Perks
In honor of Utah being the first state to issue a state-wide book ban, I wanted to write about one of the most commonly banned books, which is also one of my favorites: The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
I began reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky one morning when I was a mid-teen. I didn’t put the book down until I finished it later that day. Then I cried. I read the book again that night. The next day, I read the book again. I had never before read a book that seemed to so completely encapsulate my experience of being alive. The Perks of Being a Wallflower helped me understand myself. It helped me get through high school. It helped me decide to keep living at a time I was uncertain if I wanted to continue doing so. Chbosky himself has said that he has received thousands of letters, phone calls, and emails from young people who intended to end their own lives, and then decided against doing so after reading his book.
And yet Perks was the fourth most frequently challenged book in libraries last year, due to its themes of mental health issues, sexual abuse, and homosexuality. Libraries and governments that ban books are infringing on the individual rights of young people, inhibiting them from the full exploration of their identities, and preventing them from accessing the works that may save their lives.
Government and school officials may claim that they are protecting young people from exposure to harmful content by banning certain books. In fact, they are abridging the right to free speech and the press, according to the First Amendment of the Constitution, which makes no distinction between age groups. David L. Hudson Jr, a professor of law, former Senior clerk to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and author who has spent much of his career focusing on First Amendment law, asserts that “book bans violate the First Amendment because they deprive children or students of the right to receive information and ideas.” Our education system should teach students how to learn, not limit what they can or cannot learn. Officials who ban books, and the parents that support them, are discouraging freedom of thought among young people during one of the most difficult periods of their lives.
Censoring books with characters that have certain gender or race identities is a covert means of censoring those genders or ethnic identities. Of the 4,240 titles targeted for censorship in 2023—a rise of 63% from 2022—47% represented the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals (see ALA Censorship). But it is not the act of reading a book with a gay character, as in the case of Perks, that makes a young person gay. Just as it is not the act of reading Genderqueer, by Maia Kobabe, the most banned book of 2023, that makes people non-binary. Being gay or non-binary is an identity, just as being black or indigenous or a person of color is an identity.
Because every young person has to discover their own identity, only they can decide what is essential to that identity. In an interview with the National Coalition Against Censorship, Chbosky explained why he wrote The Perks of Being a Wallflower: “This book is my love letter and wish for every kid who is struggling with identity, because at the time I was writing it, I was struggling with my own.” Young people from historically marginalized populations need stories in which they can find themselves as much as anyone else. We should not be taking those stories away from them at the time of their lives when they are most vulnerable. Young people need more support from us, not less.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in the US among people age 15 to 24. Among high schoolers, the situation is even more dire: 9% of current high schoolers have attempted suicide, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health. The number of attempts have risen dramatically over the last ten years. According to a CDC report from 2022, “an increasing number of students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2021, including 57% of girls (up from 36% in 2011), 29% of boys, and 69% of LGBTQ+ students”. That teenage suicide attempts have risen at the same time as books bans does not mean there is a correlation between them. But books are one of the few ways a person of any age who feels emotionally isolated and in despair can feel someone else understands them. This may be exactly what saves someone—I know this was the case for me. Asked why he thinks his book has been so helpful, Chbosky said,
“For many kids, the book helped end a sense of isolation. It ended the idea that they were all alone in what they were going through, whether they were gay and they thought they were going to be punished for that, or if they were struggling with mental illness or depression and they thought that it never gets better. Charlie’s struggles, and his friends’ struggles, speak directly to those experiences. I feel that because the book—and movie—ends in a cathartic way, I think it gives a sense of hope, which is what I wanted it to do.”
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, like so many books that have been banned, doesn’t lead teenagers into these difficult issues, they help teenagers find their way through them.
Minority groups have already had their individual freedoms violated enough in this country’s history. Substance abuse, suicidal ideation, mental health issues, the sexual abuse of minors, and the struggle to express one’s LGTBQIA+ identity in a discriminatory environment are not going to go away because teenagers don’t have access to books in which these issues are written about. Banning books which address such themes will only make it more difficult for young people to speak out about these facts of life, which in turn makes them far more difficult to deal with. This is potentially far more harmful than any perceived harm that may come from banned books. Surviving adolescence is difficult enough already. Why prevent people from reading the books that will help people through it?
