Can't Stop the Signal: Why Banning Books Makes Me Want to Read Them

As a teacher and a writer, my life-long love affair with words is undeniable.  But I don't just love words for their fancy dancing on the page.  I love them for their point and purpose as the beautiful wrapping around ideas.  Be they brown paper packages tied up in strings or the most ornately decorated hatbox wrappings that Pinterest can inspire - what they hold matters. 

And what they hold is, well. Everything. 

This week, bibliophiles across America will celebrate Banned Books Week by taking a long look at the books that have been banned or challenged across the United States, scratching their heads, and wondering why.  To be on the list, someone must take some sort of citizen action with a library to have the book removed from the shelves.  This year, Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian took second place to Captain Underpants. The Banned Books Week website provided a handy list called Banned Books that Shaped the World to show us the most historically challenged books that have had the greatest influence on our nation. 

It includes some of my favorites and they all have something in common - these books threaten and challenge some of our most basic assumptions about the world and the people in it.  They make us think.  They make us hurt.  They change us in some lovely, difficult way. Or, you know, like Captain Underpants, they're full of fart jokes. That's cool too. Or, like Fifty Shades of Grey, they're knockoff fanfic disguised as BDSM that took the world by storm long after The Story of O came along. That's less cool, but whatever. We all have our opinions, right? 

For me, I guess, if a book inspires such a visceral reaction in someone that they would beat down the doors of their library and complain or start a letter campaign to have those words hidden from the public - there is something worth exploring in that book, some idea important enough to hold in my hands and mind long enough to find some value there. 

Me, I'm off to the library to find The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian and And Tango Makes Three. 

What banned book will you read this week?

Yup. Met Lucy. Sorry you think so poorly of her.

I've been thinking a lot about a blog post I saw reposted by a gads of friends on Facebook.  The one about Lucy, the Generation Y whiny brat. It reminded me of that crabby old "From Gen X to Gen Y" post I saw six months ago but can't remember the link for. The Lucy post and the crabby Gen X post both did two things:  They made a lot of assumptions about the broad attitudes of Gen Y and the Millenials and they both made me mad.  Not the seething rage of the entitled turned disappointed mad, just mutter under my breath mad.

You. and you. and you and you and you.  You're NOT the same. 

Why?  Well, for one, I know a Lucy.  She's not Gen Y. She's a Millenial.  In the whole I've known her, I don't think Lucy's asked me for much or demanded anything more than a cup of water or maybe a snack.  She expected a little - like, say, a functioning pancreas and when she was four and her first Disney trip was ruined because her islet cells shit the bed, Lucy got a fancy bracelet that said "Diabetic" and skipped on.  No whining. No disappointment.  Shit man, if everyone of every generation can be THAT Lucy,  we'll all be better for it.

But we're not all that Lucy.  And Generation Y is not all the Lucy described in the post that made me so mad.  Because no matter how much people would like to pretend it is so, Generation Y is a pretty random bunch of people trampling through life as best they can.  Some saw their parents enjoy the spoils of Lucy-in-the-post.  Others, like me, watched their parents and grandparents work hard their whole lives to mixed results - due to the randomness of the universe or their own choices or devastating illnesses or winning the lottery.  Few of the people I know carry an air of expectation and specialness described in the "Why Gen Y yuppies are unhappy" post.

Some of us have taken jobs, as I have, in public service - working hard to make the world a better place - without demanding more money  or job security or even insurance for our services because we believe what we're doing is worth it.  Other Gen Y yuppies have been fighting and dying overseas for a decade now.  Those lucky enough to return demand things like Veteran's services and the GI bill so that they can build some sort of life for themselves and their families after laying down their lives. Still others run around feeling like Lucy-of-the-post-that-made-me-crabby but you know what? Those people are assholes and we all know it.

They aren't disappointed because they're Gen Y yuppies turned Gypsies or whatever the author creatively called them - they're disappointed because they're whiners and here's some breaking news:  Every generation has to deal with their fair share of assholes. It's another thing that the Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, the Millenials, and whatever we'll call the future generations have in common.  There are those among us who are jerks.  This is not shocking. This is not news.  I'm sure there was probably a 13th disciple named FlimFlam who walked out on Jesus because Jesus just wasn't recognizing how special a guy FlimFlam was. 

Flim Flam argues with Jesus over who gets to sit in the middle of the table

The Why Gen Y Yuppies are Unhappy post is right about one thing:  Generation Y isn't special.  They're just like every other generation - a broad group of people aligned by historical zeitgeist that fights, sweats, and bleeds to build an America in which their children have the right to fight, sweat, and bleed to pass it on to their kids.  Congrats, Lucy.  Welcome to it.  I'm sorry you're sad.  Let's work on that. Come on over and meet my friend Lucy.  We have a lot to learn from her, I suspect.

Back to School. . . and the end of an era, so to speak.

All three children started school this week.  That's right: three.  Honeybadger has descended upon the local church preschool and begun her educational reign of terror.  As usual, everybody loves it - loves their classmates and teachers and curriculum and the shine is still painfully bright on the school year. Meanwhile, I'm back in my own classroom - two sets of twenty students ready and willing to learn all of the glorious things I have to teach. 

It's the end of an era:  Honeybadger should be our last child - which means our last child has entered the preschool-to-high-school pipeline - thus allowing me small windows of freedom to do things I haven't had much time to do in oh, say, the past 10 years or so.

One of those things is writing, though I promised that last fall at this time.  In some ways I am writing more - I've begun a professional blogging gig. But my personal writing has suffered tremendously over the past 10 years.  I was reading an old friend's blog the other day - and she was talking about the trials and torments of being a writing mother and I was thinking of myself as a mother who used to write.  In many ways that is true and I'm not particularly impatient with it.  In some ways that writing part of me has been doing necessary things like keeping short people from licking the cat or eating paper.  And that's fine. 

But I'm surrounded by women who have managed to be mothers and still write and I'm very impressed with their ability to do so.  I want to be them. 

And so here I go - I'll start with reading a bit more.  Poetry. Fiction. What have you.  This month I started sort of easy with A J Jacobs's Drop Dead Healthy and Anthony Bourdain's The Bobby Gold Stories.  Next up will be some collection of poetry.  Or collections. Then a book of writing prompts - with a daily writing goal of one sort or another.  But also more reading.  I've spent a decade putting in little of substance - and my writing life is suffering for it!

Any suggestions?  What have you read lately? 

I have just a moment.

There is a two and a half year old hanging off my arm and screaming at the top of her lungs.  Summers are . . . long.

Hidden. . . and not so hidden. . . treasures.

My father is an artist.  I grew to the smell of paints and drying canvasses and still reminisce with joy when I get a deep sniff of wet clay.  He was an art teacher for several years, and while he never said it to me in my childhood - it was always clear.  Art is everywhere. 

When we moved to our neighborhood several years ago, I was struck by the high number of public art projects I saw dotting our routine landscape.  Just a few weeks ago, I found a map from our local Park & Rec center and decided to take the family out and try to find them all.  First, it gives us something to do and fills our days which - as any stay at home parent knows of the summer - can sometimes be difficult.  Second, it takes us to neighborhoods we haven't necessarily seen before.  Most importantly though, it's gotten everyone in the habit of looking - for - and AT - the art and we're learning fascinating things.  The scuplture above, for example, just looks like boots from the street, but contains this sweet little surprise behind it.  Another sculpture at a park we frequent moves, rotates, and dances with the wind - something we've never before noticed.

Now they're finding art wherever we go.  That is the two youngest.  The older child peers up over the spine of her latest Harry Potter (don't ask which one, there's a new one every few days), raises an eyebrow, and says "Oh, yeah, great" in her best teenager sass. But they're looking - and we're hiking and exploring - and grateful to live in a neighborhood that supports such things!  Once we've finished this list, we'll move on to a larger one that represents the metropolitan area nearby. It's definitely a great way to spend some time together - even if my eldest doesn't yet appreciate it.