Mennonite Valley Girl - by Carla Funk

This memoir, written as a collection of essays, details Funk's upbringing in the Mennonite Community of Vanderhoof, British Columbia in the 1980s and 90s.

In the chapter called "The Changeroom" Funk describes the cringey awkwardness of her mother and older girl cousins trying to explain puberty to her in a world where euphemisms around body parts and bodily functions abound. In universal adolescent fashion a young Funk rolls her eyes at her mother and declares that she probably knows more than her mother, having read the "secret book" in the library of the Christian school she attended, that explained how the human body worked - including a "single page dedicated to reproduction". She and her friend attempted to sound out words that they'd never heard before and Funk confidently proclaims that "it rhymes with tennis" only to learn in a rather humiliating manner that penis has a long "e" sound. They didn't dare to ask any adults the correct pronunciation of any of the words because they (the adults) couldn't possibly be aware that the school's four-shelf library "contained a book with such forbidden language".

Gay the Pray Away - by Natalie Naudus

 

Valerie and her brother are homeschooled with a curriculum sanctioned by the Institute of God's Basic Principles, a conservative Christian organization headed by Ben Goddard - a not-so-subtle camouflage of the Institute of Basic Life Principles once headed by Bill Gothard. Valerie has always been taught to obey her parents and the church's teachings. The seventeen-year-old is expected to marry and begin having children when she completes her studies in God's Training Academy. She interacts mostly with others from her church, and rarely talks to people outside of her insular world. Her haven is the public library - a place she is able to visit while supervised by her mother (who once organized a protest against it for "sexualizing children"). Valerie has learned to select books with innocuous covers so that her parents don't question her reading choices. It is through library books that she first learns about bisexual and other queer folks and begins to question her own identity. When she meets Riley, a "troubled youth" who got kicked out of her private Christian school for kissing a girl, she realizes that there is much that she still needs to learn. With the help of the public library's internet she begins to explore new territory, the freedom she experiences leads her to make some difficult decisions. 

This book reminded me of Pearl Abraham's The Romance Reader (which I read when it was first published almost 30 years ago). Abraham's work tells of a girl growing up in a strict Hasidic community who sneaks to the library to read romance novels.

The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon - by Bill McKibbin

 

It is certainly trendy to blame everything that is wrong with the world on my generation ("Okay, Boomer") and, to be fair, there is plenty of blame to go around, but as McKibben points out we Boomers were born during a rather long span (the years 1946-1964) - a population over about 70 million people which "means you're making generalizations about populations larger than France or England". We can look at Zoomers (those born between 1997-2012 - a population which includes my own child) and find fault with their addiction to fast fashion and shake our heads at the problems of sustainability it causes. At the same time I can also see that they are leading the way in seeking racial justice, fair wages, and health care reform. 

McKibben grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, just up the road a piece from my own home in the Bay State. He describes his childhood home as "like a child's drawing of a suburban home: a square block with a door and a window on the ground floor and two windows on the story above". I expect that the second story in the "child's drawing" was triangle shaped. This describes my own house as well. McKibben uses the house as a starting point in the book and moves from there to descriptions of his schooling, first jobs, and the history of the area to explore some bigger questions on race and the common good.

McKibben is clearly a fan of libraries and indicates that he has made good use of them throughout his life. Early in the work he describes a lecture given in 1970 by Ralph Nader at the town library in which he [Nader]

blast[ed] both air pollution and hot dogs, which he called "innovations to relieve food companies of all their crud". 

I've always been a fan of Nader and voted for him in the epic presidential election of 2000.

Further McKibben describes walking past the town library in 1971 (where he was "already a regular in the downstairs children's room") as part of a protest of the Vietnam War, led by another later presidential hopeful John Kerry, leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

As a high school student McKibben got a job giving tours of the Lexington Battle Green. Donning a tricorn hat he regaled tourists with tales of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. In order to get such a job 

you needed to pass a test...administered by the venerable rector of the local Episcopal church...He handed you a reading list, and you repaired to the town library's local history room for long days of study.

In one passage he demonstrates the importance of libraries through their absence. Eighteenth century Lexingtonians, according to Richard Kollen "the most determined chronicler of the town's religious history", would have 

attended an average of seven thousand sermons in a lifetime, that meant they heard fifteen thousand hours of preaching from their pastor. (And of course that was pretty much all heard, in an era with no theater, no library, no radio, no internet).

It would seem that today's far right politicians and Christian Nationalists would prefer that we return to this as they remove books from libraries and attempt to censor legislators who speak out for an end to gun violence, and basic rights for transgender people. 

Meanwhile, McKibben tells us that people's interest in libraries, theater going, and even sports has been waning in recent years.

Everything that the affluent possess in private has swelled in size... and what we share in common has been allowed to decay.

 This is evident in California's passage of Proposition 13 in 1978

which sharply limited the ability of cities and towns to assess taxes. Local property tax revenues dropped 60 percent overnight, and though the state filled some of the gap, services like education suffered immediate hits from which they never recovered...They cut maintenance, assistant principals, librarians...in south LA, or the north-eastern San Fernando Valley the library opens rarely...

City and town libraries suffered as well with summer and after-school programs cut. Some branches were closed, or hours had their hours shortened.

Finally, McKibben gives props to "Lexington's superb Cary Memorial Library" in providing access to back copies of the Lexington Minuteman which allowed him to do the research for this book.

Post Script:

To answer the question posed by the subtitle of this work ("What the hell happened?") I submit that we really should have listened to Bill McKibben back in 1989 when he wrote The End of Nature. But we didn't. 

Lailah's Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story - by Reem Faruqi

 

In honor of Ramadan which starts today, and National Library Week, which starts tomorrow, I read Lailah's Lunchbox. In this beautifully illustrated book young Lailah is excited to be fasting for the month of Ramadan for the first time. She is worried, though, that her classmates and teachers in Peachtree, Georgia won't understand why she isn't joining them at lunch. She decides to go to the library during her lunch period where she is greeted by an understanding librarian, Mrs. Carman, who is happy to share the time with her, and to help her gather her thoughts so she can best explain why she is fasting, and why Ramadan is a special time.

How to Be a Muslim: An American Story - by Haroon Moghul

Baltimore County Public Library's April 2018 #BWellRead Challenge category was to "a memoir/biography about a person who doesn't look like you". Of course, as my husband pointed out, this could mean anyone who is not my sister, but I took it in the spirit of the challenge and selected Moghul's story. A Pakistani Muslim who grew up in New England, Moghul was born with a myriad of health problems, which relegated him to being one of the "geeky" kids growing up. And where there are geeks there are libraries.

Early in the work Moghul describes the very well-educated family into which he was born - one that

appreciated, encouraged, and rewarded bookishness - which made life easier, since [he] was the kid who made a beeline for the library when the last bell rang.

It is a good thing he was so comfortable in the library as it is a place with which he would became quite familiar. As the only kid whose parents wouldn't sign his permission slip to take sex ed the  "doofy twelve-year-old" was dispatched to the school library while the rest of the kids in his class received their illicit lessons. He became so well-known in his library he described it as a place where "everyone fist-bumped him". As an adult he also made good use of a "well funded public library systen" while waiting for his bookish mother to give lessons on Islam to "housewives".

As an about-to-graduate student of New York University (shortly post 9/11) Moghul proposes that the University hire a Muslim chaplin (himself) to "a senior university official, a woman whose stunning workspace occupied the rarefied top floor of NYU's library". It is here that he learns that "there were levels of power and influence that [he] hadn't the slightest idea of." It has always seemed more than a bit ironic to me that University officials are so quick to recognize the value of library space only when they want to claim it for other-than-library needs.

I learned quite a bit about Islam from this work. I have enjoyed reading several religious memoirs of late. You can see my other posts here, here, here, and here.

The Mermaid Chair - by Sue Monk Kidd

Set in a fictitious place called Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina, Kidd's book tells the story of Jessie, who falls in love with a monk when she travels to visit her mother, Nelle, a cook for the island's religious brotherhood. Estranged from her mother for the previous five years Jessie is called back to her childhood home by a family friend, Kat, who gives Jessie the disturbing news that her mother has purposefully cut off one of her fingers.

Father Dominick is the librarian in this work. It is through him that Jessie's paramour (Whit) learns that Nelle had taken two books out of the library before chopping off her digit. Legenda Aurea: Readings on the Saints contained the story of St. Eudoria a twelfth-century prostitute who cut off her finger and planted it in a wheat field. Indigenous Religious Traditions relates the story of Sedna, an Inuit sea goddess whose fingers are severed by her father as she tries to hold onto a boat. All ten of her fingers become sea creatures. 

I was most intrigued by Sedna's story. When Paloma was young we often read the picture book Song of Sedna together. The version we had was a bit scary, but not as gruesome as the one depicted in Kidd's book. The story of St. Eudoria, by the way, was an invention of the author.

Well, I guess this just goes to show that books are dangerous. If Nelle had not found those books she probably would still have all of her appendages. The idea that reading can be harmful is reinforced by The Reverend Father, Dom Anthony, who forbids Whit (aka Brother Thomas) from reading anything by the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer when it was discovered the Bonhoeffer's writings were feeding Thomas' doubts.

The library is also the site of one clandestine meeting between the forbidden lovers. I don't think that Kidd intended to write a book with the purpose of demonstrating the dangers lurking in libraries, but when reading only the passages that highlight books, the message is clear.

Sin Bravely: A Memoir of Spiritual Disobedience

Of the spiritual memoirs I've read most recently (see my posts for Post Traumatic Church Syndrome and A Year of Living Prayerfully ) Rowe's work was, without a doubt, the most raw. The author tells the story of how her doubts of being saved, despite the fact that she had been baptized, and had, on countless occasions, publicly professed Jesus Christ as her lord and savoir eventually consumed her. As a young college woman in the 1990s this lifetime of confusion catches up with her. The overwhelming feeling that she was not doing enough to demonstrate her Christianity (a condition she discovers has a name - scrupulosity) lead her to check in at Grace Point, a psychiatric hospital "where the Bible comes first". The book details her time at Grace Point and incorporates flashbacks of her life prior to the panic attack that ultimately motivated her to seek help there.

Rowe made good use of her college library. She not only used the viewing room to watch BBC productions of Shakespeare plays for class with her boyfriend she also attacked her "theological demons" there by reading what "theologians and the early church fathers had written about salvation and hell". She specifically mentions drawing a "trench line in a remote corner of the Cornell library, between Dewey decimals 220 and 230". While I don't doubt she did the research, I do question that Cornell University Library used the Dewey Decimal System to classify its books. The Library of Congress system is most commonly used in research libraries and so it appears that Cornell does, at least currently, follow this custom. Perhaps things were different in the 1990s, but that is unlikely. I expect Rowe took a bit of artistic license here.

Rowe worried a lot about the eternal fates of the many good people she knew who were not Christians, including the "Asian librarian with the Buddhist yin-yang symbol around her neck who didn't charge [her] a late fee for [her] overdue books". She needn't have concerned herself, though - all librarians go to heaven! The destiny of those who return library books late, however, is another matter.

Rowe's work is funny, honest, and surprising.

Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome - by Reba Riley

In my quest to find a religiously-themed, yet light-hearted story for a possible One Book One Community Read I came across Riley's book. Like Jared Brock's A Year of Living Prayerfully Riley makes a "year of" project out of exploring a variety of religions. The purpose of her search, however, is quite different than Brock's, and she also is more willing to examine faiths beyond those with a Judeo-Christian history including Muslims, Wiccans, and Native American spiritualities.

An interesting connection between her book and Brock's however is that both are living with a chronic, undiagnosed illness. The Sickness, as Riley calls it, sometimes prevents her from researching as much as she might before attending a service. For instance she was surprised to learn that visiting a synagogue on Yom Kippur without a ticket just wasn't a thing.

She does mention doing research on several occasions, including twice using a library, even checking out a book on one occasion!

Riley's year goes from her 29th birthday to her 30th attainment day. I cringed when she referred to this as her 29th year. It was her 30th. The day a person is born they begin their first year, which ends the day before their first birthday. Their second year begins, then, on their first birthday, and so on. Her mistake though is common. Let's agree to stop this madness here and now.

Despite my issues with her counting of years, I enjoyed the book. It is funny, and the author kept the focus on herself. It is definitely a contender for One Book One Community.

A Year of Living Prayerfully - by Jared Brock

Our One Book One Community (OBOC) steering committee is looking for a light-hearted book with a spiritual theme to read next spring. We had a suggestion of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - And Doesn't by Stephen Prothero which I started to read, and do like, but I am not sure it is a good choice for a community read. Our community likes to read stories, and Prothero's book is not only not a "story" it is also rather didactic (as the title would suggest). These are two things that make the book a less-than-ideal choice for OBOC. With this in mind I started to look for other books - specifically something with a plot. Then I remembered that during my "Year of Reading 'Year of' Books" I read two religiously-themed humorous books that were about spiritual quests: The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs; and My Jesus Year by Benyamin Cohen. I correctly surmised that more such books must have been written the last few years and selected Brock's book as one that had potential for OBOC. Brock's story features a genuine inquiry into what prayer means. He travels across the globe, often with this wife, to talk to religious leaders about their own spiritual journeys and ultimately finds more questions than answers.

As a Unitarian Universalist I respect and support each person's search for truth and meaning (see our fourth principle). I was intrigued with Brock's quest, and especially appreciated his final comments regarding having more to learn

After an intense year of learning about prayer from some of the best sources on earth, I don't feel like I'm further along. If anything, I feel like a first-year university student-I now know all the things I don't know-all the things I haven't yet learned, understood, or experienced. I am not, in any way, a prayer expert. I'm a failing student who's playing catch up, at best. Rather than coming to the end of a journey, I've only just begun.

As he continues his inquiry I hope he branches out beyond Judeo-Christian traditions. His interactions with Muslims were limited and I don't recall him meeting with any imams. Nor did he talk to any Buddhists (he did meet with one who had converted to Christianity) or Hindus. Likewise, his dealings with women religious leaders were rather narrow. I think the woman with whom he had the longest conversation was Rachel Phelps-Hockenbarger, daughter of Fred Phelps of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church. I have to give him credit for his perseverance in getting the interview, though.

Brock's travels took him to, Israel, several parts of Europe, his native Canada, the United States, and also to North and South Korea. I was impressed with his courage in voyaging to North Korea, and his refusal to bow down to the body of Kim Il-Sung. There were no visits to any African or Latin American countries, however, and I suspect that if he had spoken to someone in Central or South America about liberation theology, or talked to anyone in Africa about colonialism, or attended a religious ceremony on an Indian reservation in the United States, he might not have simply and naively accepted the comments he found in Christianity Today that

Missionaries brought about reforms, fought colonialism, taught people to read, and rallied support for struggling peoples around the world. The conclusion the article makes is striking: "Want a blossoming democracy today? The solution is simple-if you have a time machine: Send a 19th-century missionary."

I was, of course, glad to see that he began his globe-trotting voyages at his local library. On page one Brock tells us

Michelle and I decided to live prayerfully for an entire year. It was a nice, shiny idea. But where should we start? 

With For Dummies, obviously. I borrowed a copy of Christian Prayer for Dummies from the library.

After reading a bit of the work though, he found himself unimpressed and

called it quits, returning the book to the library, where [he] assumed it would remain until next year's Friends of the library book sale. 

He also visited the library at the Monastery of Vatopedi (and even borrowed a book there) and while on Mount Athos talked to Father Philotheos who, when asked to define prayer, responded

Prayer isn't one thing...You can read a whole university library full of books that have been written just on the Jesus Prayer.

Brock made at least one other attempt to visit a library while on his journeys. Sadly, however he found the library (and the museum) at Monte Cassino closed (this after he paid his entrance fee). The gift shop, however, was open.

Ultimately, I think I will keep up my own search for a One Book One Community read and look for something that explores religion beyond what one will find in the Judeo-Christian traditions.

Unfamiliar Fishes - by Sarah Vowell

I think I first learned about the missionaries who left Massachusetts almost 200 years ago to go to Hawaii from my e-mail subscription to MassMoments which provides me with a daily bit of trivia from my adopted home state. I have enjoyed listening to Sarah Vowell on NPR for at least two decades. My husband and I have also read some of her other books out loud together. Such was the case with Unfamiliar Fishes.

Ms. Vowell is tireless in her research. She visits Hawaiian landmarks, museums, and libraries in her quest to tell Hawaii's history. Her travels take her to the Mission Houses Museum's library where she reads the letters and diaries left behind by New England missionaries. The Mission Houses Museum is a complex of homes where the original missionaries lived - huts made out of tufted pili grass.

In his memoir Hiram Bingham wrote, "A house thus thatched assumes the appearance of a long hay stack." Fitting that a pious expedition first envisioned at the Haystack Meeting in Massachusetts  would find New England missionaries holed up in thatched homes in Polynesia-much to Hiram Bingham's dismay. "Such houses," he grumbled, "are ill adapted to promote health of body, vigor of intellect, neatness of person, food, clothing or lodging, and much less, longevity. They cannot be washed, scoured, polished, or painted." They are no place, he continued, "for the security of valuable writings, books, or treasures." He would be relieved to learn that some day the mission descendants would build a climate-controlled library next door to care for (and lock up) his and his fellows' writings.

Fun Fact:
The Hiram Bingham to which she refers in the above is the grandfather of the Hiram Bingham credited with "discovering" Machu Picchu in 1911

Also at the Mission Houses Museum, she meets librarian Laurel Douglass, alumna of the Punahou School (the same school from which President Barak Obama graduated).

Within about a minute of the librarian from the Hawaiian Historical Society introducing us she (Douglass) was rifling through a thick folder of papers to show me her morning's research. She had been reading the diary of Moses, a student at the school who was a grandson of Kamehameha I.

Vowell quickly realizes, however, that Douglass is not just doing your "garden-variety" genealogical research.

The way she talks about Moses and his schoolmates speaks to her interest in uncovering truth about her forebears. Like any genealogical researcher, her blood pressures rises a bit when she sees Amos Cooke's name in print; in her case it is because she despises Cooke for beating the royal children with a whip.

Douglass also tells Vowell that she lived in Reno, Nevada for a while working as a blackjack dealer - "the worst blackjack dealer Harrah's ever turned out" in fact.

The book includes quite a bit of information about the hula, and its history, and the fact that the missionaries found it rather distasteful. The dance that is now almost synonymous with Hawaii, was actually outlawed at one point in its history when Queen Kaahumanu converted to Christianity. It was brought back to the culture of the islands by Kalakaua who celebrated his coronation with two weeks of festivities, during which "hula performances were featured prominently."

Vowell goes on to connect the censoring of the dance to the censoring of words. She quotes John-Mario Sevilla

When he placed the hula at the center of his coronation, Kalkakua made a significant gesture to the past, which is where Hawaiians traditionally looked for truth and meaning, in the face of rapid contemporary change. By challenging the foreign shame of the hula, he popularized and, therefore, politicized it. It's as if he decided to write and publish books after all the libraries had been burned. (emphasis mine).

The censorship connection was more than just metaphorical, however,

A missionary descendant, William R. Castle, held on to his forebears' disdain for the art form and insisted that the printers who published the coronation program of the hula chants be arrested for obscenity. One of the issues was the inclusion of hula ma'i, the traditional songs praising a chief's genitals. Noenoe Silva points out that the sexuality of these hula was meaningful to the king and his people because the natives "had suffered depopulation caused by epidemics of foreign disease and also by childlessness".

I am again reminded of an important lesson I learned in my library school days: there is something to offend everyone, and everyone is offended by something.

My husband also blogged about this book when we finished reading it last night. His post can be found here.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - by Robin Sloan

Clay Jannon, recently laid off from his work as a web designer, takes a job in an unusual bookstore. Working the third shift, when his few customers are borrowing books (rather than buying them) from what he calls the "Waybacklist" (located in the the back of the store) Clay is intrigued by his eccentric clientele. The Waybacklist is three stories high, with the highest shelves accessible by a very tall ladder and Clay gets the job by demonstrating that he is good at climbing, and is not afraid to reach. Clay is also required to describe each of his customers in a log book, explaining their demeanor and what they were wearing on each visit. The books they borrow are written in a cryptic code, and customers always seem to have a sense of urgency about them.

Clay's boredom at work drives him to use his computer skills to create a digital model of the store, and he discovers that there is a pattern to the book requests. In what becomes a bibliophile's National Treasure  Clay and his band of geeky friends attempt to help Mr. Penumbra to find the key to the secret of eternal life. Their quest takes them from Penumbra's quirky storefront in San Francisco, to New York City, to a warehouse in Nevada.

New York City is where the secret library of the Unbroken Spine is housed. Volumes in this library are "encrypted, copied, and shelved...[and] not read by anyone until after [the author's] death." All those who have written books for the library of the Unbroken Spine are hoping that one day the codex vitae will be unlocked, and they will thus be rewarded with immortality. Penumbra explains to Clay

The nature of immortality is a mystery...But everything I know of writing and reading tells me that this is true. I have felt it in these shelves and others.

Although skeptical Clay admits that he is familiar with

the feeling Penumbra is talking about. Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines - it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits. That's just a feeling, not a fact...

We also learn about a long ago "between the stacks" tryst. As in often the case, even today, such a thing will likely get you kicked out of the library. A hundred years ago it also would get you kicked out of the order of the Unbroken Spine.

Thousands of computers are used in an attempt to crack the codex, which ultimately requires a decidedly much more low-tech technique.

The answer turns out to be about as satisfying as Douglas Adams' 42 - the answer to "life the universe and everything".

A final note to those who decide to read this book, no need to Google Gertizoon font, or Dragon-Song Chronicles. I already did so. They were invented for this story.

Like a Virgin - by Aarathi Prasad

I had a bit of trouble concentrating while I was reading this one, not because of the sexual subject matter, but rather because it gave me an earworm. Much as I like Madonna, hearing the refrain of one song over and over in my head was pretty distracting.

This was a fascinating book though, explaining how different organisms reproduce, including those who do so asexually. Discussions of cloning mammals, and advances in fertility treatments demonstrate that a human virgin birth is probably not far outside the realm of possibility, perhaps in the very near future.

There were also two noteworthy things for the "Library Books" blog. One mention that the sequencing of human DNA "has provided a library of essential biological information". If there had been nothing else in this book to blog about here, it might not have even gotten an entry, but in addition to libraries in books, any time I find information about banned books I have to comment. Book banning is a time-honored tradition, which appears to go back as long as there have been books. I can even imagine Neanderthals chipping away someone else's cave drawings in order to put up a "more accurate" or even "less offensive" version of events. The banned book in question here is Aristotle's Masterpiece, or, The Works of Aristotle. This book was, in fact, not written by Aristotle, but includes some of his ideas, as well as others', and was banned in the UK from the 18th through the mid 20th century, when it became available in 1960.

The book includes descriptions of midwifery, female reproductive organs, and all things related to sex and embryos...In the United States...[it] was much more accepted. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, it was the most commonly read medical text-despite the arrival of new microscopes, dissection tables, and complex experimentation, which completely contradicted the book's depictions of the workings of reproduction.

Never let science get in the way of education. Such things are still taking place today as creationists make their religious viewpoints the focal points of science classes, even in public schools.

Overbite-by Meg Cabot

It became immediately evident to me that this book was a sequel to something else (Insatiable, as it turns out). Since I had only grabbed it for light reading on a train ride I figured it wouldn't matter much that I had not read the first book in the series, and it didn't. Cabot managed to keep this newbie up to speed, but did not pique my interest enough to want to go back and read the first book, even though there were two of my favorite things in this novel: vampires and libraries. Many of the former, several of the latter.

Meena Harper works for the Palatine Guard - a super secret organization that seeks to eliminate vampires and other demons. Her job is complicated by the fact that her ex-boyfriend, Lucien Antonescu, is the son of Dracula. Antonescu manages to track Harper down even though she moved without leaving a forwarding address, even going so far as to cancel her library card (desperate times)!  Harper, however, has access to other libraries including the Vatican Library's Secret Archives (the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana). The archives include a Book of hours which belonged to her ex's mother (who is rumored to have been an angel), and which is used to lure him from hiding. Everyone knows if you want to catch a demon, a book is indeed the best bait! What could be more irresistible than words on a page!

Meena also makes use of the Palatine research library, apparently so much so that her physical strength is compromised because she skips the gym on too many occasions to make use of the library, making fighting off a new born vampire a challenge.

A good book for passing the time on a too-long train ride.

Banned Books Week: The Complete Persepolis - by Marjane Satrapi

This graphic memoir that tells the author's story of growing up during Iran's Islamic Revolution got a lot of coverage in March and April of this year when it was banned in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) for its graphic images of torture. While denying it banned the books CPS did say it ordered the book removed from seventh grade curriculum and classrooms. Hmmm...let's take a look at the American Library Association definition of  banning

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group.  A banning is the removal of those materials.  Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum (emphasis mine) or library, thereby restricting the access of others.  Due to the commitment of librarians, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens, most challenges are unsuccessful and most materials are retained in the school curriculum or library collection.

Like Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 there is true irony in the challenge of this work in that part of it treats the issues of loss of information as well as the censorship of ideas. As a young schoolgirl Marjane is confused when she is told to tear all the pictures of the Shah from her schoolbooks; and finds her dreams of visiting the United States and going to University dashed when the US Embassy is occupied and hostages are taken. All the Universities were closed for two years while books at "all levels" were revised so as not to lead young people "astray from the true path of Islam".

The book also specifically tells of Marjane getting information from a library on at least two occasions. In one her father goes to the library and brings back three books that she reads in a matter of ten days: The Secrets of the CIA; Freemasonry in Iran; and The Memoirs of Mossagegh. In the other, she and her husband spend the summer in museums and libraries researching mythological heroes in order to design a theme park in Tehran, a plan which never is implemented.

Find out more about this controversy

Chicago Public Schools denies it banned the book "Persepolis"

Persepolis Stays in Chicago Public Schools but out of Classrooms

Watch March 18, 2013 - Controversy Over "Persepolis" on PBS. See more from Chicago Tonight.

Banned Books Week - The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

I have a clear memory of myself, as a college student who had recently been introduced to feminism and feminist literature, picking this book off of a cart of new stock at the bookstore where I worked and being drawn in by the cover illustration. Why were those nuns wearing red habits? The description on the back cover of a dystopian world intrigued me. The story stayed with me long after I read it. Some books are pure escape, and even if I remember that I read them, I don't always remember what they were about, but this one haunted me. Each time I've read it (this was at least my fouth go round) I've experienced a new realization that the world is growing ever closer to the chilling reality faced by the narrator, Handmaid Offred. In this day of "legitmate rape" arguments as an excuse for the constant picking away at women's rights to birth control and abortion, and "Islamic fanatic" blaming, this books hits dangerously close to home.

My most recent revisit of this work, in honor of banned books week, was prompted by this article which mentions that it has a book burning scene (which I had not remembered) and which, ironically, takes place in the "time before" and, in fact, our narrator actually participated in the destruction herself. It must have been some time since I last read this. Surely I have not read it since my now 16-year-old daughter was born, before I moved to Massachusetts. I don't recall having the same "triggers" I felt while reading it this time around. The loss felt by Offred when her daughter was taken from her, and the realization that the story takes place in Boston, only about 30 miles from where I now live, prompted me to have a lot more to say than I might have.

When I became a mother, I became a "Mom" to the rest of the world. "You're Paloma's Mom" people would say, or "the Moms can wait over there" once our roles of chauffeur to whatever event had been fulfilled. I found out that some foods were "Mom approved" as were some activities, and others weren't. I couldn't quite put my finger on why all of this creeped me out. I didn't mind my daughter calling me "Mom" as an endearment, but I really resented that to others "Mom" was the only thing that identified me. In The Handmaid's Tale I noticed that women were only defined by one role: Wife, Martha, Handmaid, Aunt. Each of these was capitalized no matter where it fell in the sentence, and whether it was being used as a title or not. However, the same was not true of the men. Some of them had multiple roles, so they could be a husband, (with a small "h") as well as a Commander, and have a first name. I guess I saw the use of "Mom" as a stripping away of my other identities: my first name; my profession as a librarian; my roles as wife, daughter, sister, world traveler, beer brewer, recorder player...

Reading this work again in a post-Boston-Marathon-bombing world, a world in which "if you see something, say something" has created at least three different situations on my campus in which an unattended backpack was reported to police within a one-week period, the "you can never be too safe" cry really resonates. Imagine, a backpack on a college campus! Sound the alarm! I, frankly, did not feel especially safe when one of the "non-bombs" prompted my own street to be cordoned off. It is truly disconcerting to have a police officer tell you that you cannot enter your own home. Following these incidents backpacks were banned at my university's graduation ceremony.

Our narrator explains that during the transition from the "time before" to her present that "newspapers were censored and some were closed down for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful." The Handmaids are told by the Aunts there is "freedom to and freedom from". They had experienced "freedom to" before, "in the days of anarchy" now they would experience "freedom from". Of course the Aunts meant they would experience freedom from objectification, and freedom from pornography, but the Handmaids also experienced freedom from ever having to think for themselves again, from getting to read or write, from feeling loved. And they actually didn't get to experience "freedom from" objectification either.

There is also a more surreal aspect to reading the book this time around. Previously, I felt as if I was reading about a time in the not-too-distant future, but this time it felt more like reading about a future-that-was-already-passed. Much like reading Orwell's 1984 now would feel. It is hard to tell what time period for the work is set in. It was written in the 1980s, and references to any decade stop in the 1990s. It is hard to ascertain since the author could not have known about DVDs or cell phones and other technologies that came just after the publication of the work. Are they not mentioned because their time had come and gone, or because Atwood could not have imagined such things? Paper money is not used at all, all commercial transactions are electronic, but Polaroid pictures still exist. The Epilogue, which takes place in the year 2195, refers to the story being found on a cassette tapes, and specifically says such tapes became obsolete in the '80s or '90s, after CDs became popular, and a machine having to be made that could play such devices. This makes reading it a bit more eerie than the first few times I read it.

Loss of information is a definite theme in this work. Reading or writing anything is forbidden for women, so that even playing a game of scrabble becomes an illicit fling.

The Commander has his own library, although the word is not used. It is the place where he summons his Handmaid to come and meet him clandestinely through a signal from his chauffeur, Nick. Offred wonders what Nick gets out of it

How does he feel, pimping in this ambiguous way for the Commander? Does it fill him with disgust, or make him want more of me, want me more? Because he has no idea what really goes on in there, among the books. Acts of perversion, for all he knows. The Commander and me, covering each other with ink, licking it off, or making love on stacks of forbidden newsprint.

The Commander explains to Offred why it is okay for some to read, but not others. His reasoning is something I hear often. Certain materials can fall into the "wrong hands". The censors, however, are able to handle the information.

"'What's dangerous in the hands of the multitudes', he said, with what may or may not have been irony, 'is safe enough for those whose motives are...'

'Beyond reproach' I said."

Even the Bible is edited, and changed.

Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed be the meek. Blessed are the silent. I knew they made that up, I knew it was wrong, and they left things out, too, but there was no way of checking.

Because, as Offred explains, the Bible in the Commander's home is kept locked up. "It is an incendiary device: who knows what we'd make of it, if we ever got our hands on it? We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read."

Offred's mother was a feminist. She was a single mother by choice, protested at anti-abortion rallys,  and gave her daughter a "pop up book of sexual organs by the time [she] was four". She burned porn magazines  and brought her daughter along to the burning. The censorship of pornography is one place where the continuum of liberal and conservative will sometimes come together. Religious Right and Feminist Left make strange bedfellows here.There are those in the religious right who would have burned the pop up books as well. Those who are burning the magazines are described in terms such as "ecstatic","happy", "cheerful". The event is likened to Christmas. A holiday. The Commander allows Offred to read some of the forbidden artifacts from "the time before" during their secret meetings and she tells us that "The Vogue magazine should have been destroyed. There were house-to-house searches, bonfires..." Again, we see both the right and left wings using the same tactic: burning what they don't like.Who gets to decide? What information are we willing to be "free from".

Much of the setting is in and around the area of Harvard Square, which I doubt I would have fully realized on any of the other times I read this book. Harvard University has become some kind of government headquarters. The University Library itself has become a place for a different sort of enlightenment.

We file onto the wide lawn in front of what used to be the library. The white steps going up are the same, the main entrance is unaltered. There's a wooden stage erected on the lawn, something like the one they used every spring, for commencement, in the time before....But this stage is not the same after all, because of the three wooden posts that stand on it, with loops of rope.

Offred and her denizens are forced to watch as three of their own become object lessons. Earlier in the book she describes the library as she remembered it from "the time before" as a "temple".

The Handmaid worked in a library in her previous life. She transferred books to computer discs "to cut down on storage space and replacement costs".

Discers, we called oursevles. We called the library a discotheque... After the books were transferred they were supposed to go to the shredder..."

Offred, along with all the other women who worked in the library were dismissed en masse. The Library director had told them "If there's any trouble the books might be lost". Of course all the books were lost anyway.

Again, I have to imagine what Atwood thinks about what all the advances in technology would bring. Today e-books aren't stored on discs, they are in the ether of cyberspace. I even read The Handmaid's Tale in electronic format which I borrowed from my public library. In an expected, yet almost unreal twist, it disappeared from my iPad after seven days.

Those who say libraries don't matter because everything is online do not understand that once everything is online it is easier to control. The Chinese and Cuban governments already know this. Searching Google in China results in many links that are "unavailable". Cubans simply don't have access to the internet.

Like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 the banning of this book is truly ironic. The Handmaid's Tale has been challenged on grounds of being anti-Christian, sexually explicit, and violent. One parent in Guilford County, North Carolina had this to say about the book "I was not happy with what I found because I did not find anything inspirational, anything to help our young people." Find out more here. While I concede that the book does denigrate a certain type of Christian (those who would wield their riches and power over those less fortunate hmmmm.....), and is sexually explicit as well as violent, but un-inspirational? My goodness, it inspired me to write one of my longest blog posts yet! Last week the Guilford County School Board voted to retain the book on the reading list.

The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You to Read - edited by Tim Leedom

The title of this work isn't entirely accurate for those of us of the Unitarian Universalist persuasion. I doubt there is any book my church would discourage me from reading, and if there were, I would most certainly put such a work at the very top of my reading list.

Leedom's book is a collection of essays that explores the history of Judeo-Christian mythology (news flash: Bible stories are rehashed from pagan traditions); and points out some serious inconsistencies in the Bible. As well it looks at some contemporary church issues such as clergy sexual abuse, women's role in religious life, and the separation of church and state. The book was published about 20 years ago, but I was interested to see that these issues were all still such hot topics. This passage in particular resonated in light of recent news stories

The sort of moral considerations that could quite properly be incorporated into a [sex education program] are those indicated by common sense, social custom, and practicality. Young boys, to give specific instance, must be taught that they have no right to force their sexual attentions on anyone else, that to persist in doing so is called rape, and that it is a grave crime, punishable by imprisonment, in our society. Furthermore, it should be explained to immature boys that rape is wrong not simply because it is illegal but also because it is a cruel violation of the Golden Rule.

Libraries were mentioned throughout the work in several different ways. Since this book was published "pre-Google" there are a few places where the authors suggest going to the library to look things up (e.g. in a Bible Concordance) that can now easily found online. The discussion of the the Dead Sea Scrolls mentions two libraries that were integral to the dissemination of the scrolls for today's scholars. The first was the "hidden" library of the Essene community of Qumran (AD 132-135). The library was hidden to protect it from the Romans who were "invading the land of Judea and...destroying everything in their path". The scrolls were eventually discovered in 1947 and in 1980s, the Huntington Library "which had a microfilm copy of the Scroll fragments, decided to make it openly available to scholars". The stories the scrolls tell, in some cases, contradict traditional Christian teachings.

A section of the book about the Religious Right (RR) in America includes a political agenda item from the RR from each state for the year 1994. Many of these involved the public education system, and several targeted books and/or libraries

• In Jacksonville, Florida "a group called Liberty and Justice for All attempted to ban The Autobiography of Malcolm X from all school libraries claiming that the book teaches children to be drug dealers and contains anti-white racism."
• In Georgia "the House passed HB 1950 which required "that library materials be reviewed by a local media committee if 1% or 500 community residents objected to it."
• In my own home state of Maryland the Wicomico County Free Library was the target of two attempted book bans involving children's books with homosexual themes: Heather has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate. The Library's Board ultimately voted overwhelmingly to keep the books.
• And in Washington State The Washington Alliance of Families successfully lobbied to remove Jane Smiley's book A Thousand Acres from the Lyndon High School curriculum.

An essay by Austin Miles, critiquing the tax-free status of churches, begins with this description

As a guide said to me in a richly furnished, gold-leafed monastery and library outside Vienna, "this monastery was built by other than "Christian" means, indicating that "Christian" should stand for something good and honorable. It does not-the ghosts of Christianity's victims will forever haunt the universe. 

I learned a lot about the Bible by reading this book. Since I didn't actually know much about it before I started it went a long way in providing me with some "biblical literacy". However, I imagine that many of those who claim to have more biblical knowledge will likely learn as much as I did. This book will certainly give them plenty to ponder in any case.