Bookalicious

Welcome to Bookalicious and Censorship week. We all know I am a huge advocate for censoring in your own home and leaving others to do what they wish in their own. Instead of giving you post after post of my own opinion, I wanted to bring in some other awesome bloggers to give us their take on censorship and what it means to them personally and their thoughts on what it means to us as a society. Humans through the ages have always banned, censored, rallied against, and protested anything that fell beyond their comfort zones. Whether that zone is in place due to religion, upbringing, or personal morals I have never understood the need to force others to your mentality. As bloggers we have the platform to be anti-censorship. To be a flagship of open content and doing and saying on our own blogs what we see fit. We must outwardly oppose censorship of any piece of literature, even if we are censoring it in our own homes. What if we are the next to be censored? Freedom of journalistic integrity and blogging taken away. What then?

Here is what Gail from Ticket to Anywhere has to say:

Growing up I was pretty lucky, my parents had a good income and so I never wanted for anything. It is also because of my parents that I developed a love of reading at an early age. My dad used to read my bedtime stories and as I got older and started to read on my own they used books as a reward. In book stores or the library I was free to browse and take home any book that I wanted. My parents could have told me that I couldn’t read book x or y but they never did. Did they look at what I read? Sure. My mom would even borrow books that I checked out or bought after I read them if I really enjoyed them. But they never told me I couldn’t read something. They knew what a fraidy cat I could be and knew if something got too graphic that I would stop reading before I scared myself into nightmares. My parents trusted me to self-censor what I thought I could and couldn’t handle.

Its because of this freedom that I’ve been able to go out and explore topics that I haven’t experienced first hand. Its through reading books that I can learn the horrors that exist in the world and learn from the experiences of others. I can pick up books by Ellen Hopkins and learn about the long term effects of drug use and get a better and longer lasting argument on why drugs are bad. One that works far far better than those “Just Say No” campaigns. I can also pick up Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and learn about a world and culture so very different from my own. I can see through another person’s eyes about how dangerous an idea can be to some people. But Nafisi also shows the courage and strength and the amazing things that some people will do to keep that spark of free thought alive. To think that if she’d been caught reading books like Daisy Miller or Lolita that she could have been beaten, imprisoned or even killed is mind boggling to me.

Books are filled with ideas. They are filled with the thoughts and possibilities of others. They are a record of our history, of where we came from, where we are and where we could be in the future. Words can create a spark that make people think and evaluate how the world is. What if Upton Sinclair never wrote The Jungle? What if no one read it? Would the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) exist as we know it today if this book didn’t exist? For it is because of this book, this work of fiction that people in the US sat up, took notice and began to realize just what horrible places the meat packing plants in the US were. Through a piece of fiction legislation was made and there are now standards to be followed. If someone had censored this book from being published or read then the public wouldn’t have reacted as they did and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 would probably never have been created. The Bureau of Chemistry never established and therefore it never would have turned into the FDA in 1930.

Just stop and think on that for a moment. Just think about the power that a book had on the world that we know today. The Jungle is just one book among millions. One thought. One person’s viewpoint that created so much out of nothing. So when I hear about other books being banned and words censored my blood begins to boil a little. I think about all those books that have had an effect on who I am. How I think and even the industry that I work in. If it wasn’t for The Jungle then the industry that I’ve made my career in probably wouldn’t exist. Where would I be today if it wasn’t for this book?

Yes, books and ideas can be scary things. They can shake your thoughts up and touch your soul. They can reaffirm your beliefs and they can make you think about the world around you. I love the books that make me question who I am and the world around me. The stories that make me wonder if I am making the right choices. Its these books that keep me aware of the world around me. That make me want to stand up and say something when I see something unjust happening. Its so easy to ban a thought or to suppress an idea because it challenges you. But to say nothing. To do nothing. To assume that because you aren’t directly affected by an issue that you can ignore it and life will be fine. To me, saying nothing is a quiet acceptance. To not do something because I am not black or gay or the affected party is the same as saying that I am ok with liberties being suppressed. Censorship effects everyone not just those being censored. I could go on and on and on but will stop with this one last thought from Martin Niemöller who says it far better then I could even imagine.

“First they came for the Communists ;

I did not speak because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews ;
I did not speak because I was not a Jew.
Then they came to fetch the workers, members of trade unions ;
I did not speak because I was not a trade unionist.
Afterwards, they came for the Catholics ;
I did not say anything because I was a Protestant.
Eventually they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak …”

Martin Niemöller,Pastor
Dachau, 1942.

The next time you see or hear of someone/something being censored think of Niemoller’s quote. Ask yourself, if you were the effected party would you want others to speak for you? And ask yourself when you see unjustice what might happen if you don’t speak up. Never think that your voice doesn’t matter. One person can make a difference. You don’t think so? After all what can one person do in such a vast sea of humanity?

Well just look at what Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote about that in their book Into the Labyrinth: “In the vastness of the ocean, is any drop of water greater than another? No single drop has the ability to cause a tidal wave. But, I argue, if a single drop falls into the ocean, it creates ripples. And these ripples spread. And perhaps – who knows – these ripples may grow and swell and eventually break foaming upon the shore. Like a drop in the vast ocean, each of us causes ripples as we move through our lives. The effects of whatever we do – insignificant as it may seem – spread out beyond us. We may never know what far-reaching impact even the simplest action might have on our fellow mortals. Thus, we need to be conscious, all of the time, of our place in the ocean, of our place in the world, of our place among our fellow creatures. For, if enough of us join forces, we can swell the tide of events – for good or evil.”

Really makes you think doesn’t it? We are all drops in an ocean and as such we all have the power to make tidal waves of change. Always question what you don’t understand. Never stop learning. Never stop fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. We’re all in this together. You might think that by banning one book, one voice, that nothing will happen. That its irrelevant and won’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. But what if that one voice was the one that would create a wave that would lead to the end of cancer or AIDS or to the creation of the FDA. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such a small thing after all, does it?