Spring 2024 newsletter
I’m a proud Toronto Public Library card holder. The TPL calls itself “the busiest urban public library system in the world” with nearly 11 million lendable items. It’s a marvelous institution, and if you can support it in any way, I encourage you to do so.
In October 2023, cybercriminals attacked the TPL, stealing data and encrypting the library’s computer systems. It was a ransomware attack, but TPL refused to pay the ransom, instead opting to rebuild their computer systems. As a result, for the next five months many library functions involving a computer, from online materials reservation to free, public printing services, were unavailable. Branches remained open, and it was still possible to borrow, (circulation was done for a time with pen and paper) but many, including myself, opted to wait until the online system was operable once again. This is when I got a taste of what it’s like not to have full, unfettered access to a vast array of human knowledge and experience.
And that’s also when I started paying a lot more attention to the increasing number of news stories about people who live with this reality every day. I’m not talking about authoritarian regimes – where the control of information is key to maintaining order and preventing criticism of the ruling party. No, I’m referring to the increasing number of books banned in public libraries in Western democracies.
Banning books isn’t a new phenomenon. Despite First Amendment rights, the US has a long tradition of banning books, although the American Library Association says that book ban attempts in that country have reached an all-time high. I don’t mean to point fingers – librarians in other democracies must negotiate book censorship demands from various groups, including in my own country of Canada.
I support the right of parents to limit what their own children under the age of 18 read. But no one in a democracy has the right to tell other people, including other peoples’ children, what they can or cannot read. Democracy means (according to my dictionary) ‘a system of government by the whole population’. By definition that’s going to be messy. Meaning, in a democracy you have to co-exist with people who do not share your world views. Co-exist with the whole population. Not censor the views or ideas or lifestyles or aspirations of the population you don’t agree with.
Of late, in addition to attempts to ban books dealing with race, gender and sexuality, in the US at least there have been increasing calls to censor books about social and economic inequality. For example, there have been frequent demands to ban Barbara Ehreneich’s Nickle and Dimed, for crying out loud, one parent claiming it promotes “economic fallacies and socialist ideas”. (If you haven’t read Ehreneich’s 2001 book, I highly recommend it. It is a masterful touché to all of those who claim people who live in poverty somehow deserve their fate.)
The injustice of social, economic and gender inequality are recurring themes in my fiction. No wonder then that attempts to ban books from public libraries – libraries that belong to the whole population – touch a nerve for me.
Many of my central characters are marginalised people: dismissed and disparaged because they are poor, or the wrong gender, or the wrong age, or not thin, or not good-looking. As I’ve written many times on this site, I as a reporter I met and interviewed may real-life heroes – people whose fictionalised lives would never merit a super-hero starring role. Marcie Blanchard, for example, the protagonist in How the Invisible Woman Learned to Fly, is invisible to many people in her world because she is a heavy, plain-looking, middle aged woman. Few expect, or even want, Marcie to do heroic things. Few would notice if she did.
There is a vast array of knowledge and experience from the whole population of humans, and I think fiction featuring characters like Marcie is important. Marcie’s challenges may not be yours, my recurring themes not your cup of tea when you are looking for a good book to read. But we still need to tell stories like this. And most importantly, we all deserve full, unfettered access to stories like this.