Larocque and Roll

Not only do I play one on television, I am one in real life March 4, 2007

As y’all are aware, I am a librarian. I am also a very lazy person, which is why I don’t really spend all that much time writing about what’s going on in Libraryland - if you were truly interested in it, there are a hundred other people out there doing it better than I am. However, I’m also very opinionated, although I choose not to spew forth my many and varied opinions here (or at least, all that often). Something happened recently that made me want to climb onto my soapbox and voice my opinion.

A group of librarians have publicly stated that they will not add a book, titled The Higher Power of Lucky, to their collections because it contains the word “scrotum.” (here’s the response from the author, who also happens to be a librarian.)

Here’s what I think about this:

Firstly, the librarian’s and parent’s reaction is immature and childish, and more suited to fourth-graders than adults. In the context in which it is used (the character sees a snake bite a dog’s scrotum), the word is appropriate - it’s the proper word for the part of the anatomy being referenced. Would they have preferred the author used a different term for it? Are they too horrified that children might learn the anatomically correct name for it instead of calling it something cutesy and euphemistic, like “the thingy”? By stating that the appearance of this word will cause some kind of mental harm, are we not sending the message that there are parts of our bodies that are shameful and should never be talked about if we tell children, “You can’t read that because it contains a bad word”?

Secondly, since when is it our job as librarians to censor what people read? We’re supposed to make the books, the movies, the music, the artwork, the information, etc. available to all, and let the individual patron make up their minds. If I don’t like what an author or an artist has to say, then okay - I won’t read/view their work, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to prevent you from reading/viewing it and letting you come to your own conclusions. If a parent doesn’t want their child to read or watch something, then it is up to the parent to explain to the child why. Don’t tell us to remove something from our collection because you can’t be bothered to have a conversation with your child about your beliefs and values, or about how they feel about something they’ve read/watched/heard.

There are a number of reasons a library might not have a controversial work available - underfunding, it’s been stolen/gone missing, it’s difficult to obtain, it’s out of print/out of circulation, and so on. However, to stand up and say, “I’m not going to add this to my collection because it has a dirty word in it!” is shameful and a black mark on our profession.

And then there’s the whole backlash effect - any time someone says “let’s ban this book because it contains passages about witchcraft/the occult/sex/drug use/etc!”, a lot of people sit up, take notice, and say, “hey, I hadn’t planned on reading that, but now I’m intrigued!” Calls to ban books aren’t at all effective, because it only makes them more popular. Which brings me to this…

This past week was Freedom to Read week. A friend and former co-worker of mine has organized a banned book reading challenge to celebrate the freedom to read whatever you want without anyone telling you why you shouldn’t be able to. Sign up, indicate how many banned books you’re going to read between now and the end of June, and then report back when you’ve finished reading them.