By Joseph R. Rodriguez
“I’ve started reading banned books. That’s my new reading list, Mr. Rodríguez,” declared Aquilino, a senior student in my language arts class. His thoughts and imagination get my full attention.
“Which one did you start with, Aquilino?” I ask.
“Lord of the Flies. Well, I started with Lord of the Flies, but they’re so many more books I might just read two at a time. Is that a good idea though, mister?”
“If that keeps you reading, I say go for it. Keep going in your reading,” I respond.
Books, even the banned and challenged ones, open minds.
I am coming to this decision and declaration about books — more and more each day — as I teach language arts and reading. In fact, I want my students’ imagination aglow. Aquilino reminds me of this through his literary quest and feat.
In my 30-year career as a teacher and researcher, book defenders and I fight and win battles to get books in the hands of students and their families. Overall, we support more digital books for students’ devices and personal libraries, so they can read and dive inward to know and trust themselves.
Only through reading words can young people name the worlds they inhabit. Evidently, they become consciously awakened and culturally aware as the Brazilian scholar Paulo Freire reminded people around the world years ago.
The struggle to get banned and challenged books on digital and nondigital shelves demands immense courage and strength, especially to keep going in this literacy pursuit for democracy. Many more teachers, librarians and parents can attest the challenges and bans faced each week in Texas schools and libraries and across the country.
My push for access to banned and challenged books is mostly at the local level, beginning with my own classroom library, school library, Little Free Library, but also extends to town, city and county libraries. Why keep books locked up in a school bookroom, library storage closet, or back shelf when young readers are out in the open?
Our literacy work is not for the faint of heart, but for those seeking to do the advocacy work that harnesses more youth minds and worlds through words and books.
Some of my book advocacy translates to getting school bookrooms opened to students, books on classroom shelves, and book spaces in our hallways, so students can have book choices to consider for their reading enjoyment.
Some book advocates attend school board and public meetings to say the following to the elected and appointed: These books exist for young readers. Read them first and involve the public’s input before making decisions. Let the process begin now and with all of us.
Book reading must not be reduced to banishment, excerpts, formulas or measurement as advanced by BookLooks.org. Besides, most books that are banned or challenged are unread by the select few or by groups that ban them in the first place without firsthand knowledge of the content and author’s body of work.
Moreover, books cannot be used as punishment or for extrinsic motivation. Frankly, why not just read for the pleasure of it, rather than solely for bubbling in a multiple-choice test form, answering comprehension questions as a robot, getting a grading score for an authority figure, or measuring student populations against one another?
Piggy, one of the characters in Lord of Flies by William Golding, says in the opening chapter, “I expect there’s a lot more of us scattered about. You haven’t seen any others, have you?” I believe he speaks of the adventuresome, the imaginative, and the survivors.
Piggy’s words can apply to book advocates and defenders: more of us exist. And we must keep rising up.
The goal of providing book access is led by teachers, librarians and supporters. We do this work with locked arms and in collaboration, cooperation and unison as we put the U.S. Constitution into action. We must promote the freedom to read, learn and understand.
Each week, my students tell me of more books — many banned and challenged by non-readers or fearmongers. The students reveal the numerous book titles that illuminate their lives though. The stories they find in fiction, nonfiction, graphic art and poetic forms reveal the dilemmas and scenarios they face while growing up in this century.
In our everyday, we face immense realities: global pandemics, political upheavals, nature’s wraths, and beginning and changing relationships through the tempests of censorship squads. When the misinformed ban or challenge books what they’re essentially saying is that they refuse to read a book in its entirety and fear learning and understanding.
However, authors such as Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds, Erika L. Sánchez, Jacqueline Woodson, and many others write books for young people and that challenge the censors and dividers among us. The members of the American Library Association, FReadom USA, and National Council of Teachers of English gather as influences for our students’ right to read and learn.
I found it telling that in the introduction to the 2016 edition of Lord of the Flies, Stephen King explains: “A successful novel should erase the boundary between writer and reader, so they can unite. When that happens, the novel becomes a part of life — the main course, not the dessert. A successful novel should interrupt the reader’s life, make him or her miss appointments, skip meals, forget to walk the dog. In the best novels, the writer’s imagination becomes the reader’s reality. It glows, incandescent and furious.”
The books that continue to be banned and challenged glow in the lives of students who are just as incandescent and furious as the authors who write and publish; they unite across pages, chapters and books in our state and country.
Our worlds can be enlarged when we read one or two books at a time, similar to my student Aquilino.
May our imaginations flourish, and may books, even those banned and challenged, fuel our minds and hearts for the common good.
Note: The name Aquilino is a pseudonym to protect the student’s identity.
R. Joseph Rodríguez teaches high school English language arts and reading at a public school and prepares future teachers at St. Edward’s University. He is the coeditor of English Journal and author of several books, including “This Is Our Summon Now: Poems” (FlowerSong Press, 2022). He lives in Fredericksburg.
