FOREWORD When telling the story of America, its founding, and the myriad tales that make up the history of this great nation, it must be noted that we have both consciously omitted critical information and marginalized perspectives crucial to comprehension of our American story in full. In a concerted attempt to avoid the harsh judgment of history and risk offense to our national self-image, we have been overall less than forthcoming with the truth of exactly how America came into such greatness. Writing in defense of a free press, Benjamin Franklin famously observed, "If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed." Although the publishing of books in the modern era has seen much improvement in creating space for those voices traditionally excluded from the American narrative, there is obviously much more work to be done. If it can be said that "history is written by the winners," the battle for representation in America's story has erupted into full-scale cultural warfare. At the heart of this conflict is an alarming uptick in efforts to ban certain books in this country. I shouldn't need to point out the dangerous precedents of such efforts, but neither should it still be necessary to point out the existence of gross, systemic inequalities based on race that are baked into the DNA of our nation. Censorship in the hands of those in the majority, used to silence the voices of those in the minority, is tyranny. When signing a bill increasing federal aid for library services, President Lyndon Baines Johnson said, "Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance." As I write this, efforts are being made to remove books from libraries and schoolrooms under the guise of "protecting" our children. Literature discussing America's racial history is being framed as harmful to our kids, as it might cause some of them to feel uncomfortable. Confronting history that is controversial can be discomfiting to some; however, it can also provide a pathway to healing for others. It makes no sense to shield our children from truths told in an age-appropriate manner, and these efforts have no place in a healthy, functioning democracy. On the banning of books, one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, quipped, "I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases." As his and the other quotes above indicate, censorship and the blatant erasure of thoughts and ideas that challenge the status quo are not new to our national discourse. We stand yet again at another defining moment in America. Our ideas about who we are as a nation and exactly what truths we hold to be self-evident are being examined and re-evaluated daily. The truth is, diverse voices are finally making themselves heard--in the public sphere as well as the historical record. And they will not be denied. America's promise has always existed in our potential to harness the power of our rich diversity in service to the entirety of her citizenry. E pluribus unum . . . out of many, one. Any attempt to deny that truth by banning books is ultimately unwise, ill-advised, and anti-American. INTRODUCTION censor: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable -- Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary It's hard being a person. We all know that. --from "Runaway Teen" by William Stafford At the age of ten, it thrilled me to learn that history had once been made in Mount Vernon, New York, the quiet, tree-lined suburban town where my parents had chosen to raise their family. Quiet it was, with an imposing Carnegie library, an annual Fourth of July parade, one ten-story "skyscraper," and a place to grab a twenty-five-cent slice after school among the highlights. Back in pre-Revolutionary War times, though--the 1730s to be exact--Mount Vernon had been the site of real fireworks when a fearless newspaper publisher and journalist named John Peter Zenger dared to expose the assorted crimes of New York Colony's corrupt royal governor William Cosby, among them an attempt to fix a local election in which Mount Vernon's St. Paul's Church played a pivotal role. Enraged by the bad press, the governor had jailed Zenger, claiming his fiery verbal attacks were unlawful. At trial, the judge and jury disagreed with Cosby, and the charges against Zenger were dropped on the grounds that to publish the truth could never be a crime. In 1789, the Founding Fathers cited the Zenger case as they drafted the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, a sweeping statement of principles that guaranteed citizens freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion and assembly, and the right to criticize their government. Ever since then, the First Amendment has stood as a shield protecting a wide swath of the basic rights that we as Americans enjoy, including the freedom to read and write whatever we please. As such, it has also served as a powerful safeguard against efforts at censorship, including those aimed at books for children and teens. I can still recall the pride with which my fourth-grade teacher spoke to us about the Zenger trial, the First Amendment, and their long-term consequences. Thanks to the Founding Fathers' foresight and wisdom, she said, Americans had won the battle for freedom of expression. Lucky us for being the heirs to that noble legacy! As I later realized, the story of that battle was far more complex, and far from over; attempts to censor the printed (and spoken) word have been a recurring feature of American history. In 1821, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court banned the sale of a spicy English novel called Fanny Hill as an imminent threat to public morality. In 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Act, which, by making it illegal to send printed items ranging from erotica to birth control manuals through the mail, effectively denied access to these materials to millions of readers. Anthony Comstock, the bombastic moralist whose New York Society for the Suppression of Vice had vigorously lobbied for the legislation, next took aim at a type of sensational adventure fiction then attracting legions of teenage readers. Fans of "dime novels" purchased the spellbinding paperbacks at newsstands with their own pocket money and could not get enough of them. Comstock, however, certain the books were a corrupting influence, warned parents that, "[If] read before the intellect is quickened or judgment matured sufficient to show the harm of dwelling on these things, [then dime novels will] educate our youth in all the odious features of crime." Once again turning the postal system to his advantage, he managed to have the publishers' second-class-postage permits revoked, thereby sending their shipping costs skyrocketing. Comstock was a self-righteous bully on a mission to impose his own morals on everyone. Imagine what damage he might have done in the age of Twitter. Excerpted from You Can't Say That!: Writers for Young People Talk about Censorship, Free Expression, and the Stories They Have to Tell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
