You, like me, have probably read a book that changed you. I have a theory that this is the reason people want to ban books, and often don’t read those books before trying to ban them. They’re scared of having their minds changed, scared to discover that things are more complicated than they thought. Like books themselves, indie bookstores are agents of change in their communities. But they also preserve something that was already fundamental to those communities: a public sphere, where people go to encounter new ideas, new people, and new ways of seeing the world. The centerpiece of this year’s Banned Books Week theme, George Orwell’s 1984, is a book that changed me. I first encountered it as a teenager, reading on the floor of a tiny, college-town bookstore. 1984 would help me think for the first time about how power works — how it silences people, but also how it compels people to say things that they know are absurd, but that they say anyway, out of fear. Censorship, and the culture of fear it creates, also separates people, turning them against each other, destroying the public sphere and thus making them easier to control. It happens in 1984, it happened in the US in the McCarthy Era, and it is happening now. Indie booksellers are so essential in this moment because you counter both sides of censorship’s pernicious erosion of the social fabric. By the nature of your work, you expose people to ideas that challenge them, and at the same time, you bring people together. Thank you for doing this work — this week and every week — and thank you especially for raising awareness about book censorship during Banned Books Week. Sincerely,
Philomena Polefrone
Associate Director of American Booksellers for Free Expression (ABFE)
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