That Book is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing - by Adam Szetela

When I was in high school, back in the 1980s, we were required to take a civics class. In addition to learning about the three branches of government, and checks and balances, and how the electoral college functioned, we also learned a theory of politics that, rather than seeing Democrats and Republicans on a linear spectrum (that stretched from left to right) put them on a loop continuum, that eventually would meet. 

I thought about this lesson a few years later when I was in college and learned about Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist who, along with Catherine MacKinnon, fought against pornography. The two made strange bedfellows to right-wing Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell. All were active in an a lobbying effort to censor pornography in the 1980s.

More recently, attempts to ban Harry Potter books also demonstrate how the right and left mirror each other. While conservative Christians (literally) burn the books because they see them as espousing witchcraft, crusaders on the left likewise throw the works into the fire because of author J.K. Rowling's anti-trans views.

Szetela's book is unusual in that its focus is on how the left is censoring books. While I see a lot of news articles and reports about the crisis in book banning in schools and public libraries, these are almost exclusively about threats from the right (from groups such as Moms for Liberty, and No Left Turn in Education). To be sure these are real and serious threats that seek to remove books written by authors with BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or other historically underrepresented identities. Books that feature characters from marginalized communities are also often targets.

With the exception of PEN America almost no one is reporting on how the left is censoring materials. In some ways the methods are the same as those from the Moms for Liberty crowd. We see in both camps: 

• Paternalistic condescension: insisting on "protecting" children (and adults) from "harmful" books
• Not actually reading the books they want banned
• Calling for physical violence (including issuing death threats) against the authors and their publishers 
• Insisting that what they are doing isn't censorship because if people want to read the books that have been removed from the library they can simply buy them

Attacks from the left, however, may not get the same press as those from the right because some of their tactics are a bit more stealthy. Rather than challenging books that have been published, and are already on library shelves, what we see on the left is the use of social media to prevent books that don't adhere to very narrow guidelines (of what might be considered inoffensive) from being published in the first place. Online book reviews, many (most) of which are written by people who never read the book are shared by an increasingly large community. It is ironic, but not surprising, that it is often authors with the same marginalized identities that the right targets who are targeted by the left in these cases. Likewise, some of the mob have thrown stones only to find that they are living in glass houses themselves.

One of the things Szetela writes about that I found particularly curious is the proliferation of sensitivity readers. While those of us in academia are (fairly) admonished not to ask people with marginalized identities to be spokespeople for all in their communities, sensitivity readers have created a rather lucrative business marketing themselves to do just that. This has gone so far that "...even sensitivity readers have their work read by sensitivity readers".

I want to be clear that I absolutely agree that there is a need for more diverse books (for readers of all ages). I do not believe that any one person (or group) should be the arbiter of what should be published, or be found on library shelves. Every reader will bring a different interpretation to a particular book based on their own experiences. It is not for anyone else to determine how any book speaks to another reader. Additionally, books roles as "windows and mirrors" are part of their appeal to me. But not all books need to reflect my experiences, nor do they necessarily need to have a moral lesson, nor develop empathy. Some books are thought provoking, others are just fun, or silly, or simple escape. 

It may be time for all to revisit the Freedom to Read Statement adopted by the American Library Association in 1953 which, in addition to other things, reminds us that books should not be censored for author viewpoint, and that readers should be trusted to make their own choices (emphasis mine). 

Readers of this post can be assured that I did indeed read Szetela's whole book before writing my review!