Editorial: Art and Alienation, or, Can Books Save Lives?

Normally, our posts here focus on particular cases of banning and censoring going on across the country rather than the big philosophical issues. Sometimes particular cases will lead to interesting philosophical discussions in the comments section, but today I want to put an idea right out there for us to think about and discuss. And this isn't a rhetorical question; I don't already have an answer for myself. I really want to know.

Like many today, I've been hearing and watching clips from the video "manifesto" put out by the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui. I have to admit that some of what he says doesn't sound all that unusual to me---he sounds like a lot of people I knew in high school who were pissed off at the world, felt done to, felt they had no place, angry and misunderstood and feeling helpless. But set him and his words aside, because the incident is too new and his history of mental illness too clear to make the case that a good book could have turned this situation around. It gets me thinking, though, about past school shooters in junior high and high school incidents of the last twenty years. Every case is different, every individual different and infinitely complex, but one of the recurring themes is that the shooters were outsiders, kids who were bullied, alienated, misunderstood, lacking a social circle that understood them, unable to articulate fear or rage or sorrow or whatever they were feeling.

One reason I read when I was a kid and teen was to feel understood. When I cracked open THE CHOCOLATE WAR for the first time I remember feeling that finally, finally, someone out there really understood the hell it was to be fourteen years old. Whenever I read a Madeleine L'Engle book, I knew it was okay to be smart---something kids in my junior high used as an insult over and over again. ("You're so smart." It came out sounding exactly the same as, "You're so ugly." I recently got an email from an adult who read about my book, and said that her own sexual promiscuity in high school started in an effort to hide and change her identity as the "smart girl.") I sought out books that featured alcoholic parents, because I had one and wanted to know I wasn't alone.

AS IF founder and regular poster here, Brent Hartinger, has gotten letters from teen readers who were so confused and alienated by sexual identity that they were considering suicide. Reading about the gay characters in Brent's books may have literally saved their lives. Authors of the so-called "edgy" books that get challenged and censored regularly hear from readers who say that their books are the first and only place they have found some understanding, some safety, some knowledge that they aren't alone. I know that sometimes adults look at the topics in some teen books and say, "How depressing! How hopeless! Why are we letting kids read this stuff?" Because for many of us, there is enormous hope simply in knowing you are not the only one who has done/felt/thought/been through a particular experience.

One thing AS IF sees again and again in censorship cases is this pervading fear of art and what it might do to children or teens. There is concern over exposing them to topics that seem too dark, too challenging. What is more fear-inducing? The prospect of a teen reading about something potentially controversial and difficult, or the prospect of a teen believing that violence---towards self or others---is the only remaining option? Maybe getting the very books that draw so much fear into the hands of kids before they turn that dark corner can be part of a process that changes a path from hope to despair. Is it possible that the defense of intellectual freedom can be the defense of life itself? It could be that I'm too optimistic about the power of art to reduce the feelings of alienation, I don't know. What do you think?