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Burning Books co-owner Theresa Baker-Pickering and banned book display
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By Jason Guth and Kyle Wekenmann
Jonathon Welch, founder and co-owner of Talking
Leaves, 951 Elmwood Ave., knows first-hand how book bans and challenges can
affect a bookstore.
When a book gains notoriety because of its content, it
flies off the shelf, but not out the door.
"We have it happen from time to time here, where
people will pull books off the shelf and move them to a different place,” Welch
said. “They’ll move a young adult’s sexuality book to the science section, and
we just put it back.”
The distinction between a challenge and a ban is worth
noting: the American Library Association defines a challenge as an
attempt to remove or restrict materials based upon the objections of a person
or group. A ban, then, is the removal of those materials.
In a time period involving deep political disagreements
in the U.S., the rise in book bans and challenges has been sharp and sudden.
According to the association, the U.S. is on
pace to break 2021’s record for the most total book challenges documented in
the more than 20 years that the association has released its findings.
“It’s never a good thing when somebody has their book
banned because it makes people afraid of it,” Theresa Baker-Pickering, co-owner
of Burning Books, 420 Connecticut St., said.
According to the association between
January and August of this year, 681 attempts to ban or restrict library
resources were documented, including 1,651 unique titles.
This means that more than 70% of the 681 attempts
included multiple titles, whereas in the past, attempts were largely aimed at
banning just one book.
In recent years, topics at the center of such
arguments largely include race, gender, sexuality, nudity and stories relating
to the LGBTQ community.
“I haven’t seen any book on any of these lists that’s
worth banning,” Baker-Pickering said. “That’s
what I would say to it. A lot of these adults could benefit from reading these
books.”
Baker-Pickering, on the threat of book bans:
https://soundcloud.com/jason-guth-639404284/burningbooksfinal?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Where, though, do the challenges and bans get their
legs? Local school board meetings. It is there that
parents and community members express their concerns and get the ball rolling
for a vote. The result of such votes determines whether a book is successfully
banned.
Rust Belt Books, 415 Grant St., co-owner Kristi Meal was
less concerned about how seriously the book ban issue should be viewed by
society.
“How serious is the issue? I don’t know,” Meal said.
“Banned books have been going on forever and here we are all still churning
along. It’s a detractor from the real issues. It’s a way for parents to empower
themselves in their lives according to their leanings.”
Among the concerns of proponents of
book bans is the notion that children need not be exposed to graphic violence,
sexually explicit content, or material that is unsuitable for children of a
certain age.
A banned children’s book that Baker-Pickering alluded
to is titled, “Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness.” Written by Anastasia
Higginbotham, it is a story about race, and Baker-Pickering said that it is a
book that Burning Books likes to highlight in the West Side community.
“I always recommend it to people, and I always take it
with us when we go tabling,” she said.
Welch said that because his business is private, it is
affected differently than libraries and school districts when it comes to book
bans.
“You could accuse us of banning every book we don’t
carry, and obviously that’s just not the case,” he said. “We have the ability
to choose what we stock and don’t stock, whereas libraries ideally have
everything all there, and for schools, it’s the same thing. The restriction of
access, therefore, I think has to do with this sort of culture war going on.
Those have also been around all the time, but they seem to have magnified.”
