Part 1: The Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story…and talk of book censorship

A number of people, when hearing I was going to the Alice Munro Festival of the Short Story in Wingham this past weekend, would simply smile and nod, looking at me a bit confusedly. There was a real literary festival in honour of Canada’s greatest short story writer? Wasn’t she still alive? (The not-so-subtle and unspoken question that would likely follow that previously asked question was: Don’t they only name festivals after writers who have died?)

Most people know of Munro’s work, especially if you’re a Canadian and you’ve been through a high school English class. Some know of the censorship of Munro’s notable collection, “Lives of Girls and Women,” in Huron County, the place where she was raised and still lives. At the same time, in the late 1970s, Margaret Laurence’s “The Diviners” and W.O. Mitchell’s “Who Has Seen The Wind?”, were also banned in various Canadian schools. You can listen to what she had to say, back then, when you listen to this clip from the CBC Archives. (As a writer and English teacher, I know that the censorship of books still happens within school curriculum and libraries, in a quiet, insidious way. It makes me seethe inside, when it happens, and you can argue against it, but sometimes teachers are just small cogs in the a larger, more narrow-minded wheel.) You can listen to what Munro had to say about the censorship:

http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/alice-munro-challenges-censorship

She speaks about how schools may ban books because of any description of sexuality, as if sex will disappear if you just ban a book. (It makes no sense, this argument, and it’s fear-based and nonsensical, and inane at its very core.) What’s happened since, though, if you study which books have been censored in schools around North America, is a constant battle between writers and school boards (as in the case of Munro and the schools in Huron County), and even more so between creative and innovative English teachers and school and board administration. As Munro says in the CBC Archives clip, English teachers are not the ones who ban the books. That pressure often comes from outside the classroom, whether from well-meaning, but misinformed program leaders or department heads, or principals and vice-principals, or from those even higher up in school board administration, or from school board trustees. What bothers me, as a writer and as a teacher, is that such censorship eats away at freedom of speech, something which is inherent to our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). It also, at the core of it all, makes it seem that students, that teenagers, are not very adept at being able to think for themselves. This is a fallacy. In my fifteen years of teaching secondary school English, I am constantly amazed by the way in which my students are able to read and think creatively and critically, posing questions that support their ability to think through ideas, to question their own suppositions, to interact with ideas and come to well thought out notions and beliefs. To assume that secondary school students are not able to handle challenging texts is demeaning to their intelligence.

Censorship in literature does not only revolve around sex, although I’m sure that’s what most people think about when they hear of books being censored in schools across North America. I’ve heard stories from fellow English teachers of books that have been ‘pulled’ from school curriculum or school libraries because of “poor or inappropriate language” (cursing and swearing), drug use, drinking, and even truthful representations of what occurred at residential schools across Canada. What is solved by pulling any of these texts? Nothing. It’s ignorant and dictatorial. It assumes that teachers can’t teach their own classes and contextualize the study of various pieces of literature. It assumes that students can’t handle the ‘n’ word in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” or that they can’t read Richard Wagamese’s “Keeper ‘n Me” because it may be too ‘harsh’ in its depiction of how First Nations people have been treated in Canada. It assumes that Lawrence Hill’s “The Book of Negroes” is too graphic, in its detailed but realistic depiction of slavery, rape, and even its use of the word ‘negro’ in the title. (It was, after all, renamed “Someone Knows My Name” when published in America.) What sits underneath all of this talk of censorship of literature, though, is that some people within education systems are white washing school systems, are gagging teachers in their teaching, and are demeaning the intelligence of teenagers. If you pretend kids don’t have sex, if you remove all of the books with depictions of kids having sex before they are fifteen, then that means they won’t have sex, right? Wrong. It’s backwards thinking. All of it. So, from issues of race, gender identity, sexual identity and human sexuality, and addiction, some people in powerful places make decisions to erase anything that might upset the illusion of what ‘good literature’ entails, or which pieces of literature best convey “moral” teachings. It makes me so angry inside….that words can’t even convey the depth of my emotion here.

As a writer, I’m a member of PEN Canada, a group that fights for freedom of expression for writers around the world. One of the most interesting things to read through, on the PEN Canada website, is the “Censorship Tracker” that references examples of censorship within Canadian borders. If you think censorship isn’t an issue in Canada, you’re sadly mistaken, and you can read more about what sorts of things are “stifled” in terms of freedom of expression. Here’s the URL:

https://censorshiptracker.crowdmap.com/

Friday night in Wingham was thought provoking. We heard excerpts of banned books read aloud by the various writers who were taking part in the weekend’s readings and master classes. Samuel Archibald,  Merilyn Simonds, Shawn Syms, and Mariko Tamaki all read excerpts from books that have been censored throughout history. It was thought provoking, to hear the words that were deemed ‘inappropriate,’ and to think that literature and freedom of speech is something we still need to fight for in Canada, in the 21st century. In between these excerpts, we saw a staged reading of Beverley Cooper’s new play, “If Truth Be Told,” which focuses on the banning of both Munro’s and Laurence’s works in the 1970s in Huron County. The play will be performed at the Blyth Festival Theatre from July 27-September 3. If you have a chance, you should go and see it in Blyth. You’ll be in the centre of Alice Munro country and you’ll recognize the beauty of this place, if you’ve read Munro’s stories over the years. More importantly, though, Cooper’s play will make you question your own suppositions about literature, education, and censorship, and this questioning of self is what is most important, I think.

So, friends, go pick up a banned book. Buy it, read it, and then ask yourself why it was banned. And, even more importantly maybe, ask yourself why people think you’re not intelligent enough to make your own reading decisions, or why people think you aren’t wise enough to know how to interact with a text, how to ask it questions, and how to ask yourself questions about your own place in the world.

Open your minds, your hearts, and just think…you may even change the way in which you view and think about the world. That’s not so bad, really, is it?

peace,
k.