book banning Archives

At least 16 of Elana K. Arnold’s books have been banned or challenged. A Long Beach native, Arnold is an award-winning author of YA and middle-grade novels. PHOTOS COURTESY ELANA K. ARNOLD

Long Beach native Elana K. Arnold was in middle school when she fell in love with her first fictional character — Anne of Green Gables.

The PBS miniseries adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books premiered in 1985, and Arnold’s seventh-grade teacher assigned her students to watch it for homework. Because she was on punishment at home, Arnold watched the show on a tiny black-and-white portable TV that she snuck into her room, fiddling with the TV’s rabbit ears to get the picture as clear as she could, then melting into the story moving across the screen. And when she learned that the show was based on a book series, she became enraptured by the literary version, too.

“Anne was my idol,” Arnold says. “She understood what she wanted; she knew how to ask and advocate for it. Even before I met Anne, I wrote — poems, little stories, lots of beginnings.”

Arnold went on to become a prolific and bestselling author of books for children and teens, garnering awards and honors that include being named a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and receiving the Michael L. Printz Award honor.

Arnold’s latest, “The Blood Years,” is a fictionalized version of her grandmother’s teenage years growing up during the holocaust in Czernowitz, Romania. The novel’s launch on Oct. 10, though, will look quite different from the launches of the author’s other books — namely because she finds herself caught in the book-banning frenzy that has swept the nation. At least 16 of Arnold’s YA and middle-grade books have been banned or challenged. On Oct. 22, she’ll serve on a Banned Books Week panel co-hosted by the Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles and PEN America Los Angeles, and on Oct. 26, she’ll be a panelist for a similar book censorship talk at UC Irvine, also co-hosted by PEN America L.A.

I spoke to her in the weeks leading up to her launch.

Book banning is not new. So many of our beloved authors — Judy Blume, Toni Morrison — were banned in years past. How would you compare what’s going on today to past censorship?

Today’s book banning fervor seems akin to other moral panics of the past: the Satanic Panic and the Dungeons & Dragons panic in the 1980s and 1990s, to name just two of the more recent panics. Everything is cyclical, as Opa, a character in my forthcoming novel, “The Blood Years,” often says. Panic is cyclical, too. The target shifts, but the urge to blame and scapegoat seems eternal. This time, books and their authors — especially books and authors that challenge heteronormative patriarchy and white supremacy — are at the center of the target.

Why do you write?

I write for lots of reasons. When I was young, I desperately wanted people to like me. I deeply yearned for friendship, and to be understood, and to understand others. But I didn’t have these things. What I didn’t know then is that many of my difficulties in social situations, much of my yearning to connect but inability to penetrate the circles of friendship of my peers, most of the reasons the other kids considered me “weird” were related to the fact that I’m autistic. As a child of the ’80’s and a girl, I was passed over as “gifted and talented” and “just quirky.” No one seemed to notice my deep loneliness, my constant state of confusion, my sense that I was walking around in a world fogged thick with clouds. Books were a place where I got to hear what the characters were thinking — what they feared, what they hoped, what they dreamed. I suppose music is a similar portal for some people, but as a noise-averse person, music wasn’t something I turned to. A quiet room, a bowl of fruit or chocolate, a snoring dog or purring cat close by, a book. Ahh.

Writing is a natural evolution of the relationship I’ve always had with books. It’s where I go, still — to the page — to sort out that which fascinates, horrifies, titillates, amuses and compels me.

Have you, in the past, dealt with having your books banned or threatened to be banned?

The book banning fever that has taken up so much air space over the past couple of years is really the first time I’ve seen a coordinated effort to remove my work from public spaces and school collections. In the past, I have been told quietly by librarians and teachers that they love my work but won’t put some of my titles on their shelves because they’re not sure about the content being “appropriate” for teens, but it’s not until the coordinated efforts of groups like Moms for Liberty (a ridiculous misnomer) that I’ve seen widespread targeted attacks.

And now, several of your books are on the “challenge” list. Which ones and why?

I have 16 titles that have been banned or challenged — the second largest list of targeted books of any American author, according to PEN America. My job is to create more art, and giving too much space in my head to ignorant, bullying people who want to strip all children of access to a diverse, vibrant body of literature does not serve my art.

In general, though, I can tell you that the arguments against my young adult novels (the books that are most commonly challenged) include claims that they are pornographic, anti-Christian, support abortion and are pervasively vulgar. I shouldn’t need to say this, but my novels are none of these things. They explore and reflect the fascinating, complex, sometimes bloody, fraught, dangerous experiences and emotions of my own coming-of-age.

Elana K. Arnold’s latest book, “The Blood Years,” will hit stands Oct. 10.

How did you first find out your books were being banned (or challenged)?

I hear about bannings in many ways: concerned parents and students have reached out to me through my website, through Twitter and Instagram to let me know what’s going on in their communities; a friend of mine who partners with PEN America to track the bannings sometimes gives me a heads-up. Very often, I get a Google alert about it when it makes it into the news.

I know that the things that I write can feel subversive and uncomfortable and unsettling and even gross. But that’s what writing is. It’s about wrestling with life, and life is all these things, too. These parents say they want to keep kids “innocent.” But that’s not true. What they want is to keep kids ignorant — ignorant about America’s history and racism, ignorant about violence towards cisgender and transgender women, ignorant about the LGBTQIA+ community, ignorant about their own bodies.

I don’t write books to teach lessons. I write to untangle that which confuses and compels me; I write to transform my own painful lived experiences into art; I write to celebrate being a human. So the bannings don’t stop me from working. They remind me that it’s my great privilege to have a voice, and they spur me to be even louder.

To learn more about Elana K. Arnold, visit elanakarnold.com.

As much as we search for a reflection of ourselves in the stories we read, books are also where we go to learn about those who are not like us. Books help eradicate ignorance. They often change previously hardened hearts and minds. They empower the disempowered.

As a kid, I used to slip behind my grandmother’s heavy living room curtains to sneak in reading between chores. Each book cradled between my hands was a vehicle transporting me to lands, characters and ideas beyond the confines of my own upbringing and the largely likeminded people who made up my family and community. Woe unto the sibling who dared disturb me!

But those interruptions of bliss, while annoying, were child’s play. I had no idea then that a Judy Blume book I was reading had been banned (because she dared write about puberty and other real-life issues). And I certainly never would have imagined that the 2020s (a decade I assumed would be as advanced as “The Jetsons”) would turn out to be an era of renewed censorship battles — from books getting banned from libraries and schools to burned in public spaces.

The inscription at Los Angeles Central Library reads “Books invite all: They constrain none.”

Yet aren’t books and other forms of writing protected under the First Amendment guarantee of free speech? According to David L. Hudson Jr., a First Amendment law expert cited by the New Jersey State Bar Foundation, book bans violate the First Amendment because they deprive children or students of the right to receive information and ideas.” However, the issue is not so clear-cut. Government actions that some may deem censorship — especially as related to schools — are not always neatly classified as constitutional or unconstitutional, because “censorship” is a colloquial term, not a legal term, The Free Speech Center reports. And in some cases, limitations on freedom of speech are constitutionally permissible, as courts have allowed public officials to take “community standards” into account when deciding whether materials are obscene or pornographic.

When it comes to allowing the general public to define what is “obscene” or “pornographic,” it’s a slippery slope. Indeed, much of the banned (physical removal) and challenged (attempts to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group) books are those that center (or briefly mention) race, racism, LGBTQ+ characters and issues and coming-of-age themes, such as dealing with puberty and/or sex.

“The leadership in our books department, both in Los Angeles and New York, reached out to me to say this book banning thing is really bad now,” says Deborah Marcus, an executive for the Creative Artists Agency Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the entertainment and sports agency CAA. “What’s happening is parent groups are challenging books, librarians are being fired or they’re afraid to put books on shelves for fear of backlash. And then, those books are not available to kids.”

Book banning “is bad for kids, teachers, the entire educational ecosystem and our democracy,” Marcus says. “Two of the areas that the CAA Foundation spends most of its time working on are supporting kids and working to support a strong democracy through civic engagement. So, I said, ‘Let’s figure this out.’”

Marcus is overseeing Let America Read, a campaign the foundation (in partnership with PEN America, Campaign for Our Shared Future, the ACLU and other organizations) launched in April in response to the sharp uptick in book banning legislation and proposed legislation, as well as individual and local efforts to ban books. “People on the West Coast often mistakenly believe that the book banning problem is a red state problem, but that’s simply not true,” says Allison M. Lee, managing director of PEN America Los Angeles. Censorship efforts are alive and well in SoCal and beyond, she says.

The Last Bookstore is located on a corner of Spring Street in Downtown L.A. that is darkened by the shade of skyscrapers. Its name can elicit feelings of comfort and uneasiness. PHOTO BY CASSANDRA LANE

With celebrities and other high-profile supporters, the Let America Read campaign grew exponentially in just a few months. Organizers are gearing up for Banned Books Week, an annual event (taking place Oct. 1-7 this year) to celebrate banned books and their authors. “This October, we’ll bring together Black authors who have been banned and other authors of color, too, but we really want to focus on Black authors because they’re particularly targeted,” Marcus says.

While book banning can seem like a conservative-versus-progressive issue, it’s more nuanced than that. For instance, some Black parents have protested the teaching of classics they deem racist at the same time some white parents have protested the teaching of American history covering slavery and Jim Crow. Shutting out any voice is a Pandora’s box, critics of book banning argue.

“Just to be clear, Let America Read will always be nonpartisan,” Marcus says. “It is a nonpartisan effort, but school board elections are important. School board members have the authority to do x, y and z. And if you care about x, y and z, make sure you vote for the right school board member for you.”

Let America Read is partnering with the I Am a Voter campaign, which aims to increase civic engagement. Participants can text VOTER to 26797 to check their voter registration and register to vote.

What else can parents do?

“You can ask teachers how you can support them, what do they need to be successful?” Marcus says. “Help teachers advocate. Parents have a very loud voice, as we’ve learned.”

And using that voice to ask questions about controversial books can help create an atmosphere of intimacy and trust. “What I have heard about in Los Angeles is people having questions about books on shelves in both public and private schools, and, by the way, that’s OK,” Marcus says. “It’s OK for a parent to be concerned about literature that might be in a library. That parent is invited by the librarian to go in and have a conversation. That librarian has that book in their library for a specific, educated, researched reason. The librarians I’ve spoken with have told me that that is how it used to be. It creates dialogue; it creates understanding. Then, if a parent still doesn’t want their kid to read that book after that conversation, that’s their right as a parent — but for their individual child.”

Cassandra Lane is Editor-in-Chief of L.A. Parent and author of “We Are Bridges: A Memoir.”