A couple of years ago, my son entered an essay contest during Banned Book Week advocating the importance of books like The Perks of a Wallflowerby Stephen Chbosky.  He won the contest!  Here is his essay, my favorite part is when he points out that it is better to learn some things through a book rather than by experience:

The challenging of Stephen Choboskys’ novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is unwarranted because the book accurately talks about issues that plague teens everywhere.  Before reading the novel over the weekend, I did not know about the different actual effects of drugs like LSD and pot, and under what circumstances they would do such damaging things.  The character Charlie is well developed in his correspondence to the unknown recipient. The reader gets the sense that they can understand why Charlie would smoke and do drugs.  It was a real eye opener to me, and the novel was an insight into what desperate and ignorant teens actually do.  Charlie’s friends, including Patrick, Sam, and his sister are not portrayed as perfect characters, but they always are there when Charlie needs them, and they are very real in the sense that they talk about their place in the world and make big and small mistakes.

Many people would miss out on the education about sex, drugs, and alcohol that no teen will learn in health class in school.  Besides, if teens don’t learn this way, the other way to learn is to actually experiment with the substances, which is generally illegal.  When you take away books like these, you take away the safe learning of teens that would otherwise damage themselves for a long time afterwards.  I did not know about this side of teen culture before reading this book, and now I have a better view of what actually happens when you smoke, drink, or do drugs. Do not ban this book.

While I was celebrating Easter on Sunday and working on my Internet connectivity on Monday, a storm was brewing about Amazon’s inexplicable deranking of several books, many in the gay and lesbian genre.  This made the books harder to find and buy.  For example, the NYT reported today that the effected books included “James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” the gay romance novel “Transgressions” and “Unfriendly Fire,” a recently published book about the government’s policies on gays in the military.”  After an avalanche of protest via Twitter and calls for a boycott of Amazon, it responded yesterday by saying that “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” caused over 57,000 books to lose their sales ranking, many of the books on health and reproductive medicine.

Independent Bookstores Give Voice and Variety

How and why this mistake occurred is still unknown.  “Ham-fisted” doesn’t explain what happened, it just describes it as bumbling which is news to no one.  One implication is clear to  me, this fiasco demonstrates the importance of independent bookstores.  When a giant megaphone dominates the marketplace, some voices can be excluded and effectively silenced. Almost always those voices are outside the mainstream.  Independent bookstores are the holders of small megaphones looking for the different opinions that society needs to hear. 

Powell’s response to #amazonfail:  in the spirit of our freedom to buy any book, Powell’s is offering a 20% discount on all internet orders over $20, just enter code #powellswin by 11:59 (PST) on April 16, 2009

We don’t need independent bookstores to tell us about James Patterson’s new book (although they need us to buy them for those easy sales), what is a necessity for a healthy society is a place for unknown authors, quirky books and controversial topics to thrive.  Otherwise, our world becomes very vanilla and knowledge of the world we live in diminishes.

This time it was the gay and lesbian genre.  Honestly, not a genre I’m particularly interested in and I’m not their target audience.  I did read a memoir years ago (I’m so sorry I can’t remember the title, it was huge and written by the “gay Nobel Laureate”) for a book group.  From the descriptions of the author’s youth, I could tell that the mother was trying very hard to provide a lovely childhood, yet the author described being miserable because he was gay in a straight society.  I asked a couple of homosexual friends if they had the same experience.  One answer struck me, a friend said it wasn’t so much the issue that he was gay, but the fact that he didn’t want to be a doctor.   I have carried the lesson of the mother working so hard to create life for her son out of love, but that she ultimately failed because it was a childhood full expectations that didn’t fit her son.  For me, it was a parenting example about unconscious expectations that ultimately has nothing to do with homosexuality, but one that I wouldn’t have learned if the door to this genre was closed.

 Which minority opinion this happened to isn’t as important as the fact that something happened at Amazon that made these books harder to find and buy.  There are still bookstores like Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia that cater to this audience, but two of the greats, A Different Light and Oscar Wilde Bookstore, are gone.  If you don’t want to be effected the shenanigans at Amazon, support your local bookstore and know that outside-the-box books in mainstream and minority genres will be nurtured.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Catcher in the Rye. Harry Potter.

Every one of these books is a literary treasure, and yet as recently as 2008 these books have been challenged for “offensive language, racism, sexuality, and anti-religious viewpoints.” What if you and your kids couldn’t read about your favorite Wizard at the public library? Or your local high school banned Mark Twain from its curriculum?

This year, take a stand against censorship. Join the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the American Library Association (ALA) in celebrating Banned Books Week 2009. From September 26 to October 3, independent bookstores across the country can host events, displays, and speakers that promote anti-censorship and raise awareness about the reality of book banning in the United States.

Start preparing now. If you are a bookseller, you can host banned book readings, hang posters and sell T-shirts, or simply make a display about banned books and why it is necessary to preserve every person’s right to read. If you’re a reader, start educating yourself about banned books, if there have been challenges in your hometown, and how you can get your local independent bookstores involved.

For lists of banned books, display ideas, and “fREADom” product order forms, visit our website .  To register your store’s events and other resources, check out http://www.bannedbooksweek.org.

Whatever your involvement, take a stand–defend your right to read.

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is the bookseller’s voice in the fight against censorship. We oppose restrictions on the freedom of speech; issue statements on significant free expression controversies; participate in legal cases involving First Amendment rights; collaborate with other groups with an interest in free speech; and provide education about the importance of free expression.