Why we should all read banned books 📚

This year, the Long View has a single item on her holiday wish list: books.

All kinds of books: fiction, nonfiction, poetry - but especially, banned books.

There are a few reasons for this:

For the love of books 📖

First of all, I love books - and some of you may know or remember that my mother was a college librarian and my father was (for a time) a history lecturer at the same small farming college. This meant that I spent a lot of time in the library as a child - reading, playing, drawing, messing about, and often, falling asleep between stacks of books.

My parents also did not restrict the scope of my reading, in any way - an approach that I now realise was controversial, and one I have maintained in raising my own children. An introverted only child, I read precociously, and voraciously.

It's true that I read some books that I never should have read, at the age I first encountered them. But it's also true that reading opened up entirely new worlds to me - other histories, perspectives and experiences that I could never (and can never) make myself, but that fundamentally changed how I saw the world around me, and my place in this world.

Reading is good for you...

The research is not conclusive as to whether reading makes you a better person, but there is solid evidence that reading can not only increase your empathy and make you more altruistic, but can also help you better communicate with others, and navigate tricky social situations in real life.

Also, for me, reading is fun.

I know that not everyone feels this way, and some people really struggle with reading - and that's okay. When I say "reading" and "books" here, I also mean listening to and watching literary works.

I think the key thing is the immersive experience of throwing yourself into someone else's imaginary world, emerging into the light, many hours later, astonished, satisfied and ...slightly different to who you were before you started.

💡 Dangerous ideas: why we should pay attention when ideas are banned

This week, I taught a class for the University of Glasgow's Lawyering for Social Justice Clinic on critical theory, including critical race theory.

Critical race theory is an approach to examining law and society from the perspective that racism in society is not just the result of individual bias, but that it is systemic - embedding in law, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce inequality.

I studied the law in the 1990s at Georgetown University, taught by people like David Cole, Lisa Heinzerling and Gary Peller, through the lenses of critical race theory, as well as feminist theory. Queer theory was not taught when I went to law school, but it, too, is an allied form of critical analysis.

💡 I find the idea that law and society are interlinked to be both self-evidently true, and also kind of uplifting - because it suggests that what has been made, can be un-made and re-made by us all.

The opposite view (that there is no link between institutions and social values) feels both unrealistic and depressing. This view suggests that we experience racism in society because individual people are racist and will forever be, and there's nothing that can be done about it. I prefer not to live in that world.

Sometimes, I rehearse ideas - running through lectures before I deliver them with family or friends, basically whoever doesn't get out of the way fast enough 😉

This week, I did a run through with middle daughter (now a teenager) whilst she cooked dinner.

When I finished, I added, "Now if I had been your teacher, and we lived in one of 12 states in the United States, what I have just taught you could result in me being disciplined, maybe fired, and in our entire school being defunded."

Say what?

It's true: teaching critical race theory in public K-12 (primary and secondary education) is banned in a number of US states, most recently in the state of Louisiana.

This phenomenon goes hand in hand with a 200% rise in book bans in the US in 2023-24, according to PEN America, "including titles on sexuality, substance abuse, depression and other issues students face in an age of accelerating technologies, climate change, toxic politics and fears about the future."

With the recent election of Trump to succeed Biden to the US presidency, together with a powerful and growing grassroots campaign to ban a wide range of books in schools and public libraries, it is likely that we will see an increase in banning books and ideas - for the next generation of American children, and maybe also, here in the UK.

Why we should all read banned books 📚

Just to be clear: not all banned books are worth reading.

Some banned books are actually pretty hard going, or badly written, and if you think about it, setting your mind to reading only books banned by people who hate being confronted with different and controversial views is equivalent to taking restaurant recommendations from a frenemy: unclear whether the recommendation will be on point, but definite that they don't have your best interests at heart! 😂

Having said that, there are an extraordinary number of brilliant and thoughtful books that have been (and are being) banned, and they deserve our attention, especially now.

A story shared, never dies.

There is something disturbing about an attempt to narrow our worldviews by restricting our access to ideas, and the best way to combat that is to keep reading, talking about and sharing those ideas with others.

This year, for middle child's birthday (who is also a precocious and voracious reader) I've bought a series of 24 used classic banned books, and individually wrapped them in brown paper, with a summary highlighting a snippet of plot or content. She can choose to open the all at once, or unwrap one at at time - and it's okay to share this wee secret with you, because she does not read The Long View 😉

So...

I hope I have made the case for picking up, reading and gifting banned books this holiday break.

If you are looking for a list of great recommendations, here is a short, accessible list from Penguin Random House as well as this longer read in Teen Vogue from independent bookshop owners in the US.

📚

Remember our public libraries! And please, if you do buy books this year, also consider book swaps, buying used books or supporting a great, independent local bookshop like Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh or Housman's in London.

Here's a list of Independent Radical Booksellers in the UK - and I would be so pleased if readers would share their favourite controversial reads, the best local bookshops - or just your aspirational to-read list for the holidays ... book club is in session! 📚