Author: garris

Let me think, what has happened this week?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

So, I’m being a little dramatic, but still, I feel as if we’re moving at a snail’s pace. This  week Cara and I have emailed everyone and their mother, just so we could get referred to someone else or be given information we already had.  Eric Grant did, however agree to let us interview him over the phone, but we’ve been having trouble setting up a time. Hopefully in the next couple of days we can figure something out.  I’m just happy someone with the school system will talk with us.

I’m also trying to contact the principal of North Buncombe High School so I can figure out who the teacher using The Bluest Eye was. However, I have not been able to find her email. I was planning on calling out to the school on Thursday, but came down with the flu and haven’t had the chance to. I plan to call out there tomorrow morning.

So what’s up with the title of my post?

When speaking with Amanda Glenn-Bradley last week, she talked about a previous book challenge in Buncombe county that she remembered.  A teacher, while waiting for The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini to be approved for her class, put All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque in it’s place on the reading list. Parents then complained that the book The Kite Runner, not only had sexually explicit content, but also had a lower reading level than All Quiet on the Western Front.

However, regardless of these arguments,  I have to wonder, had these parents read either of these books? I haven’t personally read The Kite Runner (I’m currently on chapter 3 on audio book), but I did read All Quiet on the Western Front in tenth grade. I’m sure it had many important themes and and made many important statements on the human condition.

I don’t think I could tell you a single one.

Why, you might ask?

All Quiet on the Western Front is a brick. The book isn’t written in a style that is appealing or comprehensible to most students today, so for most students its just another reason why they don’t want to read. If we want students to enjoy reading, we can’t only let them read the same classics. Students want texts they can relate to and texts they can see themselves in, and, quite frankly, as a nineteen-year-old, I find a band of nineteen-year-olds who never discuss sex to be somewhat unrealistic and unrelatable.

Then I thought about one of the students interviewed for the Grace Enriquez article we read this week. Enriquez interviewed middle-schoolers and asked them their opinions on the books they were reading in class and what books they thought were appropriate. One student, named Drew, who was interviewed said:

“it’s forbidden to read about sex and drugs because this is a reading class, not a sexual education class.” -Drew

Why must education be so categorical? Why is math only appropriate for math class? Why is the word “sex” taboo everywhere but sex ed? Why do we force children to pretend that their lives happen in boxes, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth?

References

Enriquez, Grace.  “The Reader Speaks Out:  Adolescent Reflections about Controversial Young Adult Literature.”  The ALAN Review, vol. 33, no. 2, 2006, pp. 16-23.

Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner. New York: Riverhead Books, 2003.

Remarque, Erich Maria, 1898-1970. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York :Fawcett Crest, 1975.

We’ve been having some trouble researching our case.

We know there’s information out there, but we can’t find anyone who has it or is willing to let us have it.

In the past few weeks, Cara and I have been in contact with multiple librarians, archivists and public officials trying to get information about our case, but we have almost exclusively been getting re-referred to someone else. We started by contacting Gene Hyde, head of the Archives at UNCA.  Though this interview was interesting in its own way (click here to read my blog post on that interview), he had very little information on our case and recommended we contact the public library.  Cara contacted the Buncombe County library system, was referred to a specific branch who then told her they would not have the documents she would need and that she should contact the school board, they were however willing to help with other aspects of our research, but nothing has come of that yet.

We have now also contacted the Associate Superintendent of Curriculum, Susanne Swanger, and Eric Grant, the head of Language Arts Curriculum for grades 6-12. Ms. Swanger responded by giving us the county policies and forms that I had already found on the School board website, and referred us to another person. We did find out, however, that the book was removed from the Honors English III reading list and placed on the AP Literature reading list (this is a twelfth grade course as opposed to the eleventh grade list it was on)  Mr. Grant has not yet gotten back with us.  We are also working on contacting the principal of North Buncombe High

From the NBHS home page slide show. https://nbhs.buncombeschools.org/common/pages/UserFile.aspx?fileId=3178239

School to see if she can give us the name of the teacher who was using The Bluest Eye, but we still haven’t found all of her contact information.

It feels like a game of hot potato, but we’re the potato.

There is good news though. This past Thursday we met with Amanda Glenn-Bradley, a research librarian at UNCA who is very passionate about censorship. During this meeting we found that we had roughly the same resources, however, Ms. Glenn-Bradley knows many of the librarians throughout Buncombe County and said she’d be glad to help find information through those connections.

Like I discussed last week, I think it all comes down to fear. The people we’re contacting are afraid of bad press and no mater how much we insist we are a coming from a neutral, research oriented perspective and are not affiliated with any news organization, there is one problem, perception. Our school, and the city of Asheville in general are known as “the blue dot in a sea of red,” in other words, we are known to be a concentrated speck of liberalism in predominately conservative Appalachia.  But, hopefully, we can start finding more information soon instead of another person to email.

Things I learned this week:

1. The archives at my school has a really cool cook book collection.
2. They don’t keep records of Buncombe County Schools.
3. We’re all scared of something.

This week I interviewed the archivist in charge of UNCA’s Special Collections, Gene Hyde.  During this meeting we discussed what the archives are, what they have, and how to use them.

Asheville-Biltmore College, the precursor to UNC Asheville, one of the photos that greets you when you walk in the door of special collections.

Unfortunately, our school archives do not have information on the Public School System for our county. Fortunately, he knew where we could most probably find some of the records that might be useful for us. He told me that we could probably find some information on various times Bluest Eye was challenged, and possibly the specific case we’re looking into at the the Buncombe County Public Library. My partner Cara Forbes  will be conducting that interview soon,  so more on that later.

I also got to hear about censorship from a librarian’s perspective. We discussed the literary value of offending readers, to which he said:

“I think that literature should challenge your assumptions, I think at times literature can upset you, because literature reflects the larger human existence which isn’t always pretty.” – Gene Hyde

Reading this doesn’t do justice to his vocal inflection. Hearing him say “pretty” made me think of a young girl picking flowers in a green field, unaware of the dark world around her.  His voice seemed to mention the way parents hope to keep their children innocent and unaware of the possible horrors of the world. In one word he explained the motivation of the parents that challenge books.

Though I did not realize this when I interviewed him, as I transcribed his words I realized just how poorly the sentence on my screen reflected what he really meant.

We, as people, have a tendency to reject change. This coupled with the protectiveness of a parent leads to a response that, on the outside seems overly controlling and conservative.  Then, what he said next made me understand why it might be a necessary response.

He told me about a book challenge from when he was on a committee that listened to and worked with book challenges at the Montgomery Floyd Regional Library system in Redford, Virginia.  A book that was in the children’s section of the library was challenged for sexually explicit content.  Though the committee did not believe the book was to explicit to be in circulation, they agreed that it may be better suited in a young adult section.  At first this seemed unfair, why can’t other children read this book just because one parent didn’t approve? They still could though,  he described this book at the cusp of the two ranges, so children for which that book was designed would likely also be going back and forth between sections.

During this interview, realized that the instinctual reaction to brush off people who wish to censor books is founded in a similar fear as those who challenge books. People challenge books because they don’t want to think about the implications of the text. Do we dismiss book challenges because we don’t want to discuss the capacities or library locations the book  might be better suited for.  Are we all just operating under maxims that don’t consider individual cases? Censorship is never Okay. Sexually explicit content is bad for children.

Coming into this class, I had no particular book or book challenge that I wanted to research.  For me, it is much less about the book and much more about the reasoning and the effect it had. My partner, Cara Forbes, however, had already found a book that she had read that had been challenged in our area. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye was challenged in a Buncombe County high school in the fall of 2017. Assigned at the start of the semester as a class reading for a junior level honors English course, this book was challenged for graphic depictions of child molestation.  Having not yet read the book my self, I immediately thought, “How graphic is ‘too graphic’?” I wondered what exactly parents were afraid of. Yes, child molestation is a difficult and uncomfortable subject, but if the book is read in  the classroom setting, wouldn’t a parent feel more comfortable knowing that their child would be in a safe place where guided discussions could take place?

Then I read the book.

And I realized that, if I was a parent, I would be horrified of letting  my sixteen-year-old read this book. But that was just my gut reaction. Then I thought about all the ways this book could be discussed in the classroom. Including why it is important that this book makes the readers so uncomfortable. I think for parents, it is instinctual to try and protect children from anything that could upset them, but being uncomfortable and discussing the things that upset us is an integral part of growing up.

In the “Censorship is” article that we read this week Moore describes the two types of censorship, implicit and  explicit. Explicit  censorship is the form we are most familiar with, book challenges that result in a text being removed from a library or reading list. Implicit censorship, however, happens before there is even a chance for anyone to read a book. It occurs when publishers will not publish a book because of its content or authorship. The biggest worry for me, when it comes to censorship, is the implicit form. This is  because it eliminates the ability for people to  form individual opinions on a book and eliminates discussions before they have a chance to happen. In regards to the case that we will be investigating this semester, I find myself wondering what would have happened if no one ever  put The Bluest Eye on the reading list? What would have happened if the conversation had never been started? I wonder what the seniors at that school, who would have read it before it got banned think about whether or not it was appropriate. Above all else, I wonder if anyone in that junior class became enticed by the banned label and read it anyway.

References

• Moore, Nicole.  “Censorship is.” Australian Humanities Review, vol. 54, 2013, pp. 45-65.
• Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.