This is one event everyone should know about. And it's an event very near and dear to my heart: Banned Books Week. Every year I mean to do something to commemorate it, and every year I forget when it's happening until it's too late.
Not this year!!! This year I remembered. Ok, this year, one of the vendors I deal with through my job sent out an email advertising their own Banned Books Week products. But what counts is that I am aware of it ahead of time, and I have plans. Plans I want to share with you, and hopefully I can inspire you to do some subversive acts of your own.
Plan 1: I am going to buy some "I read banned books" badges, and hand them out to random people.
Plan 2: I am going to buy some "Banned Books Week" bookmarks and leave them in books at random bookstores, possibly at a library as well.
More plans below the cut:
Plan 3: I am going to visibly read controversial books. Ok, I do this all the time so it isn't a plan so much as status quo.
Plan 4: I want to throw a "Banned Books Week" party of some sort. It's probably too short a notice to ask people to come in costume as their favorite character from a banned book, but maybe next year. I figure there'll be some drinking, some readings from banned books.
Celebrating the freedom that we have in this country to read what we want is incredibly important. I do not approve of, nor condone censorship of any sort. I do not believe that people should be denied free access to ideas, even if I find those ideas ridiculous, stupid or reprehensible. I may not approve of the majority of what Paladin books publishes, but I will defend with my dying breath their right to publish it, even if it is a bunch of MRA, weekend warrior bullshit. That's what freedom of speech is all about. Besides, as one of my favorite right-wing wackaloons, Ted Nugent, once said, "It's easier to know who to keep an eye on, when you let people say whatever they want."
Ok, I had more, but it sort of degenerated into a great big diatribe that went nowhere fast or good. Granted, the name-calling was fun, but ultimately unnecessary.
Go, celebrate banned books. Read them visibly. If people try to engage you on your choice of reading material, very politely inform them that censorship of ideas is an exceptionally un-American sentiment and that you cherish the freedoms you have by being in this country and that you would never sully them by trying to deny those freedoms to others. They hate that, when you turn their patriotic jingoistic bullshit back on them. Then look at them like they're a particularly gross pile of... ok, don't. As my friend Jilli says, it is very important to be polite while engaging the terminally repugnant... Ok, she doesn't say that, I do. Seriously, though, no one would blame you if you spoke to them as if to a very slow, small child.
Or at least I won't.
Mickey Schulz is a guest author for the California NOW blog; her opinions are not necessarily those of California NOW. Copyright Mickey Schulz, with permission granted to California NOW for use on this site.
A Banned Books Week party is a great idea!
Find out about official BBW events on the official website, http://www.bannedbooksweek.org, where you can also read the BBW Manifesto and find out details of book challenges and bans in your area.
Posted by: twitter.com/freadom | September 10, 2009 at 07:47 AM