Opinion: Arm our children with weapons of mass creation, not destruction
A little over two weeks before a teenager entered an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and shot 19 third and fourth-graders and two teachers with a semi-automatic rifle he had been able to purchase just a few days before when he turned 18, I received a notice from my agent that my historical novel, "In the Time of the Butterflies," was under attack.
Some parents in Milford, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, were requesting that the novel be banned from the high school curriculum because of its alleged "theme of sex and wickedness," its "unhealthy view of sexuality and pornography," and how it impeded "religious beliefs" by suggesting that "communicating with the dead" is "part of Christianity, which it isn't."
All this was news to me, who'd written a historical novel based on the oppressive and bloody 31-year dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujllo in the Dominican Republic, which my family had fled in 1960. I did not recognize my novel in these descriptions – the charges were vague, without specifics, lacking in context.
The novel was based on an actual dictatorship my family knew first-hand. The dictator had been evil, a sexual predator, whom my heroines, the historical Mirabal sisters, had resisted, thereby losing their lives. The surviving sister reminisces and brings them to life in her imagination and ours. Like many mourners, she senses their presence in her life. It seemed such a distortion to go from these circumstances in the novel to the charges levied on it. But then, according to an article in the Daily Beast, "the detractors admitted they haven’t actually read the entire novel themselves."
The Milford parents were convinced that the novel would pervert their children, resulting in harm to others, self-harm, suicides, etc. Meanwhile, as of June 13, Ohio will become the 23rd "constitutional carry" state making it legal to carry a concealed handgun without a license. The painful irony of loosening restrictions on weapons that have actually killed 214 people in this country just this year, 24 of them school children, while attempting to restrict access to books and further curtail the freedom and discretion of our teachers in choosing their texts, is baffling.
The Milford parents claimed their mission was to protect their children – a concern and common ground we share – but it's a tragic mistake to blame books for the violence in our schools and on the streets of our nation. I can't think of a safer place to explore our baffling and beautiful world, our shared humanity, our complex motives and feelings and thoughts than between the covers of books. Or a better mission in education than to arm our young people with skills to think clearly, understand complexity in themselves and each other, explore situations that will indeed crop up in their lives and thereby prepare them to encounter these moments with insight, intelligence, compassion and heart.
"Education is teaching our children to desire the right things," Plato once wrote. And the best way to do so is by example. Illiteracy is rampant in this country – not only among certain immigrant groups who understandably have never had the opportunity to learn to read – but among the native born.
I recall being asked by a caller on a talk show if I could give her any advice on getting her 10-year-old son to read. After the usual suggestions of finding books about topics her son might like, taking him to the library and to bookstores and book events, engaging with him on the books he reads, I asked the parent if she was a reader herself. She answered that she never could seem to get into books. After over four decades in classrooms, I've amended Plato's statement. Education is teaching our children to desire the right things, beginning with their parents.
Tops on my list has always been reading, and what ensues from reading books together: skills of discernment, self-expression, listening skills, skills of analysis and appreciation of the subtleties of language, situations, motivations. In sharing with others what we are learning, we create in the classroom and beyond a more beloved reading community.
"In the Time of the Butterflies" was actually one of the books selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its Big Read program. This amazing program provides copies of the chosen book and brings together communities to discuss and share and further educate themselves and each other on the thoughts, memories, reflections sparked by a shared text.
Especially in divisive times, times of confusion and challenge, it's important to gather together and be reminded through stories of the things we share with other people. It might very well be the antidote for the many divisions in these Disunited States of America.
Vincent Harding, one of the collaborators with Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement, was interviewed shortly before his death in 2014. He was asked, "Is America possible?" According to Harding, one of the most important ways to create community is by sharing our stories and songs.
I think that the stoking of our creative capacities is one of the jobs that is still necessary for the healing of divisions, we need music, story, oratory – so that people can join together to express their great need and desire for a better world.
I wonder if the Uvalde gunman, who had dropped out of high school, might have benefited from more access to books than guns. Or if the parents who directed their anger and righteousness at banning a historical novel might not spend that energy in protesting that new state law.
The day after the Uvalde shooting one of my cousins in the Dominican Republic, whose father, like mine, had been active in the underground that eventually toppled the dictatorship and established a democracy, sent me a WhatsApp message with a cartoon of a little boy on his tiptoes on a stool trying to reach a high shelf of books. Within easy reach below that shelf were a slew of automatic rifles, revolvers, assault weapons.
We need to change this picture. We need to make that shelf readily accessible to our children. We need to arm them with the weapons of mass creation, so that they can defend themselves against ignorance and become responsive and responsible participants in the greater narrative of trust, safety and love we all want for them and for all of us.
Julia Alvarez is a poet, novelist and essayist who rose to prominence with the novels "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents," "In the Time of the Butterflies" and "Yo!". She spent the first 10 years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Opinion: Arm our children with weapons of mass creation, not destruction
