I Read, Therefore I am: Why I Read Banned Books
Mia Zierk
Book banning. The latest craze sweeping the nation. Before we get swept up in it, let’s stop and consider why anyone would want to read a banned book. Why should anyone read any book, for that matter, banned or not? That really is the question. Reading books is important because thinking is important, and banning books is banning thought. It’s like not being allowed to dribble with your left hand, so you can never go left to the rim.
The ability to think critically, perspective take, and comprehend are the fruits that reading brings us. Without these fruits, our survival and success as humans is at grave risk. Reading and thinking are inseparable actions. Reading challenges our brains to become unstuck from habitual and convenient thought patterns. It requires the weighing and sorting of information in every scene and in each character. Reading banned books and books about topics with which we are unfamiliar helps us expand our capacity to process information. It makes us more agile and dimensional thinkers. Reading takes us out of the familiar and encourages us to learn how to dribble with both hands.
Through reading, we exercise our ability to make informed decisions. To independently evaluate what is good, just, right, wrong, and trustworthy. Is there any more important and valuable exercise to engage in and teach our children than how to think? How can we expect our youth to make decisions and choose between right and wrong if they can't independently comprehend and evaluate information? When we eliminate variety and restrict access to only include certain books, our minds become dysfunctional and incapable of making sound evaluations. Our brains need stimulation and challenge through exposure to foreign ideas. This is how we remain elastic and sharp. Without diversity of thought, we are mere robots, programmed and prompted, our humanity is lost, and we are left with only one move to the hoop.
Do we only play against opponents we can beat so we can claim we are the GOAT? Do we start every game with a 10-point advantage to tip the scales in our favor? Do we make sure no one on the team is ever taller than us, or faster than us, or a better shot? Or, do we seek opponents who challenge our skillset and make us rethink everything we ever thought we knew about dribbling? Why are we in it? For what purpose are we here? Are we here just for the event t-shirt, or are we here to fully participate? Because if we really want to play, we have to read. We must be challenged, uncomfortable, uncertain, and in new territory guarding a player who is a foot taller than us and twice as fast.
We incapacitate ourselves and our children by closing the curtains and shutting off the water that stimulates growth. With life comes risk, but fearing what you don't know or understand just because it exists in the world without ever experiencing it is like never putting your toes in the water at the edge of the pond. Yeah, you could drown if you wade out, but you also may learn to swim, and it could be the greatest thing that's ever happened to you. When we don't find out about topics for ourselves through our own investigation and are just fed responses from approved sources, we don't really know what we believe. It's the difference between memorizing the test answer and learning how to solve the problem. Reading teaches us how to work the problem ourselves.
We communicate less and less with each other, and it's not because of COVID. Our daily lives have become way too insular. We don't know our neighbors; we don't know our friends. We use our thumbs and not our feet. We don't see each other and interact anymore, at the hardware store or on a friend's porch. Everything is done online, alone, in under 15 minutes. We always get what we want, when we want it. Whether we made a good or bad choice, we'll never know or know too late because the only opinions we hear are the ones inside our heads, and the stories they tell us are there to reaffirm our bias, fear, and need for control. But we can't control anything, and we know even less.
A tumor may be growing in me right now. I could be run over by a bus at lunch. An amazing job offer could be coming my way. Maybe I will find my son trying on my new dress in our upstairs bathroom. I could be a victim in the next mass shooting. All of this is out of my hands. The illusion of control is merely that, an illusion. What can we do? We can read. We can educate ourselves. We can diversify our knowledge and expand our tools of understanding. Instead of being fear-driven victims in isolated ignorance, we can become informed technicians and teammates that can deal with whatever life throws our way with dignity and grace.
I read because I don't know everything and everyone. I have forgotten half of the little I do know or have once known, so I need continual refreshers. I have not traveled the world, and even if I did, the world is rapidly changing every hour. I live in a large and diverse urban area, yet I have limited exposure to different cultures and life experiences. I rarely interact with the elderly and have few encounters with differently-abled people. My world is small. My color palette is select. This doesn't make me safer; it makes me extremely vulnerable to the worst kind of fear, a fear that is grown from ignorance and isolation. Therefore, I read.
I read so neighbors don’t become enemies, strangers don’t become adversaries, and everything outside my condo doesn’t become a threat to be feared, but instead an opportunity to embrace. I read so I can remain sturdy, wide, and balanced instead of narrow and unstable because when I am unstable, I grow more afraid. When I allow my frame of reference to shrink like a pinhole around me, I surrender to fear and am unprepared for what's coming. Books are here to bridge the gap. No matter where we live and what we do or don't know, books provide access to people and life experiences outside our own. They help us discover who we really are and what we really believe. You can’t know until you know. Books connect us to information and experience that we may not yet know we need.
The world is expanding and growing and changing around us. It always has and will continue regardless of our personal choices, biases, or beliefs. Self-isolation will not thwart change or hold back time. Nature finds a way. We can either adapt and evolve and allow ourselves to thrive or wither alone in darkness. Reading is an exit out of the darkness. It is limitless light, water for seeds of thought. With each topic we tackle, we nourish our ability to think, and with that ability comes stability, sound judgment, and peace in any environment.
The sole purpose of banning books is to eliminate voices. The hope is that by silencing a story we can control outcomes, secure playtime, and prevent unwanted events, but it doesn't work like that. You can burn every book that contains a scene with a rainstorm, but the rain will still come. Wouldn't it be better to know about rain in advance? To have familiarity with it, an informed understanding? Wouldn't it be more beneficial not to fear the rain but to welcome it? To be able to harness and use it? I welcome the rain and the tall guy who knows how to go left to the rim, both on my team or as my opponent. I want to know about them and learn from them. The more I can learn, the better, because who I once saw as my enemy may in fact turn out to be my closest ally. My weakest subject may in fact become my strongest suit of expertise. It is only by reading as much and as often as possible that I am really in the game, and win or lose, I'll never feel disappointed in myself or have regrets because I was afraid or never learned to go left.
