Last Friday Sigma Tau Delta and the American Democracy Project held a reading for banned and challenged books in the U.S. During the reading, UNK students and professors stood up in front of the student union and read excerpts from controversial titles.
Every year thousands of books get banned or challenged to be banned from American libraries. Many students, including Ella Fergeson, junior political science and English major, think that censoring books keeps the public from being informed.
“It’s essential that we read controversial books, especially so that we can form our own opinions on essential world subjects that are really relevant right now,” Fergeson said. “Even though that can be uncomfortable, it also expands our knowledge and allows us to be better citizens.”
Many different titles from “Fahrenheit 451” to “The Wizard of Oz” were included in the readings. Fergeson said that books get challenged for many reasons. However, the main reasons right now are political or sexual themes or representations of racial minorities or LGBTQ+ people.
Janet Graham, an assistant English professor, read an excerpt from the book “The Hate You Give,” a book about an African American girl and her reaction to one of her childhood friends being killed by a police officer.
Before reading the excerpt that she brought, Graham also spoke about the recent Utah legislation to ban books from schools and libraries.
According to the American Library Association, 2023 had 92% more books targeted for censorship than in 2022. This also meant that 2023 had more attempted book censorships than any year before it.
“There is one upside to this,” Graham said. “I think it partly is because of how publishers have realized that there’s a great demand for a lot of different voices to be represented.”
Annarose Steinke, the adviser for Sigma Tau Delta, said that most of the student attendees from the event were from Sigma Tau Delta, but the event was intentionally held at a normally busy intersection of campus so that more people could witness the readings.
Steinke said it’s important to read banned books because it is required to stay informed on different perspectives.
“That’s how you think,” Steinke said. “That’s how you grow. That’s how you become a critical reader and thinker, not just by reading things that have been censored or reading things that have been curated to not have certain information or only having a certain type of information.”
