew is killed on their street. I have rarely felt such immediacy when discussing a classic, yet never would have experienced it if “Antigone” was banned from the classroom for, say, its depiction of incest and explicit violence.
In debates about banning books, we remain too focused on the content. Nobody ever wants to ban a book for craft-related reasons, such as too many cliches or a real lack of externalized characterization.
“The Da Vinci Code,” for instance, offends me, but not because of its absurd portrayal of a Jesus who fathered a child and a villainous Catholic Church. Rather, the language is passive and predictable.
Several years ago I stopped using in my class another title on the District 214 proposed ban: “How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,” by Julia Alvarez. But it was not for its allusion to premarital sex (and its drawbacks). I discontinued it because the students were confused by the shifting narration.
When I first heard about the proposed ban in northwest suburban District 214, I admit I yawned, thinking of historical challenges to acclaimed books such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Catcher in the Rye.” Then I heard a radio interview with Leslie Pinney, the most ardent activist, and it almost made me think she had done her homework and may have a point. When she had received the district’s proposed purchasing list, she said she picked out a few titles and “did what [I] typically do when I don’t know enough.”
OK, I thought, a bit begrudgingly, since she read them carefully, I’m going to have to hop down from my freedom-of-literature high horse and actually give her perspective more consideration. But Pinney hadn’t read the books; she had merely Googled the titles and been disgusted with what came up.
I nearly pulled over the car. I don’t let my high school freshmen get away with Google as primary research. Frustrated, I felt the way I imagine many teachers react to such controversies, saying such book-banning efforts don’t convey merely a suspicion of teachers and their text choices, they imply that we are not qualified to select appropriate literature for our students.
The District 214 school board rejected Pinney’s proposal in a 6-1 vote. But the controversy brought hundreds out to the meeting and touched a nerve. And ultimately, Pinney raised an important point: Parents and guardians should try to be aware of what their children are reading. To me, this is less an act of censorship than an invitation to engage in conversation–surely one of the most important and rewarding purposes of literature.
Several years ago a student in my freshman class mentioned she had been reading John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” aloud to her mother. My student said her mother was surprised at first by the occasional use of profanity–one of the reasons that the book has been periodically banned over the years.
Girding myself, I asked the student if she wanted me to talk to her mother about why we read it. Mentally I was already planning a defense about the book’s vivid illustration of the American dream, and struggles faced by minorities and the disabled, but my student just smiled and shook her head. She had already talked it through with her mother herself.
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Summer reading list
Incoming seniors at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School choose books from the following:
“Heart of Darkness”
Joseph Conrad
“Brave New World”
Aldous Huxley
“Dracula”
Bram Stoker
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
Douglas Adams
“Killing Pablo”
Mark Bowden
“In the Company of Heroes” Michael J. Durant with Steven Hartov
“Plainsong”
Kent Haruf
“Moneyball”
Michael Lewis
“The Dive from Clausen’s Pier”
Ann Packer
“A Hope in the Unseen”
Ron Suskind
“Don Quijote de la Mancha”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
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Carolyn Alessio, a former deputy editor for the Tribune’s Books section, teaches English at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Pilsen and is a writer.
