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Who is rescuing whom? The writers or the readers?
The latest installment in our occasional series of blog posts from friends of HoCoPoLitSo. Today Patricia VanAmburg, poet and professor of English at Howard Community College, writes of the power of sharing in literature and asks a ‘simple’ question:
Four thousand years ago, the Sumerians immortalized their king Gilgamesh (and their civilization) by telling his story. This has been a universal phenomenon. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to work with American poet Galway Kinnel, who defined poetry as “rescue work in time.” Broadening that definition to encompass all literature, I sometimes ask students what gets “rescued” in a poem or story.
They always guess the writer first and the reader second. Innately we know the healing quality of sharing our feelings and the relief in knowing someone else has felt or struggled with some of our own issues. Finally though, students realize that something even bigger gets rescued—the microcosm of a single event—the macrocosm of human experience.
We all belong to communities whose stories are important on local and global levels. Turkish writer and Nobel prizewinner Orhan Pamuk said in his 2006 acceptance speech: “The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature’s eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people’s stories, and to tell other people’s stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other people’s stories and books.” Through the words of other writers, I have come to visualize literature as a flowing infinity symbol—the connection between teller and listener—the connection between individual and community. What literature connects you?
Patricia VanAmburg
Poet and professor of English
Howard Community College
The HoCoPoLitSo board of directors constantly thinks of how literature connects with the community, and how we can share those words with our audiences. But we thought a few book recommendations – especially at this time of year and considering the recent tragedies in our country – would be apropos.
What follows is a quick list of some of our board members and staff and the books they’re thinking of at this time:
- Tara Hart, board co-chair, recently sent her nephew, a veteran, a copy of Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam classic, The Things They Carried.
- Tim Singleton, board co-chair, reaches for Donald Hall’s Without, elegiac poems written of the dying of his wife, Jane Kenyon, that share the idea that one can let go, hold, carry on.
- Pam Simonson, HoCoPoLitSo’s managing director, is reading Elizabeth Spires’ Now the Green Blade Rises: Poems. Spires’ poems about her mother’s death are moving and comforting, as well as full of hope, when hope feels distant, Simonson says.
- Kathy Larson, treasurer, says she has read The Secret Garden, by Frances Burnett, many times, and “come away with a renewed appreciation for fresh air and sunshine and the healing power of nature.”
- Susan Thornton Hobby, secretary of the board, loves Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems, with the line: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” from the poem “The Summer Day.”
- Laura Yoo, board member at large, found comfort in the collected works of Emily Dickinson when she had a sudden death in the family.
We’d love to hear what literature connects you. Feel free to comment below.
Two Points of View on The Year’s Writer-In-Residence — Derrick Weston Brown
Guest bloggers Joyce Braga and Sam Rubin share their experiences of this year’s Writer-in-Residence in the Howard County Public School System, Derrick Weston Brown.
His poems have swagger, but the poet
remains introspective
Derrick Weston Brown
As the high school liaison for HoCoPoLitSo’s writer-in-residence, I’ve guided many poets around Howard County high schools. After I e-mailed Derrick Weston Brown, this year’s writer-in-residence. I prepared myself for our first meeting, scheduled for Nov. 12 at Oakland Mills High School, by reading his biography and his on-line interviews. I expected the usual poet—a little bit of a performer, a lot of ego and touch of swagger. I looked at the picture of Derrick Weston Brown, and knew I was right. But I was wrong, and in a good way.
I met Derrick at the school front desk. I rattled off instructions: Here’s the packet, here are your poems, sign the book, here’s the room. Oh, and please tell me how you want me to introduce you. Derrick seemed surprised, almost shy about telling me his accomplishments.
When Derrick began rather softly to read, I soon discovered why. He’s a very introspective individual. He thinks very deeply about life. He lets the students know “life’s a journey” and not always an easy one. He’s been writing since he was a child. Even with a masters’ degree in writing, getting published was a struggle for him.
As Derrick spoke, the students were fascinated, and so was I. He told the students he likes to eavesdrop on people, and I too felt a little voyeuristic in the classroom, listening to his stories. Rather than giving students his biography, Derrick uses poetry to tell his audience about himself.
As he read, I learned more about Derrick. One poem was dedicated to his father, called “Legacy.” Another was about his mother, called “Mother to Son.” And one poem, which was hard for him to read, was called “Forgiveness.” It was about him belittling a schoolmate. He told the class he’s still looking for that girl. He wants to ask forgiveness.
With each new visit I hope to discover a little bit more about Derrick Weston Brown. I now know he’s not shy, he just likes to let his poems talk for him.
Joyce Braga
volunteer liaison for
the writer-in-residence program
For Oakland Mills High students,
Brown’s words are supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
As I sat down at the November 12th Derrick Weston Brown presentation at Oakland Mills High School, I truly had no idea what to expect. Shortly after my arrival students started piling in, filling row after row. When Derrick started his presentation, he did not start with a poem or an introduction, rather he started it with a few questions to the class. “Who likes poetry?” he asked first. The audience seemed indifferent. “Who could care less about poetry?” A few went up.
“Who hates poetry?” A few more hands hit the air. “Who likes to write poetry?” A couple of hands rose tentatively.
The questions were a great way to grab the attention of the students, who perhaps did not care about this random writer they had never heard of standing in front of the room.
As the event went on, Derrick read his work, he asked and answered questions and it seemed like he, as well as the students, were having a good time. However, it was not the poetry alone that made the program so enjoyable. Derrick’s interactions with the students seemed so natural and so unplanned that it allowed the flow of the presentation to move artlessly.
One interaction in particular stuck in my mind and I believe will stick in the mind of every audience member at the reading. Derrick asked the students for ten words. After he compiled the list of words, Derrick recited a freestyle improvisation, something he might call an “off the dome” poem. It was an elegant piece, into which he somehow fit “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Just as in any class, only a select number of students raised their hands to answer and or ask questions, but perhaps a few more hands will go up next time someone asks “Who likes poetry?”
Sam Rubin
HoCoPoLitSo’s intern
Atholton High School
Gwendolyn Brooks — Watch a Treasure from HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life Archive Now Online
In this edition of HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing life, revered American poet Gwendolyn Brooks sat down in 1986 to talk with Alan Jabbour, director of the Library of Congress’ American Folklore division, and E. Ethelbert Miller, poet and director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University.
Brooks was the Library of Congress’ 29th consultant in poetry, and tells the story in this program of winning the Pulitzer at age 32, and getting the phone call in the dark because the electric company had cut off their power because they couldn’t afford to pay the bill. She recites “We Real Cool,” a poem she says has lasted because of its “insouciance and staccato effect.” She talks about her introduction to black nationalism, feminism and James Baldwin. Brooks says, “I like for blacks to be proud of what they have come from. They need to learn they have much to be proud of.”
HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life archives, featuring contemporary writers in conversation with other writers, are being digitized and put online as a resource for the world over. As with any such project, this effort can use your support. If you are willing and able, please make a donation to HoCoPoLitSo to ensure the continued success of this project and its contribution to the world’s literary heritage. Thank you.
HoCoPoLitSo to Welcome Colum McCann to the 35th Irish Evening – Tickets now on sale.
Colum McCann. Photo by Brendan Bourke.
The international award winning author Colum McCann is HoCoPoLitSo’s guest for its 35th Annual Irish Evening at 7:30 pm, March 1, 2013 at the Smith Theater, Horowitz Center for Visual and Performing Arts on the campus of Howard Community College.
General Admission Tickets are available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/287811 or by sending a check payable and mailed to HoCoPoLitSo, 10901 Little Patuxent Parkway, DH 239, Columbia, MD 21044. Tickets purchased before Feb. 1, 2013 are $30 each, $35 if purchased after Feb. 2.
So Many Stories to Be Told: An Evening with Colum McCann will highlight this major voice in today’s literary landscape’s with a discussion of his National Book Award winning novel Let the Great World Spin and his upcoming novel, Transatlantic, due out in late 2013.
McCann’s reading will be followed by Narrowbacks, Eileen Korn, Jesse Winch, Terence Winch, Linda Hickman, and Brendan Mulvihill on fiddle in a concert of traditional Irish music with stepdancers from the Culkin School.
McCann, a two-time winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the most lucrative literary award in the world, has published 5 novels and numerous short stories and articles. In 2003 McCann was named Esquire Magazine’s “Best and Brightest” young novelist. He has also been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Novel of the Year Award and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame.
McCann follows other great Irish authors who have come to Howard County including Frank McCourt, Eavan Boland, Hugo Hamilton, Colm Tóibín, Paul Durcan and Paula Meehan to name a few. For years, HoCoPoLitSo’s Irish Evening has recognized and celebrated the enormous impact of Irish-born writers on the world of contemporary literature.
The Dodge Poetry Festival Leaves One Asking, “More Bread, Please!”
The latest installment in our occasional series of blog posts from friends of HoCoPoLitSo. Today Ryna May, Associate Professor of English at Howard Community College, writes of her experience at the recent Dodge Poetry Festival.…
Poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
– Roque Dalton
Natasha Tretheway. Photo by Dodge Poetry Festival. Click on the image to view more photos from the 2012 Dodge Poetry Festival.
The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival once again transformed downtown Newark, New Jersey, into a “poetry village” for a few days in October. The bi-annual festival has been going strong since 1986, though longtime supporters have noticed a different energy since the festival left its traditional home in Waterloo Village.
But one thing has not changed: This remains the Super Bowl of Poetry. There is no other event like this festival, where the old meets the new, where high school students cheer wildly for words, and where the teeming energy of a giant hall of people morphs into a single, quiet heartbeat. Where Natasha Trethewey, the newly minted poet laureate, shares a stage with Amiri Baraka. Where Philip Levine and Dorianne Laux teach us about the lyrical nobility of work. Where aspiring poets, old and young, hang onto every word as if it is bread, as if it is life-giving manna.
The festival is more than a poetry reading, more than an event. It is a pilgrimage to sit at the feet of poets like Taylor Mali, to hear him recite “Like Lily Like Wilson.” It is the chance to be completely surprised by a brand new poet like Emari DiGiorgio and come to your feet when she finishes “Lady Liberty.” It is the chance to be inspired by Jane Hirshfield, who tells us that poetry gives us a voice, gives us courage to face the challenges that life puts before us.
Okay, so poetry isn’t life itself, but it is a way to experience life, a way to see the world and describe it and make meaning out of it. You can only see this, can only feel this at the festival. It isn’t quite Brigadoon, but it has that quality of stepping out of one world and into another. And if you experience it, you will be changed. This event is for everyone, and everyone should experience the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival at least once. If you go once, I promise you will want more.
— Ryna May
Associate professor of English,
Howard Community College
The Dodge Poetry Festival has occurred every other year for more than two decades. The next one wont come along until 2014, plenty of time to plan attending. In the meantime, click here to view their video archive of poets reading their work at past Festivals for a taste of the bread ahead.
“Are you on TV or something?” Maryland Crabs with Writers Edward P. Jones and E. Ethelbert Miller
The latest installment in our occasional series of blog posts from members of the HoCoPoLitSo board.…
I first met Edward P. Jones in 1994 when he accepted an invitation from HoCoPoLitSo to come to Columbia to read for Howard County residents. His first book, one of short stories about the invisible people of non-tourist Washington, Lost in the City, had been receiving wide acclaim. It was my job to drive him from his hotel to the reading venue. He wrote in my copy of Lost in the City, “Thanks for escorting me around. This has been one of the best days I have had in a long time.”
Our next meeting was in 2005 when he read for us from his ground breaking novel The Known World. He had read to an appreciative audience on the campus of Howard Community College on a Friday night and stayed over to appear for a taping of HoCoPoLitSo’s literary program, The Writing Life the next day. He was to be interviewed by poet, E. Ethelbert Miller.
Saturday morning, I picked up Jones at the Columbia Sheraton to drive him to HCC campus for the taping. On the way, he asked me if I knew a place where we could stop and get some steamed crabs later on. He said he doesn’t get to visit Maryland often but when he does, he makes it a point to buy some crabs. So, while Miller and Jones went into taping, I left the studio to call my wife to ask about a crab place. She told me that there was an excellent place just off Route 1 in Laurel that served the best crabs between Columbia and DC, the Bottom of the Bay.
When the taping was over, Jones, Miller and I got into my car for the trip to Laurel. We found the restaurant with no trouble. It was in an unremarkable strip mall and had both a sit-down restaurant and a carryout store which doubled as a convenience store with the usual fare that convenience stores carry – beef jerky, chips, soda, cigarettes, chewing tobacco and cold beer and cheap wine.
We placed our order of one dozen crabs and asked that they be seasoned with Old Bay. While we waited, Jones called our attention to the beef jerky on the display and noted that he had never tasted it and wanted to know if either Miller or I had. We both shook our heads “no” and chuckled.
While we waited for Jones’ order of crabs, two young men perhaps in their late twenties entered the store to buy some beer. One of the men turned to us and asked, “Aren’t you somebody important, or something?”
Being the “host”, I thought I should be the one to answer, so I said, “This is Edward P. Jones and this is E. Ethelbert Miller. They’re both poets.”
The other man asked, “Are you on TV or something?”
I replied, “They just finished taping a TV show, but they do not have a regular program.”
The young man followed with, “We don’t see folks around here in suits that much, so I thought you were, like, you know, somebody really important.”
At that moment, the man behind the counter announced our order was ready.
I grabbed the steaming bag of crabs from the counter and said to the young men, “Well, we are sorry to disappoint you.”
We left the store, got into my car, and headed for DC. Miller asked Jones if he was going to eat all of those crabs by himself. Jones said, “Not in one sitting; but by Sunday evening they should be all gone.” Miller and I laughed, knowingly and perhaps a little enviously.
By David Barrett
Ex-Officio, HoCoPoLitSo Board
- Watch Edward P. Jones and E. Ethelbert Miller in conversation on HoCoPoLitSo’s The Writing Life.
Pictured above at the taping of The Writing Life ( left to right, back row to front): David Barrett, Ellen Conroy Kennedy, Tara Hart, Edward P. Jones and E. Ethelbert Miller.
Poems of Pain, Times of Joy — Toi Derricotte and Lucille Clifton
Toi Derricotte
Toi Derricotte’s poems speak pain plainly. A wince from long ago when her father dangled her by her hair for failing to clean her plate. The deep ache of her grandmother trying to pass for white in Saks Fifth Avenue in the 1940s. And the torment of insomnia – wee hours of the morning full of anything but sleep: raw nerves, to-do lists, stubborn grudges.
In her poem “Invisible Dreams”, Derricotte’s lines embody insomnia, give it a color (rust), map out the suffering of leaden bones, name the smell of an ocean of decay.
Derricotte has an ability to take the personal and make it, if not universal – there are a few who blissfully sleep through every lucky night—then open to many. Born a light-skinned African-American girl with “good hair” into a family of undertakers, Derricotte started writing poetry at age 10. She now teaches English at the University of Pittsburgh and has written five acclaimed books of poetry and a memoir, The Black Notebooks. Just this year, she won the PEN/Voelcker Poetry Prize.
Poet Sharon Olds has called her work “vibrant poems, poems in the voice of the living creature, the one who escaped—and paused, and turned back, and saw, and cried out. This is one of the most beautiful and necessary voices in American poetry today.”
On Nov. 2, Derricotte will read her work and talk about the legacy of the late poet Lucille Clifton in HoCoPoLitSo’s opening event for the fall, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Series. We’ve called the event “Good Times”, after one of Clifton’s famous poems of dancing in the kitchen when the rent is paid and the electricity is back on. While we probably won’t be dancing (though who knows?), we will celebrate the power and light of Lucille Clifton, who was HoCoPoLitSo’s artistic advisor for years and taught many poetry workshops at Cave Canem, the writers’ retreat program Derricotte co-founded. A new collection of Clifton’s poetry – a sturdy volume with many previously unpublished poems – came out last month and it reveals plainly the pain and joy in Clifton’s work.
Clifton and Derricotte both write about painful subjects – child abuse, history, family ties, racism – and they knew each other well. One of the things Derricotte admired about Clifton was her endurance. She writes: “In her poetry Lucille Clifton models survival for all of us with toughness and humor. And I don’t mean just physical endurance. I mean the ability to prevail over the many things that are able to kill body and spirit. The poets who manage to keep writing reveal this attribute in their lives and their work.”
Derricotte, also, has survived to write her own poems of prevailing over things that want to kill body and spirit. Heavily influenced by the confessional poetry of Sylvia Plath, Derricotte writes personal poetry. And much of it is painful – working out abuse by her parents and rage over that kind of childhood. But her latest collection, The Undertaker’s Daughter, seems to work through the anger at her parents and ends with glimpses of joy and peace.
As she writes in a poem “After a Reading at a Black College,” from her collection Tender, which won the Patterson Prize, “Poems do that sometimes, take/ the craziness and salvage some/ small clear part of the soul, / and that is why, though frightened, / I don’t stop the spirit.”
On Nov. 2, join HoCoPoLitSo for good times in this time of craziness, to help salvage our spirits with poetry, sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, from Derricotte and Clifton.
— Susan Thornton Hobby
Tickets for the event, Friday, Nov. 2, at 8 p.m. in the Monteabaro Recital Hall (HCC campus), are available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/280070. Admission is $15, and $10 for seniors and students. For information, call 443-518-4568.
La poesie vit d’insomnie perpetuelle
—René Char
There’s a sickness in me. During
the night I wake up & it’s brought
a stain into my mouth, as if
an ocean has risen & left back
a stink on the rocks of my teeth.
I stink. My mouth is ugly, human
stink. A color like rust
is in me. I can’t get rid of it.
It rises after I
brush my teeth, a taste
like iron. In the
night, left like a dream,
a caustic light
washing over the insides of me.
*
What to do with my arms? They
coil out of my body
like snakes.
They branch & spit.
I want to shake myself
until they fall like withered
roots; until
they bend the right way—
until I fit in them,
or they in me.
I have to lay them down as
carefully as an old wedding dress,
I have to fold them
like the arms of someone dead.
The house is quiet; all
night I struggle. All
because of my arms,
which have no peace!
*
I’m a martyr, a girl who’s been dead
two thousand years. I turn
on my left side, like one comfortable
after a long, hard death.
The angels look down
tenderly. “She’s sleeping,” they say
& pass me by. But
all night, I am passing
in & out of my body
on my naked feet.
*
I’m awake when I’m sleeping & I’m
sleeping when I’m awake, & no one
knows, not even me, for my eyes
are closed to myself.
I think I am thinking I see
a man beside me, & he thinks
in his sleep that I’m awake
writing. I hear a pen scratch
a paper. There is some idea
I think is clever: I want to
capture myself in a book.
*
I have to make a
place for my body in
my body. I’m like a
dog pawing a blanket
on the floor. I have to
turn & twist myself
like a rag until I
can smell myself in myself.
I’m sweating; the water is
pouring out of me
like silver. I put my head
in the crook of my arm
like a brilliant moon.
*
The bones of my left foot
are too heavy on the bones
of my right. They
lie still for a little while,
sleeping, but soon they
bruise each other like
angry twins. Then
the bones of my right foot
command the bones of my left
to climb down.
— Toi Derricott
HoCoPoLitSo Welcomes 2012 PEN/Voelcker Winner for Poetry
Toi Derricotte Celebrates Lucille Clifton
Photo by Seishi Tsutsumi
Toi Derricotte, 2012 PEN/Voelcker Winner for Poetry, will read for HoCoPoLitSo 8 pm, November 2, at the Horowitz Center for Visual and Performing Arts’ Monteaboro Recital Hall on the Howard Community College campus.
Tickets are available $15 to the general public; $10 for students and senior citizens. Credit card orders are available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/280070.
Good Times: Toi Derricotte Celebrates Poetry and Lucille Clifton celebrates distinguished poet and University of Pittsburgh professor Derricotte’s recent work, The Undertaker’s Daughter, and Lucille Clifton’s influence on Derricotte’s work.
“We are proud to welcome back Toi to read for HoCoPoLitSo and celebrate our good friend and former board member, Lucille Clifton,” said Dr. Tara Hart, Co-Chair, HoCoPoLitSo.
“Lucille was a personal friend and also a supporter of other poets’ work,” Derricotte said, reflecting upon the personal impact Clifton had on her own work, on other writers’ work and on the literary community.
Derricotte, co-founder of Cave Canem, a summer poetry workshop for African-American writers, frequently hosted Clifton who provided constructive, critical advice to young and emerging writers.
“She (Clifton) came to Cave Canem several times even when she was extremely ill, so you can imagine how grateful we all were for her presence,” Derricotte said. “She gave of herself without holding back. This, in itself, was a totally unique gift to all of us.”
Clifton (1936-2010) was a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for poetry, a former Maryland Poet Laureate, The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner, and she is scheduled to receive The Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement for poetry from the Poetry Society of America.
She left a 45-year legacy of poetry, children’s books and other writing. The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser, “provides a definitive statement about this major American poet’s career.”
Derricotte’s work, greatly influenced by Clifton, makes a statement of its own. The Undertaker’s Daughter has been hearlded as another great work from Derricotte. The Washington Post has described these “Poems that stick with you like a song that won’t stop repeating itself in your brain…”
“Derricotte’s work continues to have a profound impact on society and HoCoPoLitSo is honored to add her to the long list of distinguished, award-winning writers that have shared their work with our community,” Hart said.
For more than 38 years, HoCoPoLitSo has nurtured a love and respect for contemporary literary arts and global literary heritage in Howard County. The society sponsors live readings by authors and hosts a monthly television series, literary contest, writers-in-residence outreach programs and activities, and partners with other cultural arts societies to support the arts in Howard County, Maryland.
Poetic Lack of License
The latest installment in our occasional series of blog posts from members of the HoCoPoLitSo board.…
When it comes to HoCoPoLitSo, I follow the money via the checkbook, the budget, and the ticket sales. I also do the tax returns. In short, I’m the Treasurer.
I’m also an unofficial driver for HoCoPoLitSo. Since we like to provide the personal touch, the board members and the staff share the task of picking up or dropping off our authors at the airport or the DC Metro. It surprises me that so many of our authors, including our own Lucille Clifton who lived in Columbia, don’t drive at all.
I admit that if I lived in DC, I would seriously consider abandoning my car, but I wonder sometimes if there is something innately poetic about not owning a car or holding a drivers license. Whatever their reason for not driving, the benefit of the poetic lack of license is that it gives us another opportunity to interact with our visiting authors.
While some save their energy for the audience and just wish to ride quietly (as did Martin Espada), others prove quite talkative. On our way to the Wheaton Metro, Naomi Ayala remarked about how green Columbia was so I explained Columbia’s Open Space concept. In turn she told me about her favorite Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan.
Linda Pasten carried on a charming conversation with me despite the nail-biting circumstances of running very late as I drove her along winding back roads from Montgomery County to Columbia one rainy Friday. She surreptitiously glanced at her watch and humored me gently as I chattered away, trying to distract her from my perhaps ill-founded decision not to use the beltway.
Playing chauffeur is well worth the experience and, as Treasurer, I have to add, the cost of the gas. So I guess I’ll keep my car and the job.
By Kathy Larson
Treasurer, HoCoPoLitSo Board
Let Our Kids Read
“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents,” says author Emilie Buchwald. That’s a nice cuddly sort of sentiment, isn’t it? But she’s right. Most of us with children do read to them, almost from birth. It’s one of the best tools we have to introduce them to the vast new world around them.
We read to teach colors, shapes, letters, numbers, and textures. To teach them about animals and flowers, babies, and brothers and sisters, mommies and daddies. We read to teach them about themselves and living among others, about their world and their place in it. We read to help them learn to think. And in the process, we fervently hope – in fact it’s our duty – that we spark in them a sense of curiosity and a love of words, both so powerful that they will learn and love to read and to seek out answers on their own.
There’s an old joke about bringing up kids that goes something like this: We spend the first two years of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk. Then we spend the next sixteen trying to get them to sit down and shut up. Isn’t it more or less the same thing when, after we teach and encourage our children to explore the world through reading, we allow a book to be removed from a school curriculum or public library shelf because a vocal parent or small group in some way objects to its contents?
It happens more often that you might think. Every year, for the past thirty years, the American Library Association has recorded all reported challenges and bans of books in schools and public libraries in the United States. That’s hundreds of challenges every year. And those are only the reported ones. The ALA estimates that four out of five challenges go unreported. Most of the challenges come from well-intentioned parents trying to protect their children from some difficult idea or information. And that would be within their rights if they were protecting their children. The problem, however, is that challenges and bans might also deprive other children whose parents don’t share the same objections.
The challenging or banning of a book is akin to pulling the reading rug right out from under our kids. Take a look at the ALA’s list of frequently challenged books of the 21st century. You’ll see that along with the usual characters – Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and so on – are a host of children’s and young adult books, the very books that we should be thrilled that our children are reading.
Reading is an active process of discovery. Our children will encounter new ideas and new ways of thinking; it’s bound to happen more and more as advances in technology continue to shrink our world and move us ever closer to true globalization. If as responsible parents we embrace such encounters as teachable moments, helping our kids “enter into a dialogue” with what they are reading, instead of saying, emphatically, “NO, you can’t read that,” we will teach our children to truly think for themselves, to consider the tough questions of our world, to make it a better and more accepting place.
In a nation that bemoans the fact that our educational system and student performances are lagging behind those of other developed nations, why would we ever even consider, if we hope to regain the intellectual edge, denying our children the opportunity to think by preventing them from exploring through reading? It may not sound quite as cuddly as what Emilie Buchwald says, but what a world of good we could do if we made our children thinking “readers on the laps of their parents,” and then let them read to their hearts’ content.
The American Library Association’s 30th Anniversary Banned Books Week observance is September 30-October 6. Join your Howard County neighbors and supporters of your First Amendment rights. Celebrate your freedom to read by reading a banned book – or by sharing one with your children.
Rick Leith
Assistant Professor of English
Howard Community College
HoCoPoLitSo 