Summer Lopez, the chief program officer for free expression for PEN America, said former Monadnock Summer Lyceum speaker Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” was responsible for her talk at the lyceum Sunday.
“That book exploded my understanding of what literature could be and what language could do,” said Lopez. “I always say it’s the book that made me an English major. And if I hadn’t been an English major I probably wouldn’t have gone on to work for PEN America, in which case I probably wouldn’t have been invited to give this talk.”
The PEN America Foundation initially stood for Poets, Essayists, and Novelists when it was founded in 1922 in New York City by the likes of Willa Cather, Robert Frost and Eugene O’Neill. The organization has represented free expression through literature and civil rights, and Lopez said the nonprofit has historically faced little resistance when releasing statements challenging controversial book bans. However, in recent years, Lopez said she has witnessed the climate surrounding book restrictions grow increasingly hostile and organized.
“Beloved” tackles several poignant issues, including slavery, sexual assault and gender divide. Lopez said the book is dark and difficult, “as it should be,”and she was taught about it carefully and with great attention to detail. She went on to pose the question of how her own life would have turned out if her teacher was forced to exclude “Beloved” from her curriculum, a hypothetical she said has become a reality for a number of American schoolchildren.
Using statistical evidence from PEN America, Lopez provided evidence that the practice of book-banning has increased dramatically in the past two years. The counts for the 2022-2023 school year are still being tabulated by the organization, but many of Lopez’s examples came from areas such as Florida’s Martin County.
Schools and teachers are also being increasingly pressured into acting on complaints raised by parents about the literature made available to their children. Lopez said no parent should be able to decide what huge numbers of students are able to read in school, adding that more than 70% of parents opposed banning books in 2022, and 60% of book challenges made that year were by the same 11 people.
Lopez went on to mention that while New Hampshire “has not seen much in the way of book-bannings,” the state is not impervious to the trend. She cited House Bill 514, which was recently passed, regarding the “dissemination of obscene material by schools and institutions of higher learning.”
Lopez closed out her discussion with questions from the audience, which had to do with how to get involved, the banning of religious texts and personal experiences relating to literary restrictions.
“New Hampshire gives the phrase ‘Live Free or Die,’” said Lopez in the closing moments of her talk. “What could be more fundamental to freedom than the right to choose what ideas to read about, what stories to hear, what concepts we agree with or disagree with and to know that one’s own story is worth telling?”
Next week’s installment of the Monadnock Summer Lyceum will be the penultimate talk of the 2023 summer. Penelope Abernathy will speak on “Can Our Democracy Thrive Without Local Journalism?”