Authors of Banned Books: It’s About Insecurity of Parents

AMANPOUR: And now, we return to a vexing battle inside the United States. We have followed the recent rise for school boards banning books to supposedly protect kids from being and feeling uncomfortable. Yet, sometimes, discomfort is an avenue to growth. Michel Martin sat down to discuss this issue with the award-winning authors, Jason Reynold and Kiese Laymon, who have had both their books banned or challenged by school boards around the country.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Kiese Laymon, thank you so much for joining us.

KIESE LAYMON, AUTHOR: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: And Jason Reynolds, thank you so much for joining us.

JASON REYNOLDS, NATIONAL AMBASSADOR, YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE: Appreciate you all for having me.

MARTIN: One of the things we wanted to talk about today is the fact that books by both of you have been either banned or challenged in numerous jurisdictions around the country. Jason, two of your books have been challenged so often. They are in the top 10 most challenged books of 2020 according to the American Library Association. Some of the reasons cited for the banning of the books, “Stamped,” racism, antiracism and (INAUDIBLE). That’s the book written by you and Ibram Kendi because of author’s public statements, because of claims that the book contains selective storytelling incidents and does not encompass racism against all people. And then, “All American Boys,” and you wrote this with Brendan Kiely. Reasons banned and challenged for profanity, drug use and alcoholism and because it was thought to promote antipolice views and contain the list of topics and “too much of a sensitive matter” right now. So, the first thing I wanted to ask you, Jason Reynolds, is that, how did you first hear that this movement was happening and how did it strike you when you did hear?

REYNOLDS: I have been challenged before and banned before. I mean, you know, I have gone through this quite a few times. And so, how does I feel or how does it feel when every time it happens? It’s painful for me, right? Like, I think it’s painful for me because for a few reasons, number one, I think it make this really strange assumption that I am doing something that is harmful for young people, harmful to young people, right? It’s saying I am harming young people or that I am intending to harm young people, which, of course, would never be the case. I would never do anything to harm any young person. I would never make anything to harm any young person. And so, that feels — it offends me and it — quite honestly, it hurts my feelings, right? Like, it’s a painful thing. At the same time, it also is painful because it strips access to these books for all the young people who may need them. If you don’t want to read this book, you don’t have to read it. But to strip them completely off the shelves, to remove them from schools feels — quite frankly, it feels unloving when it comes to the way that we’re talking to our young people and it’s rooted in the fear of adults not in the fear of kids. It’s rooted in the dismissal and the disregard of the intellective of our young people. It’s rooted in the insecurity of their parents and the administrators and the politicians, right? It has nothing to actually do with the kids. And that’s the part that I think is the most frustrating.

MARTIN: When you say that kids who might need this book, too. Would you talk a little bit more about that?

REYNOLDS:  You know, you know, like the old folks where I come from, and I know, you know, the old folks talk about the prayer closet, right? These sort of secret spaces where one retreats to, to search for something bigger than themselves, right? To me, that’s what books actually do. So if you take a book like Stamped or a book like all American Boys or a book like Heavy for that matter, what can happen right, is a young person can sort of hide their secrets within the pages of that book. A young person can, you know, there’s this adage of the windows and mirrors, which we have beaten, you know, at nauseam at this point. But I actually think that it’s more interesting to think of books as both as every book being both window and mirror, right – being a window that is so clean, that it is also reflective of one’s self, right? So I can, can see myself and also go on an adventure. I can see ME for the first time (perhaps) and also move into a world or move through a world that I do not quite know. Both things happening simultaneously, right. So to take these books away from young people is to one, strip them of the possibility for said adventure, for said journey, for said discovery and also strip them of the opportunity for them to actually get to know themselves a little better.

MARTIN: So Kiese, your book, Heavy – you’ve written multiple books, but Heavy was actually banned by the Wentzville school board, which is in Western St. Charles County, Missouri and challenged by several other schools or districts. Heavy is your story Kiese. And so I’m just, forgive me, for probing. But what that feels like to have your story, a story of your life, banned or saying ‘I don’t wanna hear that.’

LAYMON: It feels incredibly humiliating, but it also feels historically black. Do you know what I mean? Like, like so many of our stories and our interiorities have been banned, whether we use that word or not. But what’s interesting is when people heard about it, a lot of my friends were cheering, right. They were like, you must feel great. And sometimes you have to play along and be like, yeah. You know, again, I feel, but it hurt my heart and I’m glad Jason opened up the possibility of us talking about heartbreak. Like it, it sort of hurts your heart when you attempt to create anything out of a rigorous love, but especially like a life. Like I’m trying to offer up ironically like a parental child relationship to the nation and talk about the folds and the things I did not wanna look at. And to have a school board or who is deemed with like educating young people, decide that me, my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my nation, my relationship with books, is obscene and pornographic. It hurt my feelings and it humiliated me greatly, and it made me angry.

MARTIN: Speaking of anger, you wrote an Instagram post that I think has gotten quite a lot of attention. Do you happen to have it in front of you and or —

LAYMON: I do.

MARTIN: Can you, would you mind?

LAYMON: I wrote, “Of course some of these parents and school boards have spent the last 22 months banning this book. If I hated my child, I’d ban Morrison, George Johnson, Jason Reynolds, and Angie Thomas too. I’d ban masks that might protect my child. I’d ban electric cars, that might help my children breathe. I’d ban CRT because it might encourage my child to see structural impediments to freedom. I’d ban any and everything that might encourage my child to see me. I’d ban voting rights. I’d ban infrastructure bills because my children do not need nor deserve clean water, streets with no potholes. And their parents do not deserve to die with dignity. I’d ban vaccines because they actually help my child not die or kill anyone else. I’d ban abortion. I’d ban Planned Parenthood. I’d ban medical and recreational marijuana while waking up drunk as a skunk, high off prescription remedies to pain. So yeah, if I hated my child, hated myself and hated the n***s who explore the textured wonder of blackness and queerness and rigor, risk love in this nation, like a writerly demon, I’d ban Heavy too. I bullsh*t you not, I’d ban Heavy too.” Sorry for the Cussing, but that’s what I said.

MARTIN: Wow. Obviously, it brought up a lot for you, but it’s interesting how you connect the banning of books or the attempts to ban or challenge books to other kinds of conservative impulses right now.

LAYMON: Yes. I think sad, you know, sad, you know, like we we’ve, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve chosen teams, some of us in this nation and I think that we’ll do anything to win – even putting our children up on the front lines or using books to harm our own children. And again, like it’s some, I think it is about the books, but I don’t think it’s about the books. You know what I mean? Like when you have similar school boards in my state, that I know also want to ban critical race theory, don’t want the children and reading heavy and literally do not want their kids to go to school with mask in the state that leads the nation in deaths for COVID, you have to understand it cannot just be about the book. Right. And so, and so what I was saying was conceding that, that, that, that, that, that post was a concession, you know, and it was a sad concession, which is that like, yes, if I did not want the best for my child, I would do those things too. I wouldn’t want ’em to wear masks. I wouldn’t want ’em to breathe clean air. I wouldn’t want ’em to drink clean water, and I wouldn’t want them to want that for every child on earth. And also wouldn’t want ’em to read Jason Reynolds because they might see themselves and worse than that, they might see me as a parent. So that’s my conjecture about the situation.

MARTIN: obviously many of the parents who are taking the stance believe they are protecting their children. I’m sure you’ve heard this, that you know, the parents or the officials or the movements that are pushing this say that they wanna protect their kids from feeling bad or feeling guilty, feeling guilty for being white, feeling uncomfortable. They feel that it promotes certain points of view that they don’t like. What do you say to that?

REYNOLDS: You know, I say that there’s a conflation of definitions. I think that there is a difference between feeling uncomfortable and being unsafe. And the truth of the matter is books don’t necessarily – these books, the books that we’re talking about in this particular moment, not necessarily making young people unsafe, right? They’re making young people a little uncomfortable. And, why is discomfort such a bad thing when discomfort is always the sort of avenue to growth, always, right? Discomfort has always been that thing that sort of, you wrestle with something. And if we have the proper framework around that discomfort, right through the educational sort of process, through facilitation, through parent child, reading together, through all these other things, then discourse can happen and then discomfort can be quelled and then growth might be on the other end of that, right. So I think it’s just a grave disservice and a weird conflation when in reality, you got black kids sitting in these classrooms that are actually made unsafe because certain because white kids or white kids’ parents won’t allow them to be a little more uncomfortable, right? Like that’s a, that’s a real thing. Do we ever question how indigenous kids feel every time they learn about Christopher Columbus, every time they got to paint of cornucopia during Thanksgiving, right. Do we ever, do we ever question what that might be like, and yet we do that every year without pause. We never, we never bat an eye. Right. But the moment that we, and that’s being fed to us as, as truth. But these but books, the thing about books is that they’re meant to sort of be landscapes and playgrounds for discourse. I’m not saying for, in my, I write fiction, my stories are meant for you to wrestle with. I’m not telling you what to think, but I do want to sort of figure out a way to perpetuate your ability to think and to feel, and to figure out where you stand on any side of any line.

MARTIN: Kiese they say they’re protecting their kids for being uncomfortable or for learning things that might make them feel bad or feel guilty. And, how do you respond to that?

LAYMON: I mean, I think that the educational experience in this nation is partially one of feeling bad for everyone involved because history is partially like an experience in the bad things we have done, right. But, I also think if if that’s the case, we cannot be selective. One needs to go through all of literature and look at all the moments in which one could feel bad. And what happens when you do that is you have no literature at all, at all. And so I’m, if that’s what they want to do, I would just encourage ’em to take it, take it to the link. Don’t just focus on queer black folks. Don’t just focus on black folks. Don’t just focus on queer people. Like focus on all the literatures that might make one feel guilty or sad or bad. And in a way I will say, you know, as a young person, I wish that my school board would’ve done that because we wouldn’t have read any of that stuff that erased me, ‘cause we would’ve been able to say, this makes me feel erased. This makes me feel completely insecure. And this makes me feel sad. Instead we had to read it and believe that it was literary and believe that to become literary we had to imitate it. So that that’s really the kindest thing I can say about it.

MARTIN: It’s interesting that in there is a long history of books being challenged or banned in schools in this country. But it just seems that the target of those challenges changes over time. I mean, you know, there are certain women writers who wrote about what it was really like to be a girl, you know – who, in earlier points had their books challenged or banned. Now it does seem very much that the experience of LGBTQ people are very much in the crosshairs, as well as books about black people. And it does seem that there’s a sort of a trend. And I wonder what that means. I don’t know how, if you have some broader theory about this?

REYNOLDS: I mean, you know, my, I do have a, I have a bit of an, an esoteric theory around it, right. I think even when I think about the great Judy Blume being band back in the day, for which you’re talking about, right – writing about girlhood in an honest way. You know, my theory is a simple one and it’s just that, beyond the obvious sort of political dynamics of it, all right, my theory is that people steal what they don’t have, right? People steal what they don’t have. If a person steals something from a store it’s cuz they don’t have the thing that they’re taking. And so if a person is stealing opportunity, possibility, intellectual freedom… If they’re stealing sort of opportunity to be better. If they’re stealing information, right. My assumption – and this is me shooting bail to these folks, right? And, and sort of in the tradition of Baldwin, right – my assumption is because they don’t have have it. They don’t have the information, they don’t have the possibility for that greatness. They don’t have, sort of the, the chops to intellectually tussle. They don’t have, right. In my mind, you’re taking something from young people because you don’t possess it in the same way that one would steal a bag of chips because you don’t have anything to eat. Right. And so that’s the way I sort of look at it, as a way to sort of figure out, how to somehow allow myself to actually pity these adults. Right. As angry as I am. I also feel sorry for them, that they can’t see that the very thing that they created has the possibility to be better than they are. And instead of allowing for that, they chop them at the knees.

MARTIN: Hmm. Kiese, you wanna, I know you wanna amen that, but –

LAYMON: I do. I wanna say amen, you know, me, well, Michel. I just wanna say, I wanna say amen. And the only thing I can add, and I’m not attempting to speak for Jason, but you know, I think every piece of art, definitely every piece of literary art created, should and can be revised. And so we’re not putting these books out with the expectation that they are containers of virtue, right. Nor that they are perfect, like the educational process itself, like they are partially wrong. But if you do not give your child an opportunity to wrestle with that wrongness, you don’t give your child an opportunity to revise, which is what so many of us who are in love of books really have to embrace, and education should be about revision. You can’t revise anything you don’t see or say you don’t see.

MARTIN: Do you see any, any, any hopefulness going forward? I know that in Kiese, in your case, the ACLU and two students have actually filed a class action lawsuit against the Wenztville school district over the ban of multiple books, including yours and Tony Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye. I’m just wondering, is there any, is there any upside in the sense that maybe it causes people to think again about what books mean? I don’t, I don’t know, Kiese?

LAYMON: Yeah. I think if, I think there’s definitely upside and again, we have to big up the librarians and the teachers who rigorously bring these books into the lives of their students. And we have to big up the students in that situation in Missouri, who, you know, I’m sure with parental help decided that they should be able to have a say in what they read and write. So I do not think that we’re losing, I actually think we’re winning, but as we know, as black folk, like winning sometimes comes with a bit of harm and humiliation. But I think that a lot of students across this country who read Jason Reynolds. I mean I’ve been to readings where the only books people have read, young people have read are Jason Reynolds’ books. Like, like that is a magic experience. And so what I’m not gonna do is allow these people to make me forget what Morrison has done to language and what Jason Reynolds is doing to language and experience of reading. So yeah, it, we are winning, but along with a lot of those wins comes some humiliating days. And I just accept that.

MARTIN: Mm, Jason, any final thoughts from you?

REYNOLDS: Lastly, I’ll just say this. I find hope because I’m one of the fortunate ones who actually gets to stand in front of these young folks. I’ve been in front of millions of kids in this country and all over the world, talking about these books and and the, these sort of complex subject matters. And 99.9, 9% of the time, they all just lean in. And when there are moments of discomfort, they have no problem raising their hands and say, and saying, I’m trying to figure out how to be better. I’m trying to figure out how to be less harmful. I wanna understand what it is you’re telling me and with love and care, we work through those things. But I’ve never had a child back out. I’ve never had a child run out. I’ve never had a child break down. It’s never, I’ve never experienced it in all the years. I’ve been doing this work. And so that’s where I find my hope. The kids are alright. The kids are alright.

MARTIN: Jason Reynolds, Kiese Laymon, thank you both so much for joining us today.

LAYMON: Thank You so much for having us, Michel.

REYNOLDS: I appreciate you, Michel. Thank you so much.