My parents' bookshelves would not have passed Danielle Smith’s book banning test

BACKGROUND: Danielle Smith is the premier of Alberta, a province in western Canada. Her government recently introduced legislation requiring local school boards to remove certain books from their shelves. Backlash ensued and the Smith government has revised the legislation. We can imagine where this might end... My thoughts are below. 

I don't have a photo of my parents' bookshelves. So here is my own shelf
of "To Be Read" books: eclectic, including children's pony books that I now read
for comfort; my e-reader (on the top) holds everything from mysteries to memoirs,
from books on the craft of writing to cookbooks, and more.

I can remember moving my finger along the spines of the books that sat on the shelves that lined the living room walls in every house we lived in during my childhood — the same teak shelves, holding the ever-growing collection of eclectic books my parents brought into the house. I was never looking for anything specific. I was exploring. What title or cover might grab my attention?

As it turned out, over the years, these are the ones that did and that I remember to this day:

• The Children’s Hour (1934) by Lillian Hellman — written as a play; the book version sat on my mother’s shelf. It had Shirley McLean and Audrey Hepburn on the cover from the 1961 film version of the story.
• Conundrum (1974) by Jan Morris — a groundbreaking memoir about gender dysphoria by a trans woman (the language used was very different back then)
• The Well of Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall — the classic novel about lesbian love ("inversion" was the term used back then)
• Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade (1955) by Patrick Dennis — about the madcap adventures of a boy growing up as the ward of his aunt who lives large and loud
• The L-Shaped Room (1960) by Lynne Reid Banks — a novel about a young woman who is unmarried and pregnant

Also on the shelves, among scores of books, was a full set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which I used often for my school homework. The family photo albums took up several shelves, as did Mum’s growing collection of literature and nonfiction about life on the Canadian prairie; she was deeply interested in women’s lives and women’s stories across the centuries.

All those books and the many many more, whether they captured my interest or not, represented the world to me. Granted, a world curated by my parents’ interests, so let’s say a world shaped by my family’s views and values — and that is at the heart of the problem with banning books, isn’t it.

If public spaces like school libraries and community libraries are asked to curate their collections to reflect the specific views and values of a sub-group of the communities they serve, those collections will inevitably be diminished. It follows that those who use the collections will have their own vision truncated before they ever have the chance to open a book that piques their curiosity for some reason. Maybe because something deep within them feels reflected in the book’s cover image (even if they cannot articulate what is being mirrored). Or maybe because they are curious and simply want to learn about a wide range of subjects and of perspectives different than their own.

I am who I am not because of the books I found on my parents’ shelves, but because they believed in books and ideas like they believed in good food and fresh air, and because those books opened the world to me — by opening my mind to ideas, to people and to possibilities I had not known about and could not imagine on my own. Of course, that is what anyone who wants to ban books is afraid of: that opening of the mind to possibilities not yet known by the child, not ever articulated by those in power or by those in decision-making roles in children’s lives.

I am lucky to have been born into, and to have grown up in, a family where ideas were discussed at the dinner table, where the adults expected the kids to think critically and to share their evolving thoughts through conversation. Books were a tool we were expected to use as thinking human beings. 

Not everyone has this advantage, this privilege, in their family of origin. Therefore, collections of books in school and community libraries must be broad and rich in their diversity. There is no better way to ensure that a 10- or 12- or 15-year-old child will learn just how varied the human experience is.

Let her run her fingers across the spines of the books on the shelves and allow her finger to stop on a title or a cover that catches her attention, captures her imagination. Teach her the skills of critical thinking and conversation to help her understand what she is reading and what it might mean for her as she grows up and figures herself out in this crazy complex world of ours.

It may take decades, but I guarantee that the books she had available to her as a 10-year-old will be a building block in her character that, over the years and with many many more books, develops clear and strong. Clear and strong enough to fight against those who would withhold those very books (or similar ones) from today’s 10-year-olds.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.