Rebel Reading
The banning of one popular YA book series has left people asking, “Why?”
While browsing the shelves of my local bookstore the other day, I overheard a teenager ask her friends, “The Hunger Games is banned?! Why?”
From there, the trio of girls pointed to several other titles on the store’s banned books display, asking again and again, “Why, why, why?”
I couldn’t help but smile. Witnessing the conversation felt strangely fated. Not only was I holding a paperback copy of Catching Fire, the second book in the original The Hunger Games trilogy, while all this was happening, but I’d just filed my story about banned books a few days prior. (Further, the upcoming release of Suzanne Collins’ latest The Hunger Games novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, was announced during the writing of this editor’s letter. In a statement obtained by the Associated Press, Collins said the new novel takes “a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative.” I, for one, can’t wait to read it.)
The four-book series has sold over 100 million copies, been translated into 54 different languages and become a billion-dollar film franchise. It’s a pop culture behemoth, but it’s more than a piece of entertainment — according to Collins herself, it’s an exploration of the just war theory, which attempts to define the circumstances that give people a moral right to wage war.
The series follows 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen’s journey as a competitor in the 74th and 75th Hunger Games tournaments, a nationally televised event where children — called “tributes” — must fight to the death in an arena. Winners are promised fame and fortune or, as in Everdeen’s case, become the face of a rebellion.
In a 2008 interview with School Library Journal, Collins said she stumbled upon the story’s idea while “channel surfing between reality TV programs and actual war coverage.”
“On one channel, there’s a group of young people competing for, I don’t even know; and on the next, there’s a group of young people fighting in an actual war,” she said. “I was really tired, and the lines between these stories started to blur in a very unsettling way. That’s the moment when Katniss’ story came to me.
“There is so much programming, and I worry that we’re all getting a little desensitized to the images on our televisions,” Collins continued. “If you’re watching a sitcom, that’s fine. But if there’s a real-life tragedy unfolding, you should not be thinking of yourself as an audience member. Because those are real people on the screen, and they’re not going away when the commercials start to roll.”
Critics of the series have had it banned — i.e., removed from schools and libraries — for being “anti-family” and “anti-ethnic,” and for containing “insensitivity, offensive language, occult/satanic themes and violence.” Defenders of the series might call these labels hyperbolic or argue that its troubling themes, especially its depictions of violence, are precisely the point of the story.
What I’ll say is this: I understand parents’ desires to shield their children from potentially harmful and/or disturbing content. However, I’m glad I had access to these books as a teenager. They gave me the tools necessary to better understand the world around me and think more critically about my beliefs.
After all, reading fiction is powerful — studies have shown that it aids critical thinking skills and leads to greater levels of empathy. In an interview with Stanford Medicine’s blog Scope, physician-novelist Abraham Verghese also asserted that fiction can shape society.
“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth,” Verghese said. “Fiction has a major influence over how we live our lives. In 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin took the country by storm and helped end slavery in this country. And in England, a 1937 book called The Citadel is thought to have contributed to the genesis of the National Health Service because of its depiction of undesirable conditions in a mining town.
“Fiction can be transformative and powerful,” he continued. “When fiction resonates with us, it’s because it speaks to some truth in our own lives, something we can carry with us.”
So, maybe The Hunger Games series didn’t resonate with some the way it did with me and countless others … Should that mean we remove it from shelves? Who knows — maybe there’s a book that can help answer that.
Happy reading,
Sara Santora, Editor
ssantora@rowlandpublishing.com
