February 1, 2012 The Avengers vs. the Tucson Unified School District
I’m lucky I’m not teaching my “Thrilling Tales” course in Tuscon, Arizona this semester. Three of my eight authors made the school board’s new banned books list.
Sherman Alexie scored twice with two short story collections. I’m guessing no Tuscon administrators read his time-travel novel Flight. Its teen hero guns down a bank lobby of strangers before getting inexplicably yanked into a first-hand tour of violence across United States history. Alexie argues that violence is “perpetuated on both sides of any conflict, and whichever side you’re on, the violence goes on and on and on, both sides committing incredible acts of pain and suffering.”
Sounds pretty edifying to me, but then Tuscon isn’t worried about Alexie’s message. They banned him for being Indian.
Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic, but Tuscon banned him too. Not The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I’m teaching later this semester, but his first short story collection, Drown. So apparently the children of Tuscon need to be protected not just from books where “race, ethnicity and oppression are central themes” but short stories in particular.
At least Isabel Allende’s Zorro is a bonafide novel, though I doubt any board members made it through all 400 pages. They just needed to skim her bio in the back, the part about her being born in Peru and growing up in Chile. Never mind that Zorro is a flagrantly pro-Democracy melting pot tale. Allende’s hero is part Indian, part blueblood Spanish, with a Jewish fencing mentor, and Gypsies and Caribbean pirates to fill in the gaps. The novel shouts: MULTICULTURALISM IS GOOD!
So either Tuscon is deaf, or that’s exactly the sort of pernicious liberal talk they need to yank from their children’s hands (by some accounts, the books were literally yanked from students in their classrooms.) So it’s not just ethnic studies that’s getting the sword edge. Alexie, Diaz, and Allende are joined by such race-obsessed monomaniacs as Henry David Thoreau and William Shakespeare.
Tucson is selling their book ban as a curriculum change designed to avoid “biased, political and emotionally charged” teaching. That means anything Mexican-American. Except students. The district is overwhelmingly Mexican-American, but presumably Mexican-American children will not be barred from attending school. Provided they don’t arrive emotionally charged.
Students can, however, sue. Two have joined eleven of their teachers in federal court to challenge the state law that prompted the book ban. The new law outlaws courses organized around ethnic themes or that promote “resentment toward a race or class of people.” That means resentment against white people. Which wipes out not only most American literature but most American history too.
The original Zorro rode to fight oppression in colonial Mexico (which, by the way, included Arizona). He’s riding again today, the national teach-in for spreading word of the Tuscon book ban. Zorro’s original band of followers dubbed themselves “the Avengers.” And it was ultimately the Avengers who ended state corruption in their fictionalized New Spain.
So here’s your own superhero moment, caballerros.
Hop on your electronic horse and share the outrage.
Tags: banned books, Isabel Allende Zorro, Junot Diaz, Sherman Alexie Flight, Thrilling Tales, Tuscon Arizona
- 11 comments
- Posted under Uncategorized
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Atin
said
Shouldn’t they be banning the bible too?
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Laura
said
Great post, Chris. I’m sharing it with my class.
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Joe King
said
Join “the voyage of the banned”;
http://funnypaperz.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html
…
http://www.funnypaperz.com/ad/bg/index.htm
…
http://funnypaperz.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
From “the most dangerous cartoonist in America”
Keep up the great work.
I enjoy your posts immensely.
Joe King
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Chris Gavaler
said
Thanks for the kind words, Joe. I have not seen your calendar myself and so don’t have my own opinion on the subject. In general, I prefer that people who are offended by something find ways of countering it other than lobbying Amazon and like places to stop selling it.
That said, I did follow your link above and read your statement: “The “truth” is that AIDS is an “elective” disease. It STOPS the day guys quit sticking it to each other. And for the tragedy of women and children infected… THAT stops the day their gay husbands and fathers stop cheating on them. Anyone need MORE education, science or funding to understand THAT?”
In light of that statement, I can’t help but to feel a deep sympathy with your detractors. As I said, I have not read and so don’t have an opinion about your calendar. If, however, your notions about AIDS are reflected in your calendar, it must be a profoundly offensive piece of merchandise.
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Joe King
said
Dear Chris, the harsh truth is frequently offensive in the current atmosphere of hand-wringing that vaunts political correctness above the simple truth.
I read you are a professor within such a system.
I have compassion for your position, my daughter is completing work toward her professorship as well.
I once was a cog in a similar corporate system.
I left to pursue my creative freedom.
I built me next career around toy packages that incorporated original comic strips to fulfill the old photo cross-sell requirements at a time when Marvel title sales amounted to fewer than 10,000 copies per month.
Each toy line I was in charge of between 1980 – 1990 had dozens of figures and vehicles. Each skew had a minimum run of 50,000 pieces.
If you can do the ruff math, I am one of the most widely circulated comic artists of the later 20th century.
I am happy to discuss both objective and subjective truths with you especially in your chosen field.
if you get a chance – watch the video.
If you are not prone to fear – listen to the voice messages:
http://funnypaperz.blogspot.com/2012/01/voice-of-truth-vs-voice-of-lies.html
– A fan,
Joe King
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Chris Gavaler
said
I prefer to err toward political correctness than insensitivity. Your opinions about AIDS reveals a fundamental lack of imagination and empathy. So much so that I suspect you of being disingenuous. You are performing a caricature similar to the ones in your cartoons. That requires you to place provocation before intelligence, humor before compassion. Those choices have probably helped to make you so widely circulated. So profit is another motive. Profoundly angering people is just a cost of doing business for you. I suspect there’s more intelligence under the surface of your persona than you are willing to reveal, but it’s easier for you to pretend you’re merely speaking simple truths in an age of censorship. I’m not buying it.
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Joe King
said
Dear Chris, It is not compassion to let a brother die in his sin. It is not intelligent to allow compulsive behavior that comes with deadly consequence to go unchallenged.
For all your sideline observations of super heroes, including the self-anointed and appointed title of Patron Saint – as tho they bow to you for guidance and protection you really have learned nothing FROM them.
It is a never ending battle for truth and justice.
And it seems your own motives in just profiling them dis-serve you in that their own virtues do not seem to rub off on you.
Can it really be true after all that “those who cannot do – teach?”
That would be a shame.
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Chris Gavaler
said
If you believe homosexuality is a sin, then you’re expressing a religious conviction, presumably a Christian one. Homosexuality is referred to as an “abomination” in the bible. So is eating pork and shellfish. If you’ve ever eaten a hotdog, then you’ve sinned as deeply as someone who has anal sex.
You could discard that biblical passage as a product of its cultural time period. Taboos on food have fallen out of religious fashion. But if Christians are free to ignore some passages while shouting others, they’re not following God’s word; they’re selectively using God’s word to justify their personal opinions.
Superheroes are a product of their cultural time periods too. Truth and justice in the 1930’s included vigilante lynchings. Pick a decade and you’ll find a different “truth and justice” with a set of superheroes to reflect them. Overall though, superheroes are simple. They were written for children. They’re a way of taking a very gray world and pretending it’s black and white. That’s not a virtue. That’s make believe.
The title of my blog, by the way, is a reference to St. James.
I like to think that any two people, if they work hard enough, can find common ground. At the moment, Joe, I can’t imagine what that common ground could be. Your last comment doesn’t appear to be interested in bridging differences anyway. That’s fine. But I would rather agree to disagree than exchange insults. If you have something sincerely productive to add, I’ll listen. Otherwise, I thank you for reading my blog, and I’m signing off.
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Joe King
said
Dear Chris,
As for picking a decade, does the phrase “I like Ike” help orient you?
As for common ground I recommend DC’s “Kingdom Come”.
I thot the contrast between old school heroes (black and white to you I imagine) and the young Turks in all their diversity and amoral mutations was as good a portrait of the world today as I have seen.
I took a poll on my FB account when I had maxed out at 5,000 asking the mostly cartoonist membership which side they would choose in the “Kingdom Come” scenario.
To my great disappointment many chose the deviant side, but the results also broke down along age demographics, ie: old school vs. current youth.
As for St. James, may he enlighten you towards salvation rather than just provide a throw-away reference or sarcasm.
The communion of saints is a super power worthy of consideration.
Sincerely,
Joe King
PS>
http://funnypaperz.blogspot.com/2012/02/time-continuum-paradox.html
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Chris Gavaler
said
Kingdom Come is indeed a great graphic novel. I read it as a belated confirmation of how profoundly amoral (from a human perspective) a race of supermen (in the Nietzsche, Shaw, eugenics sense) would really be. A true Superman, the idea was, wouldn’t concern himself with the petty definitions of truth and justice that mere humans worry about. Old school superheroes were written as an intentional reversal of that Superman philosophy. Instead of directing their concerns to their own kind (as the young Turks do in Kingdom), WW2 era heroes were depicted as fighting for the common man — a notion that goes against everything that Nietzsche, Shaw and every other eugenicists (both Nazi and American) had in mind. Though it intrigues me that Kingdom ends with an admission that superheroes, old school or new, are a race apart in need of their own nation. Not sure if that’s a backdoor way of agreeing with the eugenics agenda, or the inevitable conclusion to any “what if there were really supermen” scenario. Either way, a book well worth reading. And, in this case, some solidly common ground. Thanks.
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Eric Gehman
said
I continue to be astounded by the mere existence of this law. How, in 2012, do elected officials think that banning books is appropriate or necessary, given all of the other (actually important) issues facing education today? What is this, 1950?!
Worse, the racism that motivates this whole book-banning campaign is so incredibly transparent. How this ever got approved by any legislative body just boggles my mind…
… And, also, kind of depresses me. I really thought that we, as a society, were past this crap.
I take heart, at least, when I see W&L professors speaking out on this issue!