I used to be a bit right-wing, but books saved me. 

Alright, maybe right-wing is the wrong way to describe myself, especially since the term has transformed into something much more intense over the years. And maybe it’s a slight stretch to say that books alone “saved me” from a life spent in MAGA hats and unironically quoting Ronald Reagan. 

Let’s just say I was a conservative. What can I say, I went to a Vietnamese Catholic Saturday and Sunday school for most of my childhood where Fox News was on the kitchen television every day, and I grew up learning how to shoot a BB gun, raise chickens and not question a bit of the history I was taught. 

Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t praise the impact that books have had on my life — the things I’ve read influence this column, my work and my life. Books have made me the activist that I hope I am today.

But students in school districts all across the South may never realize their potential to impact change like I did. Sweeping book bans and “parental rights” efforts have put too much power into the hands of a tiny few — both peers and parents alike.

In South Carolina, a teacher was barred from assigning TaNehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me” in her advanced English class soon after some of her own students reported that they felt uncomfortable being taught the book. Written as a letter to his son, the book offers a first-hand account of the reality of living as a Black man in the United States.  

From 2021 to 2022, 60% of the books that were challenged were done so by just 11 people, including one woman in Virginia who challenged herself to take issue with one book a week. 

These folks are straight out of the loony bin, but I think their behavior is brought up too much in the discussion around book bans. Too little are we thinking about the kids who sought refuge in these books, and who have since had those books ripped away from them. 

These are kids whose identities and aspirations may lead them to know that the world is so much bigger than their classrooms, but who will never get the keys to leave the cage that school districts and state legislatures have put them in.

Book bans are nothing new, and the list of controversial and divisive titles that have turned nations on their head is long and storied. Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” revolutionized the way we saw the meatpacking industry and the lives of the working class — but it was also denounced as “un-American libel” by conservative press when it was first published. Even “1984” by George Orwell, which has found a modern foothold with Russian activists rallying against their country’s repression, was banned in the 1980s in Florida. 

Like Cesar A. Cruz said about art, a book should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comforted. For the young students who have experienced book bans and have had literature that reflects their identities and experiences taken from their local libraries, they will remain disturbed without any respite. 

They’ll sink into the crowd and get caught up in the systems and institutions designed to keep them down because they don’t have any literary examples to light the way to a better future. They won’t challenge the systems they know because they’ve never encountered a book that challenges them. 

As bleak as that picture is, I urge you to continue to pay attention to news coverage about the book bans in one county or another. Weep about how primary school education in the South has gone to the dogs. But then start going to your local school district meetings and check out your local library.

Start paying attention to the threats to books in your area, and don’t let this literary backsliding bleed beyond Southern states. And if you find that your home turf is safe, respond to calls to action from teachers, students and book-loving activists in communities across the South, whether by donating banned books or sharing resources so they can access restricted titles.

Of all the scary doomsday scenarios I can think of, a world without books is possibly the scariest because we’ll have no leaders that have been inspired to take up the mantle because they’ve read a book that opened up their minds. There will be no more Clarisse McClellans, just Captain Beattys next time.

Quynh Anh Nguyen is a senior writing about the implications of current Southern political events. Her column, “I Reckon,” runs every other Wednesday.