{"id":4394,"date":"2022-03-16T17:43:43","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T17:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/?p=4394"},"modified":"2022-03-16T17:44:08","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T17:44:08","slug":"amazing-nyt-op-ed-on-book-censorship-by-viet-thanh-nguyen-the-27th-annual-mortenson-distinguished-lecturer-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/2022\/03\/16\/amazing-nyt-op-ed-on-book-censorship-by-viet-thanh-nguyen-the-27th-annual-mortenson-distinguished-lecturer-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazing NYT op-ed on book censorship by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the 27th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecturer (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazing NYT op-ed on book censorship by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the 27th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecturer<\/a> (2017)<\/p>\n

\n

My Young Mind Was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life.<\/h2>\n

https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/01\/29\/opinion\/culture\/book-banning-viet-thanh-nguyen.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Jan. 29, 2022<\/p>\n

by Viet Thanh Nguyen<\/p>\n

When I was 12 or 13 years old, I was not prepared for the racism, the brutality or the sexual assault in Larry Heinemann\u2019s 1974 novel, \u201cClose Quarters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Heinemann, a combat veteran of the war in Vietnam, wrote about a nice, average American man who goes to war and becomes a remorseless killer. In the book\u2019s climax, the protagonist and other nice, average American soldiers gang-rape a Vietnamese prostitute they call Claymore Face.<\/p>\n

As a Vietnamese American teenager, it was horrifying for me to realize that this was how some Americans saw Vietnamese people \u2014 and therefore me. I returned the book to the library, hating both it and Mr. Heinemann.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I didn\u2019t do: I didn\u2019t complain to the library or petition the librarians to take the book off the shelves. Nor did my parents. It didn\u2019t cross my mind that we should ban \u201cClose Quarters\u201d or any of the many other books, movies and TV shows in which racist and sexist depictions of Vietnamese and other Asian people appear.<\/p>\n

Instead, years later, I wrote my own novel about the same war, \u201cThe Sympathizer.\u201d<\/p>\n

While working on it, I reread \u201cClose Quarters.\u201d That\u2019s when I realized I\u2019d misconstrued Mr. Heinemann\u2019s intentions. He wasn\u2019t endorsing what he depicted. He wanted to show that war brutalized soldiers, as well as the civilians caught in their path. The novel was a damning indictment of American warfare and the racist attitudes held by some nice, average Americans that led to slaughter and rape. Mr. Heinemann revealed America\u2019s heart of darkness. He didn\u2019t offer readers the comfort of a way out by editorializing or sentimentalizing or humanizing Vietnamese people, because in the mind of the book\u2019s narrator and his fellow soldiers, the Vietnamese were not human.<\/p>\n

In the United States, the battle over books is heating up, with some politicians<\/a> and parents<\/a> demanding the removal of certain books from libraries<\/a> and school curriculums. Just in the last week, we saw reports of a Tennessee school board that voted to ban<\/a> Art Spiegelman\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, \u201cMaus,\u201d from classrooms, and a mayor in Mississippi who is withholding $110,000 in funding<\/a> from his city\u2019s library until it removes books depicting L.G.B.T.Q. people. Those seeking to ban books argue that these stories and ideas can be dangerous to young minds<\/a> \u2014 like mine, I suppose, when I picked up Mr. Heinemann\u2019s novel.<\/p>\n

Books can indeed be dangerous. Until \u201cClose Quarters,\u201d I believed stories had the power to save me. That novel taught me that stories also had the power to destroy me. I was driven to become a writer because of the complex power of stories. They are not inert tools of pedagogy. They are mind-changing, world-changing.<\/p>\n

But those who seek to ban books are wrong no matter how dangerous books can be. Books are inseparable from ideas, and this is really what is at stake: the struggle over what a child, a reader and a society are allowed to think, to know and to question. A book can open doors and show the possibility of new experiences, even new identities and futures.<\/p>\n

Book banning doesn\u2019t fit neatly into the rubrics of left and right politics. Mark Twain\u2019s \u201cThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn\u201d has been banned at various points<\/a> because of Twain\u2019s prolific use of a racial slur, among other things. Toni Morrison\u2019s \u201cBeloved\u201d has been banned before<\/a> and is being threatened again<\/a> \u2014 in one case after a mother complained that the book gave her son nightmares<\/a>. To be sure, \u201cBeloved\u201d is an upsetting novel. It depicts infanticide, rape, bestiality, torture and lynching. But coming amid a movement to oppose critical race theory \u2014 or rather a caricature of critical race theory \u2014 it seems clear that the latest attempts to suppress this masterpiece of American literature are less about its graphic depictions of atrocity than about the book\u2019s insistence that we confront the brutality of slavery.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: If we oppose banning some books, we should oppose banning any book. If our society isn\u2019t strong enough to withstand the weight of difficult or challenging \u2014 and even hateful or problematic \u2014 ideas, then something must be fixed in our society. Banning books is a shortcut that sends us to the wrong destination.<\/p>\n

As Ray Bradbury depicted in \u201cFahrenheit 451,\u201d another book often targeted by book banners, book burning is meant to stop people from thinking, which makes them easier to govern, to control and ultimately to lead into war. And once a society acquiesces to burning books, it tends to soon see the need to burn the people who love books.<\/p>\n

And loving books is really the point \u2014 not reading them to educate oneself or become more conscious or politically active (which can be extra benefits). I could recommend \u201cFahrenheit 451\u201d because of its edifying political and ethical dimensions or argue that reading this novel is good for you, but that really misses the point. The book gets us to care about politics and ethics by making us care about a man who burns books for a living and who has a life-changing crisis about his awful work. That man and his realization could be any of us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only books that depict horror, war or totalitarianism that worry would-be book banners. They sometimes see danger in empathy. This appeared to be the fear that led a Texas school district to cancel the appearance of the graphic novelist Jerry Craft and pull his books temporarily from library shelves last fall. In Mr. Craft\u2019s Newbery Medal-winning book, \u201cNew Kid<\/a>,\u201d and its sequel, Black middle-schoolers navigate social and academic life at a private school where there are very few students of color. \u201cThe books don\u2019t come out and say we want white children to feel like oppressors, but that is absolutely what they will do,\u201d the parent who started the petition to cancel Mr. Craft\u2019s event said<\/a>. (Mr. Craft\u2019s invitation for a virtual visit was rescheduled and his books were reinstated <\/a>soon after.)<\/p>\n

Mr. Craft\u2019s protagonist in \u201cNew Kid\u201d is a sweet, shy, comics-loving kid. And it\u2019s his relatability that makes him seem so dangerous to some white parents. The historian and law professor Annette Gordon-Reed argued on Twitter<\/a> that parents who object to books such as \u201cNew Kid\u201d \u201cdon\u2019t want their kids to empathize with the black characters. They know their kids will do this instinctively. They don\u2019t want to give them the opportunity to do that.\u201d The historian Kevin Kruse went a step further, tweeting<\/a>, \u201cIf you\u2019re worried your children will read a book and have no choice but to identify with the villains in it, well \u2026 maybe that\u2019s something you need to work through on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those who ban books seem to want to circumscribe empathy, reserving it for a limited circle closer to the kind of people they perceive themselves to be. Against this narrowing of empathy, I believe in the possibility and necessity of expanding empathy \u2014 and the essential role that books such as \u201cNew Kid\u201d play in that. If it\u2019s possible to hate and fear those we have never met, then it\u2019s possible to love those we have never met. Both options, hate and love, have political consequences, which is why some seek to expand our access to books and others to limit them.<\/p>\n

These dilemmas aren\u2019t just political; they\u2019re also deeply personal and intimate. Now, as a father of a precocious 8-year-old reader, I have to think about what books I bring into our home. My son loves Herg\u00e9\u2019s Tintin comic books, which I introduced him to because I loved them as a child. I didn\u2019t notice Herg\u00e9\u2019s racist and colonialist attitudes then, from the paternalistic depiction of Tintin\u2019s Chinese friend Chang in \u201cThe Blue Lotus\u201d to the Native American warriors wearing headdresses and wielding tomahawks in the 1930s of \u201cTintin in America.\u201d Even if I had noticed, I had no one with whom I could talk about these books. My son does. We enjoy the adventures of the boy reporter and his fluffy white dog together, but as we read, I point out the books\u2019 racism against most nonwhite characters, and particularly their atrocious depictions of Black Africans. Would it be better that he not see these images, or is it better that he does?<\/p>\n

I err on the side of the latter and try to model what I think our libraries and schools should be doing. I make sure he has access to many other stories of the peoples that Herg\u00e9 misrepresented, and I offer context with our discussions. These are not always easy conversations. And perhaps that\u2019s the real reason some people want to ban books that raise complicated issues: They implicate and discomfort the adults, not the children. By banning books, we also ban difficult dialogues and disagreements, which children are perfectly capable of having and which are crucial to a democracy. I have told him that he was born in the United States because of a complicated history of French colonialism and American warfare that brought his grandparents and parents to this country. Perhaps we will eventually have less war, less racism, less exploitation if our children can learn how to talk about these things.<\/p>\n

For these conversations to be robust, children have to be interested enough to want to pick up the book in the first place. Children\u2019s literature is increasingly diverse and many books now raise these issues, but some of them are hopelessly ruined by good intentions. I don\u2019t find piousness and pedagogy interesting in art, and neither do children. Herg\u00e9\u2019s work is deeply flawed, and yet riveting narratively and aesthetically. I have forgotten all the well-intentioned, moralistic children\u2019s literature that I have read, but I haven\u2019t forgotten Herg\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Books should not be consumed as good for us, like the spinach and cabbage my son pushes to the side of his plate. \u201cI like reading short stories,\u201d a reader once said to me. \u201cThey\u2019re like potato chips. I can\u2019t stop with one.\u201d That\u2019s the attitude to have. I want readers to crave books as if they were a delicious, unhealthy treat, like the chili-lime chips my son gets after he eats his carrots and cucumbers.<\/p>\n

Read \u201cFahrenheit 451\u201d because its gripping story will keep you up late, even if you have an early morning. Read \u201cBeloved,\u201d \u201cThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,\u201d \u201cClose Quarters\u201d and \u201cThe Adventures of Tintin\u201d because they are indelible, sometimes uncomfortable and always compelling.<\/p>\n

We should value that magnetic quality. To compete with video games, streaming video and social media, books must be thrilling, addictive, thorny and dangerous. If those qualities sometimes get books banned, it\u2019s worth noting that sometimes banning a book can increase its sales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I know my parents would have been shocked if they knew the content of the books I was reading: Philip Roth\u2019s \u201cPortnoy\u2019s Complaint,\u201d for instance, which was banned<\/a> in Australia from 1969 to 1971. I didn\u2019t pick up this quintessential American novel, or any other, because I thought reading it would be good for me. I was looking for stories that would thrill me and confuse me, as \u201cPortnoy\u2019s Complaint\u201d did. For decades afterward, all I remembered of the novel was how the young Alexander Portnoy masturbated with anything he could get his hands on, including a slab of liver. After consummating his affair with said liver, Alex returned it to the fridge. Blissfully ignorant, the Portnoy family dined on the violated liver later that night. Gross!<\/p>\n

Who eats liver for dinner?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, my family. Roth\u2019s book was a bridge across cultures for me. Even though Vietnamese refugees differ from Jewish Americans, I recognized some of our obsessions in Roth\u2019s Jewish American world, with its ambitions for upward mobility and assimilation, its pronounced \u201cethnic\u201d features and its sense of a horrifying history not far behind. I empathized. And I could see some of myself in the erotically obsessed Portnoy \u2014 so much so that I paid tribute to Roth by having the narrator of \u201cThe Sympathizer\u201d abuse a squid in a masturbatory frenzy and then eat it later with his mother. (\u201cThe Sympathizer\u201d has not been banned outright in Vietnam, but I\u2019ve faced enormous hurdles while trying to have it published there. It\u2019s clear to me that this is because of its depiction of the war and its aftermath, not the sexy squid.)<\/p>\n

Banning is an act of fear \u2014 the fear of dangerous and contagious ideas. The best, and perhaps most dangerous, books deliver these ideas in something just as troubling and infectious: a good story.<\/p>\n

So it was with somewhat mixed feelings that I learned some American high school teachers assign \u201cThe Sympathizer\u201d as required reading in their classes. For the most part, I\u2019m delighted. But then I worry: I don\u2019t want to be anyone\u2019s homework. I don\u2019t want my book to be broccoli.<\/p>\n

I was reassured, however, when a first-year college student approached me at an event to tell me she had read my novel in high school.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly,\u201d she said, \u201call I remember is when the sympathizer has sex with a squid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

Mr. Nguyen is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel \u201cThe Sympathizer\u201d and the children\u2019s book \u201cChicken of the Sea,\u201d written with his then 5-year-old son, Ellison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazing NYT op-ed on book censorship by Viet Thanh Nguyen, the 27th Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecturer (2017) My Young Mind Was Disturbed by a Book. It Changed My Life. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/01\/29\/opinion\/culture\/book-banning-viet-thanh-nguyen.html Jan. 29, 2022 by Viet Thanh Nguyen When I was 12 or 13 years old, I was not prepared for the racism, the brutality or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":606,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-media-coverage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/606"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4394"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4396,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4394\/revisions\/4396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/mortenson\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}