You know who else banned books? Nazis. And Communists.
Here is a story my mother likes to tell.
First, however, here is some context.
I am five, maybe six, and I like to listen to the news on the radio. Being the first grandchild in my family—a family that is old and has waited a long time for someone young—I am indulged as a whimsical child while expected to behave as a budding adult.
At nighttime, my grandmother brushes out the tangles in my long black hair and tells me stories of root children and rain babies. I grow up believing trees whisper to each other in the dark, and everything has feelings from the stars in the sky to the violet amethyst stones deep in the earth. Anything that grows can feel pain, can hurt, and you must remember that.
Yet, in the daytime, under the tutelage of my grandfather with his flat narrow fingers, stained blue from holding the Philadelphia Inquirer morning after morning, I am reminded things from the ground also cause wars and just because something is in a book, doesn’t mean it is true.
As a small child, I am interested in diseases and magic, dictators and saints, far away places, and the secrets buried in my family’s history.
In those days, family gatherings were my forum. As older relatives circled around me to hear my thoughts and listen to my stories, my little brother and cousins waddled around with pacifiers corked in their drooling mouths. I was lucky to have people to encourage me to share my opinions, and to be taught to respect other’s thoughts.
One time, as my mother tells, I declared, in the confidence and innocence of mind of someone under ten, that I could solve the AIDS problem. My family, with their gray-haired ears, listened up, and my grandfather, a gentlemanly man, stiffened his back.
“Just make a law that every man must where a compass on his penis,” I say, oblivious to my word confusion, and oblivious that it makes the male members of my family uncomfortable to hear their little girl say penis.
My family nods their collective head. I am never told that sex is bad or that one must wait for marriage. That comes later, in school, but by that time, I am already too inquisitive and unsatisfied to merely swallow what I am taught.
After this statement, my mother says, I headed into a serious description of how at night, I visit the deer, who live in nearby Burholme Park and bring them food. In exchange, I explained, they let me ride on their backs through the forest.
I am writing this because I think it is possible to have both an imagination and a hold on reality. I am writing this because I think adults discredit children often and try too hard to protect them from the world. The seeds of fear are planted so early on it makes me frustrated.
I abhor censorship and the kind of senseless bickering that is going on between Ginny Maziarka and the libraries in Wisconsin; sadly, things like this happen all the time. Computers are definitely a great source to discovering the bigger world out there (especially if your parents are anything like Maziarka), but if someone like Maziarka is this enraged by the library, imagine what the parental blocks are like on her family’s PC.
Libraries need to be a safe harbor for learning. They cannot be clouded by politics, religious beliefs, and other matters. Last summer, eleven libraries in Philadelphia were put on a list to close within the year, and I fear, if the economy does not pick up, that list will grow. Libraries are actually closing across the nation, and it is a shame that the ones that are open are subject to this type of bullying and misguided protection.
We can’t control what parents teach their own children—or make a man put a compass on his penis, for that matter—but we can maintain the freedom of information for people if we choose to stand up for this freedom.
Central Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine Street
Expansion plans for that same library if the City of Brotherly Love ever finds the $$$ for the endeavor.
