Great Michigan Read authors sound off on book banning

At the 75th annual National Book Awards on Nov. 20, Percival Everett took home the fiction prize for his novel “James,” a humorous reimagining of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Hillary Clinton — I mean Kate McKinnon — was the mistress of ceremonies. The organizers likely weren’t prescient enough to know what was coming when they booked the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member. For most authors at the event, it was a somber backdrop, knowing that proponents of book banning might take a more aggressive stance in the next four years.

Heck, “James” and “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” might be side by side on banned bookshelves nationwide.

In one of many humorous moments, McKinnon recited an inspirational treatise on the importance of books but then told the audience she got it from ChatGPT.

I recently moderated a literary discussion between seven Great Michigan Read authors who have also won Michigan Notable Book awards. The first question I asked was about the impact of the book-banning movement in the United States. Following is an edited transcript of their answers.

Beth Nguyen: I’m always fascinated by book banning because we go through so many processes of editing and revision, and just getting a book published is a huge ordeal. We should be banning people from Reddit, not books. The currency of information is crucial, and having a book filled with other people’s perspectives is a gateway to a lifetime of critical thinking, imagination and understanding.

Kevin Boyle: My book has been banned by the Texas prison system. The older I get, the thing that I find difficult is the extent to which the world is becoming more constricting for younger people. One of my great childhood memories is that my father loved to read. We would go up to the Thomas Jefferson branch of the Detroit Public Library at least once a week, and I never had a sense when I was young that there were things I wasn’t supposed to read. I find it so incredibly frustrating to imagine that young people’s worlds are now being constricted in a way that mine wasn’t.

Steve Luxenberg: Book banning invokes my inner marketer; please ban my book, it’ll sell more. I’d like to say that the front line of resistance to the banning of books is our libraries. My wife is a retired school librarian. She got requests every year from parents who wanted a book to be banned, and she had a very simple answer: no!

Kekla Magoon: As an author of books for children and young adults, this conversation impacts our field significantly because one of the major targets of book banning is schools. I wish it were true that when a book gets banned, it actually sells more, but the fact of the matter is that when books get banned or challenged, it succeeds in diminishing the awareness of those books or simply makes people afraid to buy them.

Librarians are fighting to keep books on the shelves and get books into classrooms, but a lot of times, they’re risking their jobs. When I was a kid, there were very few books that had kids like me on the cover. I distinctly remember my joy and excitement at finding Mildred D. Taylor’s ‘Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry’ on this rickety paperback rack in my middle school library because I saw this little girl who had Black skin and Black hair.

Mona Hanna: I’m just a doctor who happened to write a book. I wasn’t supposed to write a book — that wasn’t my life plan. I just kind of fell into one of the most emblematic environmental and public health crises of our time in Flint. I refused for a long time, but by pure serendipity, I met an editor at an event in Washington, D.C., and he told me about the other authors that he had helped bring to light. All those authors are on book-ban lists, and I’m kind of jealous — I want to be on a list!

I think book bans are a reaction to folks finally reading about history that they haven’t read about and starting to ask a lot of really important questions, like, ‘Why is it this way?’ and ‘Why didn’t I learn about this?’”

Mary Doria Russell: I’ve tried to get banned. I’ve written seven books, and I keep thinking this is the one. Banning a book is akin to having an amputation. It takes away from the cultural body in a way that doesn’t kill you. You lose one finger, but then another and another each time somebody’s work is singled out and banned. Sometimes it helps with sales, but it’s an act of violence.

Angeline Boulley: My book ‘Firekeeper’s Daughter’ has been soft banned (not shelved) in a school district 20 miles away from where I grew up. I was 18 before I even read a book that had a Native main character and saw myself reflected in the pages of a book. Soft banning is something you need to be aware of. Of course, parents have every right to say, ‘I don’t want my child to see this book,’ but how dare you answer for other parents’ children and dictate what those children should have access to.