{"id":1279,"date":"2024-04-11T23:57:58","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T23:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worcester.edu\/magazine\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2024-04-12T00:07:39","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T00:07:39","slug":"english-class-explores-the-books-they-dont-want-you-to-read-in-human-rights-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worcester.edu\/magazine\/2024\/04\/11\/english-class-explores-the-books-they-dont-want-you-to-read-in-human-rights-class\/","title":{"rendered":"English class explores the books they don’t want you to read in human rights class"},"content":{"rendered":"

The <\/span>American Library Association<\/span><\/a> documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship in 2023. When Enlish Professor <\/span>MaryLynn Saul<\/span> sees this list of novels, memoirs, fiction and nonfiction, she can\u2019t help but wonder: What\u2019s in this book that people don\u2019t want others to know?<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

That\u2019s one of the questions Saul is asking the students in her Literature and Human Rights course. This spring semester, the course is covering eight books that have been challenged, restricted, and in some cases banned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saul has taught the Literature and Human Rights course for a number of years. The idea to focus the course specifically on challenged books came to her last year. \u201cI had been reading in the news for months about the sharp increase in book banning in the last couple of years,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd a lot of the books that have been targeted have to do with human rights issues, so it seemed like a natural fit to put them together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The American Library Association data shows a steep rise in the number of titles targeted over the last three years. In 2022, 2,571 individual book titles were targeted\u2014a 38 percent increase from 2021\u2014and 2023 saw a 65 percent increase. Of the <\/span>4,240 unique book titles targeted last year, 47 percent<\/span> dealt with issues regarding race and LGBTQ+ identity<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saul sees potential far-reaching consequences to the removal of such books from libraries and schools. \u201cIf there\u2019s a student there in the class that has an LGBTQ identity and those books are removed, it\u2019s just like saying that it\u2019s a shameful thing and we can\u2019t talk about it,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it reinforces that shame not just for LGBT people but for other people as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like we\u2019re going backward on LGBTQ rights,\u201d she says. And that regression is happening with racial issues, as well, and is going to get worse if books dealing with those issues are removed from curricula. One of the books the course covers, <\/span>Beloved<\/span><\/i> by Toni Morrison, deals with the legacy of slavery. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988 and is among the most challenged books according to the American Library Association. Saul is concerned about such books not being studied in schools. \u201cIf we don\u2019t know what our past is,\u201d she says, \u201cwe can\u2019t properly move forward into the future and try to improve society.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the 16 weeks of the course, students are reading and discussing eight books: <\/span>Boy Erased<\/span><\/i> by Garrard<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Conly; <\/span>Born a Crime\u00a0<\/span><\/i>by Trevor Noah; <\/span>Maus<\/span><\/i>\u00a0by Art\u00a0Spiegelman; <\/span>Guant\u00e1namo Diary<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Mohamedou Ould Slahi; <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Persepolis<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Marjane Satrapi; <\/span>Beloved<\/span><\/i> by Toni Morrison; <\/span>The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/span><\/i> by Margaret Atwood; and <\/span>Gender Queer<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Maia <\/span>Kobabe, which had the dubious distinction of being the most challenged book in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

The results of a challenge can vary greatly. Some schools reject the challenge and maintain unrestricted access to the book. Other times schools take measures to restrict access by, for instance, moving a book from the young adult to adult section of the library or requiring parental permission to check it out. And, schools sometimes remove the book from the curriculum and even the library itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

The increase in challenges has resulted in an increase in restrictions. \u201cPart of the situation politically is that, laws like \u2018Don\u2019t Say Gay\u2019 in Florida that are supposed to protect young children, have made teachers so worried that they have removed things from their classrooms because they\u2019re afraid of being challenged or arrested for having something in their classroom that is against the law,\u201d Saul says. \u201cBut the law is so vague. They\u2019re not sure what would violate the law or not.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
“We\u2019re just going to walk around being completely ignorant if we don\u2019t weigh other people\u2019s opinions.”<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Junior Cameron Baron was aware of several instances of book banning in recent years, but she didn\u2019t realize the extent of the issue until starting the course. \u201cIt\u2019s surprising to me that there are so many small things that people want to ban books about,\u201d she says. \u201cIf there\u2019s something that bothers me, I still wouldn\u2019t take it away from someone else.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One aspect of the course has surprised her the most. \u201cI think about younger students being more inclusive and being more open,\u201d she says. \u201cBut there have even been some other students in my class that go out of their way to be on the side of banning some of the books. In my head, I\u2019m like, \u2018No, we\u2019re against that,\u2019 but I guess there are other students that don\u2019t see it the same way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Open discussion is an important element of the course. Professor Saul presents different opinions on the matter and asks students to consider the implications of all of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Baron appreciates this. \u201cWe\u2019re just going to walk around being completely ignorant if we don\u2019t weigh other people\u2019s opinions,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the books the class is looking at is Trevor Noah\u2019s 2019 New York Times best selling memoir <\/span>Born a Crime<\/span><\/i>, a portrayal of his experience growing up in South Africa during apartheid. The memoir has been challenged in multiple school districts for vulgar language and references to pornography, as well as the fact that the book\u2019s publisher recommended it for 11th and 12th graders, not 9th graders. The book\u2019s supporters have argued mature themes need to be considered in their context and have noted that the vulgar language comprised only a small percentage of the text and was nothing worse than what students hear in the hallways at school.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Saul\u2019s class, students are learning that the reasons books get challenged can be complex. <\/span>Sometimes, parents challenge a book, not to get it banned but to make sure it is assigned only to upperclassmen, as was the case at <\/span>Osseo Senior High in Osseo, M.N.<\/span>, where several parents challenged the book <\/span>Born a Crime<\/span><\/i> by Trevor Noah in 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes books are removed from a curriculum, not because of the content of the book but because of the views of the author, as was the case when <\/span>Born a Crime<\/span><\/i> was removed from St. Louis University High School\u2019s summer reading curriculum after the school board discovered Noah\u2019s pro-choice views, which conflict with the Catholic high school\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another book the course looks at is <\/span>Guant\u00e1namo Diary<\/span><\/i> by <\/span>Mohamedou Ould Slahi, <\/span>a Mauritanian engineer <\/span>imprisoned <\/span>at Guant<\/span>\u00e1<\/span>namo Bay without charge from 2002 to 2016. The book <\/span>was written and published during <\/span>Slahi\u2019s <\/span>detainment. The CIA allowed the book\u2019s publication, but redacted the text. Later, when <\/span>Slahi<\/span> was released, the book was republished without the redactions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt brings up the issue of government censorship and what we\u2019re allowed to see and what we\u2019re not allowed to see,\u201d Saul says. \u201cAs you read it, you wonder\u2014okay, this is a prisoner in Guant\u00e1namo Bay who\u2019s been accused of terrorism, so obviously, security is an issue, but some of the things they redacted, you have to wonder why. The word \u2018tears\u2019 was redacted at one point.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Massachusetts is known for being one of the most liberal states in the US, but even here, there have been challenges to books. According to a report by <\/span>The Boston Globe<\/span><\/i>, almost 70 books have been challenged in Massachusetts over the past five years. Challenges have come from both ends of the political spectrum. Many of the books challenged, including Kobabe\u2019s <\/span>Gender Queer<\/span><\/i>, dealt with LGBTQ+ issues. Other books were challenged because of racist content; these included several Dr. Seuss books and <\/span>The Adventures of Tintin<\/span><\/i>, by Herg\u00e9.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
“I didn\u2019t realize how many challenges there were… It\u2019s really astonishing.”<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Even though Alia Haytham is a first-year student and the class is an upper-division course, her advisor gave her permission to take the class. \u201cI liked the idea of looking at different issues that society has had, and still has, reflected in literature,\u201d she said. \u201cI think books are really special in a way that you\u2019re having a story being told and you\u2019re connecting with those characters, and that makes it more meaningful to you. You\u2019re more able to\u2014you\u2019re more <\/span>willing<\/span><\/i> to\u2014empathize and understand where these issues are stemming from. So, I think literature is really powerful in a sense of bringing people together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a family where we have a strong activist and human rights driven ideology,\u201d Haytham says. Her parents emigrated from Egypt before she was born. They didn\u2019t feel like they could speak out against government injustice when they lived in Egypt, she says, so now that they live in a country where they can, they do, and they have taught their children to do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the concepts Haytham is grappling with is how much control parents should have over what their children read. She thinks that parents should have some say, but at the same time, she recognizes issues that could arise. \u201cSay you wanted to find out some more about LGBTQ topics,\u201d she says, \u201cbut your own family doesn\u2019t allow those. So then who do you go to for that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This idea, she says, \u201ccaught me by surprise\u201d because her family hasn\u2019t restricted her reading like that. \u201cThe fact that people don\u2019t have access to that is kind of jarring to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Before starting the course, Haytham says, \u201cI didn\u2019t realize how many challenges there were. And the fact that they\u2019re also coming from such a small amount of people, and they\u2019re getting so many books challenged now. It\u2019s really astonishing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What is that \u201csmall amount of people\u201d? <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i> reported that 60 percent of the total complaints in 2022 were filed by just 11 people. And, although the number of unique titles challenged more than doubled from 2022 to 2023, the number of challenges went <\/span>down<\/span><\/i>, from 1,269 to 1,247.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to 2020, most challenges came from individual parents who wanted to restrict their own child\u2019s access to a book. In 2022, 90 percent of the challenges sought to remove or restrict multiple titles, and 40 percent of those challenges targeted more than 100 titles at a time. Such challenges are largely the result of targeted campaigns led by conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty. These well-organized groups share lists of books on social media platforms or request their followers to research potentially problematic books.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saul says she can understand when an individual has read a book and found something objectionable about it. \u201cWhat concerns me,\u201d she says, \u201cis if they\u2019re not reading the books.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That seems to be happening more and more as organizations like Moms for Liberty mobilize parents via social media. The problem with this, Saul explains, is that people are just looking for \u201cobjectionable\u201d content, and they\u2019re not considering why that content might be there. Is, for instance, a sexual episode included in a book to explore an important theme such as the subjugation of women or merely to be prurient?<\/span><\/p>\n

A computer science major, Baron says, \u201cthe Internet plays a really interesting part in banned books because it does kind of open a little bit of a backdoor into a way to access the information or at least find information about what we\u2019re missing out on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She also feels that challenges to books might make people more interested in them and might inspire people who wouldn\u2019t otherwise have read them to read them. \u201cIf there\u2019s something that someone is going so far out of their way to not want to speak about,\u201d she says, \u201cI\u2019m like, that\u2019s probably important information.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Given the ease with which anyone can find content online, Haytham finds parents\u2019 hurry to remove books from schools a little counter-intuitive. \u201cFor me, I find more comfort knowing that a book is being read in a school environment or even a public library where you have resources available to you and someone could help explain it to you better rather than going online and looking at it yourself,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
“I am excited to keep not only reading books that have to do with human rights,but to be able to see things from a different perspective…”<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Saul has a long history of involvement with human rights activism. She was active in the Columbus, Ohio, chapter of Amnesty International in the early \u201990s and has been the faculty advisor for the Amnesty International student club at Worcester State for several years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saul is a big believer in the power of the written word to create change. The students in the Amnesty International student club participate in Write for Rights every year. The letter-writing campaign organized by Amnesty International regularly has participants from more than 200 countries around the world. The letters provide comfort and encouragement to political prisoners and place pressure on officials to drop charges, release prisoners of conscience, and provide more humane treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes when you go to a protest,\u201d she says, \u201cyou feel like, \u2018Well, I\u2019m out here and being active,\u2019 but you don’t know if you\u2019re actually changing anything. The letters don\u2019t seem like a showy way of doing something, but it actually can have an effect.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Saul encourages people to stay informed about book challenges happening in their community by attending town hall and school board meetings and speaking with local librarians. Books are being challenged in both school and public libraries. In fact, 2023 saw a 92 percent spike in the numbers of challenges to public libraries. If people are troubled by censorship trends, they can speak up, sign petitions or write letters in protest of bans and laws that lead to bans. The <\/span>American Library Association offers resources<\/span><\/a> for individuals who want to get involved.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a lot of cases, it just took one complaint to remove a book,\u201d Saul said. \u201cAnd a lot of times, these places don\u2019t hear from people who liked the book or didn\u2019t want it removed. Sometimes places don\u2019t know that there are a lot of people who disagreed with that decision, and that\u2019s always something to remember.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Baron and Haytham, both, the course has made them more aware of human rights issues and more inspired to get involved. <\/span>Baron has long had an interest in human rights, but she calls this course her \u201cfirst stepping stone\u201d to activism. \u201cHonestly, I feel like it\u2019s almost like a necessity now that I\u2019ve been made aware of it more,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like to ignore it would just be ignorant, for lack of a better word.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For the course, Baron is doing a presentation on how climate change is affecting human rights, such as access to food and clean water, in Africa\u2019s Central Sahel region. She says she had not considered the link between climate change and human rights before.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am excited to keep not only reading books that have to do with human rights,\u201d she says, \u201cbut to be able to see things from a different perspective and see how things directly affect people\u2019s human rights that I might not have thought of before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Artwork by Complex Stories<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Library Association documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship in 2023. When Enlish Professor MaryLynn Saul sees this list of novels, memoirs, fiction and nonfiction, she can\u2019t help but wonder: What\u2019s in this book that people don\u2019t want others to know? That\u2019s one of the questions Saul is asking the students in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[28,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-worcester-state-magazine-spring-2024"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEnglish class explores the books they don't want you to read in human rights class | Worcester State University<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.worcester.edu\/magazine\/2024\/04\/11\/english-class-explores-the-books-they-dont-want-you-to-read-in-human-rights-class\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"English class explores the books they don't want you to read in human rights class | Worcester State University\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The American Library Association documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship in 2023. 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