While I may disagree, should I not have empathy?
Banned Books Week 2019
September 24, 2019
- Tucker DouglassEditorial Note: September 22-28, 2019, is Banned Books Week, an annual celebration
of our freedom to read. Last fall, Dr. Johnny Wink and Dr. Jay Curlin taught an Honors
Seminar on Banned Books. They, along with two of their students Tucker Douglass and
Kyle Burrow, are this week’s guest writers on the subject.
The first book I remember being scandalized by is Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,”
which I first read my junior year of high school. We had read other previously banned
books in class, but none that I actually thought merited being banned. But if you
read the opening poem to the “Spirit,” and then down to the third paragraph on the
first page you will have encountered the unorganized religion of the author, mangled
English, and a reference to sexual violence using only words that can’t be said in
movies without an R-rating. That’s all without turning a page. If you press on you
will find domestic abuse, abnormal romantic relationships, lesbian sex and a rejection
of the traditional conception of God.
Being in my more fundamentalist years when I first met this book, each one of these
issues alone seemed reason enough to ban the novel. However, our teacher tricked our
class into reading the book willingly. She let us read the first page and said if
we didn’t think we could handle reading the book, we were to go to her and ask for
an alternate assignment. At sixteen I made sure to exude comfort and maturity, even
though I know my reddened face and tapping foot said otherwise. So I read the book,
and disagreed with much of it at the time, though I do see some things differently
now.
I share virtually no characteristics with the main character, Celie, except that I’m
also human. In my philosophy courses, we spend a lot of time paring down definitions.
This book was one of my first exercises in paring down my own definition of what it
means to be human. “You must be asleep,” Celie wrote to God. I’ve felt that too, though
for different reasons. This general, deep seated confusion about what is happening
in the world, and why, is one of the most characteristically human emotions we feel.
Of course, pressing on through those feelings is also human.
It’s Walker’s presentation of general human emotions in a story that many of us can’t
fully relate to that makes me consider “The Color Purple” a light instead of just
another smutty novel.
By Tucker Douglass, a senior philosophy and history double major from Wakevillage, Texas
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