Every year, the week of September 27 to October 3 commemorates Banned Books Week, an event created by the American Library Association (ALA) whose mission is to promote and âcelebrate the freedom and expose the dangers of restricting access to booksâ. For the second consecutive year, EDSA, the English Department Student Association at UPRM, has striven to educate the student body about what it means for a book to be banned and why censorship should be relevant to everyone.
With its members, guest speakers, and audience, EDSAâs two-day events spawned conversations about censorship, banned books, and booksâ far-reaching effects on readers. These conversations were laced with âcontroversialâ (and relevant) topics like gender, sexuality, feminism and the impact of storytelling.
 So, what exactly is a banned book?
(Photo credit: Claudia Irizarry)
Banned books could be defined as literary works that have been challenged by a person or group fiercely enough to be pulled from the shelves of places such as libraries, bookstores or, as is the case in many countries, your own home. Â Books are often banned because of so-called âinappropriateâ content, portraying witchcraft, homosexuality, explicit sexuality, using offensive language, or because they are deemed âunsuitableâ to a particular age group. Even popular and beloved books have been banned, like the Harry Potter series, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Persepolis, The Great Gatsby, and even Shakespeareâs literary works, to name a few. In fact, most classic and contemporary famous books you can name belong to some list of banned or challenged books in some local public library or bookstore. Â Fourth-year English major Claudia Irizarry puts it candidly: âAll my favorite books are banned.â
 The events were held during the hora universal (Universal Hour) last Tuesday and Thursday at the English Department Language Lab in CH-126. There was a coming and going of students, all of which took their time to guess the books wrapped in brown paper, strewn across tables with key words on why they were banned. On Tuesday, September 29, Laura Garcia de Noceda, a first-year English Education graduate student, enlightened her audience on the history of banned books, opening the floor to conversations about the whyâs and howâs of the process of challenging and banning books. She highlighted that people have a fundamental right to read literature, and that banning books violates this right.
There was a mug shot set up at the activity where students and professorsâthe felonsâgot their pictures taken for committing the âtreacherousâ act of reading these forbidden books.Â
(Photo credit: Claudia Irizarry)
Among Tuesdayâs activities was also an interactive trivia game in which the participants had to listen to a banned bookâs description and search the room for the book based on the hints written on its cover.
On Thursday October 1, Gabriel Acevedo, another English Education graduate, gave a multi-faceted, interactive talk titled âExploring the Other Within Through Childrenâs Banned Booksâ. His goal was to have the audience âevaluate and present alternative strategies to present them to teachers, parents and students in order to promote tolerance and understanding to gender issues in society.â
The air was ripe for discussion and within moments ideas were being exchanged and built upon between the presenter and the audience. The students were surprised to hear that some childrenâs books on adoption and same-sex couples were banned on the premise of ânot promoting family values.â
Acevedo asked the audience to think about what makes the act of banning books important. One student suggested lack of representation: âA lot of people canât find their stories in books just because theyâre untraditional,â they said. Another student added that â[banning books] perpetuates the âtabooâ of subjects that should be talked about.â
Afterwards, Acevedo had participants write a short essay describing how gender and âcomplicatedâ subjects were handled in their schools. The goal was to address how the widespread taboos on these subjects could be eradicated. To finalize the event, the students read the most frequently banned childrenâs books, like And Tango Makes Three, a story about two male penguins who adopt a baby penguin who hatched under their care. Students were challenged to share how they would convince parents and teachers to remove the ban on those books.
(Photo credit: Dalina Aimee)
This workshop inspired its participants to think about how dangerous it is to censor âcontroversialâ topics just because some view them as uncomfortable or even disturbing. Censorship stunts the intellectual growth of society, and prevents people from examining their worlds through other perspectives than what their culture and society has taught them. It endangers everyone.Â
In the words of Noam Chomsky, âIf we donât believe in the freedom of expression of people we despise, we donât believe in freedom of expression at allâ.Â
Now, go pick up a book and exercise your right to knowledge!