CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - While it may be tempting to dismiss as a censor anyone who wants to restrict access to a book, such individuals understand that books are powerful and have the potential to change lives, said Emily Knox, who recently wrote about the people who raise challenges to reading material.
Her new book, "Book Banning in 21st-Century America," was published in January by Rowman & Littlefield. Knox is a U. of I. professor of library and information science, with an interest in intellectual freedom and censorship.
Unlike other books that have focused on the history of book banning, the legal issues that arise or the policies of public institutions regarding access to books, Knox talks with the people who are raising challenges to the books and looks at why, in a culture that values freedom, they argue for restricting access to books.
"I take the point of view that, for all of us, reading is really powerful," she said.
Knox looked at 15 case studies of book challenges across the country. The books being challenged included "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," by Sherman Alexie (challenged in three places), and "Invisible Man," by Ralph Ellison. Knox said books are often challenged on the basis of sexual or political content.
She found several common aspects to the people who raised challenges. Most were parents or caregivers of children between the ages of 4 and 6 or 12 and 16 - periods of major transitions in the lives of young people.
Knox said challengers want public institutions - schools and libraries - to reflect their values, and they see the roles of those institutions as aiding parents in the moral development of their children.
"One aspect of school challenges that make them somewhat different from public library challenges is the issue of coercion. Challengers often take issue with the idea that their children are required to read books with which they disagree," Knox wrote in the book.
Children's innocence and their need for protection to preserve that innocence are taken as givens by challengers, she said.
"The issue of protecting children is ubiquitous in the discourse of challengers. For many of them, this is why they challenged a particular book in the first place - to safeguard the minds of the innocent," Knox wrote.
She looked at how those challengers talk about reading. Some worry that children will want to mimic the actions portrayed in a book - for instance, drug use - in their own lives. But more than that, Knox said, challengers believe that children are unable to distance themselves from what they are reading, and that imagining the events in the book is the same as living it.
Knox said the challengers tend to believe that everyone reacts in the same way to reading a particular book, rather than bringing individual viewpoints that would change the way they interpret a book.
"The idea that each person brings their own personal baggage to the text is not something challengers accept," she said. "They believe children all bring the same thing to the text, because they lack the skills to interpret a text."
Knox said she took the challengers and their viewpoints seriously. While she didn't necessarily agree with the challengers she talked with, she saw them as caring parents and community members.
"I felt so much empathy for a lot of the parents, particularly one parent who was worried about the violence in a book," Knox said. "In some ways, this is just a clash of worldviews."
She also was struck by the difficulties the challengers described to her in carrying through with a challenge to a book, and how it can tear apart a community.
"More than anything, it's helped me in my teaching, because I've talked with people who are challengers," Knox said. "I can help my students, when they get professional jobs, be better about responding to people who are challenging a book. I really insist they see them as people, not just people trying to make their lives difficult."
Knox said she hopes the book will appeal not only to scholars in her field and those interested in contemporary reading practices, but to a general audience, as well.
"Anybody interested in where the culture wars are in contemporary society might be interested in it," she said.