Code Talker - by Joseph Bruchac

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many Native American children were sent to government-run boarding schools where they were expected to assimilate into the "American way of life". They were taught English and humiliated and punished for speaking in their native languages. However, during World War II the government discovered that Navajo Marines who were fluent in both their native language and English were valuable assets against the Axis. These Marines developed an unbreakable code based on the Navajo language and were known as the Code Talkers. Their work was so secret that it was not declassified until 1969 - twenty four years after the end of the war.

Bruchac's novel tells the story of Ned Begay who arrived at one of the Indian Boarding Schools as a young child. Although he was forbidden from using his native language at school he did not forget it. He studied hard and became a top student. He makes specific mention of using the school library to "read every book I could get my hands on", as well as reading the newspapers and magazines available there to find out as much as he could about Japan. When he learned that bilingual Navajos were being recruited for a special project by the US Marines Begay dropped out of school and enlisted, lying about his age in order to join. As a Marine Begay continued his love of learning and research, especially in the field of history

I have always loved reading history. All through the war, I did research in ship libraries and borrowed books from Marine officers who were history buffs and who liked the idea of an Indian being a historian.

The town of Bridgewater (MA) has selected this book for its next One Book One Community read. We are looking forward to a visit from Mr. Bruchac sometime this fall. It is a bit ironic that we will be hosting him at a university which does not require students to learn a second language. This book makes clear the benefit of knowing more than one language.

Dear Miss Breed - by Joanne Oppenheim

The internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II is a chapter of United States history that some would prefer to pretend never happened. I remember finding out about this injustice as an adult, and wondering why it wasn't taught in any of my American History classes in school, or my class on Constitution, Citizenship and Public Issues (CCPI) - a required course for all High School Seniors in Maryland during the 1980s. It is especially baffling to me because while I was taking CCPI there were actually Congressional Hearings about the internment going on at the time. How could it not have been worthy of a class discussion?

In 1942, after the Japanese invasion of Peal Harbor San Diego Public Children's Librarian Clara Breed discovered that many of her most enthusiastic patrons, American children of Japanese descent, were going to be sent to "relocation centers" with their families. She asked them to write to her, providing them with penny postcards, asking that they let her know where they were and how they were doing. From this she began a correspondence with many of the children. She also provided them with books, toys, supplies, and material for making clothes.

Clara Breed saved the letters that the children sent her. In 1993 they were donated to the Japanese American National Museum (you can read some of the letters here), and they are the basis of this book.

The children tell stories of the substandard conditions to which they were subjected (for some their first stop after being evacuated from their comfortable middle class homes was a refurbished horse stable - still smelling of urine). Surrounded by barbed wires and armed guards the camps were poorly heated, and poorly equipped, making for an especially difficult adjustment. Even so, the children's letters are hopeful, and demonstrate strong spirits.

Also included in this work are excerpts from opinion pieces from newspapers at the time. The bigotry is clear. It is also true that some things don't change, although today we are more likely to read such comments as anonymous posts and "tweets".

This work is evidence of librarians' long-time commitment to social justice. One former correspondent explained when he was interviewed for the book that as a "neglected child" Miss Breed introduced him "to the magical world of books". Clara Breed championed the rights of an especially vulnerable population at a time when it was especially un-popular to do so. In an article written for the Horn Book magazine in 1943, Breed tells the story of her young friends. It is interesting to note the stereotypes, albeit positive ones, evident in her article, as well as the language that many will find rather politically incorrect for the 21st century.

I was especially interested to see one of the children wrote to Miss Breed about how much she enjoyed "playing library" and discovering that another one grew up to work in a library.

Interestingly, as I was finishing this book I found out about Allegiance a new musical currently being produced in New York that tells the story of the Japanese-American internment camps.

The Celestial Bed - by Irving Wallace

As in Wallace's The Seven Minutes this work explores a modern day witch hunt involving sex and an over zealous district attorney (Hoyt Lewis). Aided and abetted by a phony televangelist (Rev. Josh Scrafield), and an aspiring newspaper reporter suffering from premature ejaculation (Chet Hunter), Lewis sets out to investigate and arrest the renowned sex therapist Dr. Arnold Freeburg, and one of the sex surrogates he employs, the lovely Gayle Miller.

Ironically, it is Hunter's girlfriend Suzy Edwards, who is also Freeburg's secretary, who provides the lead that gets her employer arrested. In referring her boyfriend to the sex therapist she also unwittingly opens the door to the investigation.

Hunter and Edwards first meet at the Hillsdale Main Public Library, where Hunter is doing some research for hire:

This fellow, probably in his thirties, surely no more than five years older than she, was carrying some books from the shelves, and the only spot open was the chair next to hers. Apologetically, he eased into the chair tight against her own. She had been taken by him at once. He was of medium build, receding neat brown hair, high forehead, soulful brown eyes highlighted by steel-framed spectacles set near the tip of his pug nose, his manner reserved but obviously an intellectual type.

It is also clear, however, that his work at the Acme Research Bureau "digging up facts from countless sources for free-lance writers graduate students, magazines, newspapers" is no job for a real man, as it barely pays subsistence wages, and at least one of his clients, the Revered Josh Scrafield had always looked at the researcher with "mild contempt [and as] something of a frail grub and intellectual nerd, sallow and frightened of life".

Ultimately, Hunter sees the error of his ways (once he experiences a successful coupling with Edwards), and refuses to cooperate with the DA, and of course, is rewarded with the real job at the newspaper he always dreamed of. A true fairy tale ending in which good sex conquers all.

Banned Books Week

As I do every year, I will be blogging all this week about banned books and censorship in honor of the American Library Association's annual recognition of Banned Books Week. Banned Books Week is "an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information" (from the American Library Association website).

Recent news stories of challenges to books include Randolph County (North Carolina's) removal of The Invisible Man from school libraries; a call by an Alabama state legislator to ban Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye from public schools; a grandparent's request that children's book Mommy Laid an Egg be moved "out of the reach of children" in the Lodi (California) public library to "an education or reference section"; and removal of Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban from the high school curriculum in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

See my Banned Books Week website and MaxGuide for more information about censorship and banned books.

Revenge of the Saguaro - by Tom Miller

Two decades ago, when I was but a mere library school student at the University of Arizona, I had the opportunity to work for an author (Tom Miller) who was then working on a book about his travels in Cuba. I did some research and fact checking for him, and was eventually gifted with a signed copy of the book Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels through Castro's Cuba. It was the first time I would see my own name on an "Acknowledgements" page - so thrilling. It was especially fun reading the book and seeing things that I'd helped the author to research.

I moved away from Tucson shortly thereafter, and lost touch with Tom. A few years ago, as I was doing some book ordering I came across a review of TWtE which had just been reprinted. I ordered the book for my library, and then did a bit of online searching and found Tom's webpage with an e-mail address and sent him a greeting. From that bit of online contact, we exchanged some more e-mails, and have since traveled to Cuba together when he lead a tour of "Literary Havana" this past January. As well, he has come to Bridgewater State University to talk to some writing students and Latin American Studies students about his work. While he was here, my husband and I purchased one of his more recent books Revenge of the Saguaro: Offbeat Travels Through America's Southwest - a collection of quirky essays. The titular essay tells of a majestic Saguaro cactus that in a final act of poetic justice, snuffs its own killer by toppling on him.

My husband, James, read the book before I did and assured me that there were librarians in it, but I was beginning to despair that the only thing I would have to blog about was one mention of Joan "a feisty high-school librarian with fire-engine-red toe-nail polish" who picked up trash with a group of volunteers along High Lonesome Road near Bisbee, Arizona. But the final essay in the book, "The Occidental Tsuris" was a true gold (or should I say copper) mine of all things library. (BTW I tried looking up tsuris in two different dictionaries, before I resorted to Googling it - here's the definition for those readers who are yiddish-ly challenged, as I am.)

In "Tsuris" Miller writes about Cochise County, Arizona, and its county seat, Bisbee, an old copper mining town on the U.S. / Mexico border. Cochise County is a place I occasionally enjoyed visiting during my own stint as an Arizonan, but I never knew about its sordid history of book banning. During the 1980s Saint David (a town I had not heard of before reading Miller's book) removed Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, and Conrad's Lord of the Rings from the high school reading list. Likewise, a history textbook was rejected for use when one (woman) citizen who had "gone through it very carefully, making a note of each time there was a reference to a woman" showed up at a school committee meeting, and explained that "Women belong in the home. Not in history". Miller writes about three bookstore owners, two of whom worked in libraries, and one (Walter Swan) who earned a D- in library in school, before dropping out in eighth grade. I remembered meeting Swan, author of me 'n Henry, and proprietor of the One Book Bookstore. Swan's brilliant plan of publishing the book himself, and selling only it in his storefront on Main Street in Bisbee earned him quite a bit of celebrity, so much so that he had articles written about him in several national publications, and he knew that "every library in the state's got a copy" of his book. I purchased a copy of the book for my mother many years ago, and had a Polaroid picture taken with him. I imagine I read the book, but I don't remember it well, and I have no idea what happened to the photograph, perhaps it is in my folder of unsorted mementos marked "Arizona".

The two other bookstore owners were John Kuehn, who also drove the county bookmobile; and former librarian David Eshner. Their bookstores were adjacent to each other, and the strengths of their collections complemented one another. On the day that Miller rode in the bookmobile with Kuehn, he (Kuehn) signed up a young couple for library cards. They had just moved to town and told him that "one of the first things [they] wanted to do was get library cards." It reminded me of my arrival in Bridgewater, Massachusetts 16 years ago. James and I moved here on August 5, 1997. Our daughter was born on August 19 of that year. One of the few things we managed to do between our arrival and our baby's arrival was get our library cards. Essential.

Swan, Kuehn and Eshner have all since died. Swan's book is still available through amazon.

Tom talks about "Revenge" in this YouTube video.

October 4 - Precious Knowledge

Earlier this year, the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) board voted to end its Mexican American Studies (MAS) program in order to comply with the Arizona law that bars ethnic studies programs designed to "overthrow the United States government"; promote "resentment toward a race of class of people"; are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” The District was threatened with a loss of up to $15 million if found in violation of the law. As a consequence dozens of books were removed from the curriculum, and the classrooms (in at least one case while students were still there) and boxed up to be put into storage.

The film Precious Knowledge is a documentary film which relates the events leading up to the passage of HB 2281. The ignorance demonstrated by the legislators in this film is so huge as to be embarrassing. When invited to attend some of the Mexican American Studies classes, all but one refused, insisting that the teachers and students would stage a different kind of class than usual on the day they attended; and that even a surprise visit was meaningless because the instructors can "change their pedagogy just like that [finger snap]" when someone uninvited walks into the room. Based on these ridiculous assertions, the program was banned, despite the fact that students who took MAS classes were more likely to graduate.

Today, the U.S. Ethnic Studies Program of Bridgewater State University will host a viewing of the documentary. Some of the books that were removed from TUSD classrooms will be on display during the screening in the Rondileau Campus Center at One Park Ave at 12:30.

While TUSD Administrators claimed that no books were "banned"  when they were removed from classrooms this chilling photo tells another story. See the story from the Huffington Post


View the Precious Knowledge Trailer