The Author of "The Handmaid's Tale" Takes a Blowtorch to Book Bans
We can too - read banned books and talk about them!
So you’ve heard a book is banned and you’re afraid you will be exposed to it.
I can understand why you wouldn’t want to read it before you write it off. For example, if you were eating out and the waiter pointed to a menu item, looked you in the eye and said with conviction, “That’s poison,” I wouldn’t sample it, either.
How can you recognize books with poisonous ingredients? There are plenty of banned-book lists, which seem to be fair and objective because both liberals and conservatives keep them up to date.
What about book burning? If it catches on it shouldn’t take much imagination to throw a book on the fire, since that’s been going on for over 2200 years.
Enter one of the most imaginative writers of our time. Margaret Atwood must have had a certain perspective to be able to endure the dire outlook of her most famous book, The Handmaid’s Tale.
Since then, she’s written an essay about her mindset at that time.
Atwood begins her essay by saying that we are formed by the circumstances of history, and that the historic narrative shifts with whatever powers are in charge.
So history is not about what happened, but what the currently powerful says happened. Today we’re seeing that revision of history in action, in the far-right movement (again!) to ban books such as Atwood’s futuristic novel.
Margaret Atwood isn’t accepting their version of history. She resists! Recently Sotheby’s auctioned a specially made “unburnable” copy of The Handmaid’s Tale.
The $130,000 it sold for will be used to fight book banning. Outrage fights fire with fire!
I believe imagination is worth a lot, especially when it’s in short supply on the other side. Applied to organized action, it can help get out enough votes to shift power away from the far right — back to where our freedom to tell the truth matters again.
Holy Smoke, Deda. You are re-kindling the flame of hope to all who resist book banning. Margaret Atwood's video is great.