Poet playing with words in her tempest in a teapot
Amanda Gorman, the young woman who read her highly celebrated poetry at Joe Biden’s inaugural two years ago has proven herself to be quite adept at writing fiction in addition to her laureate skills.
This week, she tweeted out a photo of two pages of her poem “The Hill We Climb,” and suggested that these pages were the reason that a Florida school district “banned” her work.
The truth is that her books were removed from the elementary school curriculum, but were still available to middle and upper school students.
That’s not banning. That’s not even “canceling.”
That’s making decisions on what is, and what is not, age appropriate.
You can argue whether the book is not appropriate for kindergartners, who wouldn’t even understand the points she was trying to make, but you cannot unilaterally jump on the “I was Banned-wagon” because it weaponizes your victimhood.
When you are dealing with young children, there is a heightened obligation to be very careful about what you expose them to.
This has nothing to do with politics but, rather, with common sense.
I attended a lecture the other evening of a local author named Ernest Owens, whose book “The Case For Cancel Culture” argues that not everything we call “canceling” really is censorship.
While Owens and I disagree on a lot of things, we both come down on the same side of censorship: it’s bad.
And yet, as he points out, we need to be a bit more pragmatic when defining what is, and what is not “cancellation.”
For example, the bus company in Selma, Alabama, was not being canceled during the civil rights boycotts.
Bud Light is not being “canceled” by conservatives who have a big problem with a man posing as the stereotype of a woman to sell their beer.
In both cases, people used their voices and their choices to make a political point. That is what we do in a free society, and that is what Owens refers to as “pragmatism.”
I think we need a bit more pragmatism in this society. We need to stop expecting that everyone is entitled to whatever platform they want or think that they deserve.
Amanda Gorman jumped right to “Oh woe is me/ I’m banned you see/And that is bad/For society.”
I’m not as exalted a poet as young Gorman, who is gifted, but I do recognize a whiner and a professional victim when I see one.
The poet laureate of the Biden inauguration deliberately chose to frame the controversy as a banning, when she knew very well that nothing of the kind had happened.
Her poetry is widely available, widely exalted by those in literary circles and beyond, and she herself has become a mini-celebrity. More power to her.
But the idea that children of ages 6 to 9 must be exposed to her writing or their growth will be stunted is ridiculous, and to this writer, immensely annoying.
I work with people who come from countries where they regularly ban books. There are places in the world, like Afghanistan and certain parts of Pakistan that if you open a bookstore, or if you give a book to a young girl to read, you will be threatened with death.
You might be killed.
Boris Pasternak, the great Russian poet who wrote “Dr. Zhivago” was prevented from going to Sweden to accept his Nobel Prize in Literature because he was afraid that if he left, the Soviets — who had banned that Nobelwinning book — would not let him return.
His devotion to his country trumped his desire for plaudits and laurels.
Amanda Gorman cannot seriously pretend to be the victim in this scenario, nor can we paint the children who won’t be able to read her words of wisdom until they are 12 or 13 as oppressed.
If parents want their little sons and daughters to read “The Hill We Climb,” they can buy them a copy and read it to them as a bedtime story.
The book is available everywhere, and the suggestion that what is being done in Florida is akin to Ray Bradbury’s dystopian Fahrenheit 451 is laughable.
This is not to say that I support actual banning of books.
If you make it impossible for children to access great literature that has stood the test of time, like “To Kill A Mockingbird” and“Huckleberry Finn,” you are engaging in the same sort of conduct that we justifiably condemned when the Soviet Union and the satellite states existed.
It is the same sort of conduct that I see when working with some of my asylum clients who have fled totalitarian regimes.
But that is not what is happening with Gorman. Her poem is still out there, and will be read by generations of children in countless schools around the country.
Her little pique about being “canceled” from one district is ridiculous when viewed in the larger context of what is going on around the world.
One final thought: when we put brown paper covers on Hustler and Playboy on the newsstands, we didn’t do it to “ban” Larry Flynt and Hugh Hefner. We did it because certain things are inappropriate in certain environments.
Amanda might disagree with the decision of the school administrators in Florida, but she can’t argue with the principle that not everything is good for everybody, at every moment.
Or to put it in terms she might understand:
Books are great/There’s no debate/But just like wine/ They’re not all fine/If you’re too small/To read them all/ Just wait a bit/
You’ll see that lit/When you’re prepared/And won’t be scared/So just be chill/ You’ll read that “Hill”.