Abby Westmore '26
Senior Staff Writer
The number of book bans across the United States has seen a great surge in the last decade, even more so since the pandemic. Florida has been a hotbed for literary censorship, and states such as California, Missouri, and Utah have swiftly followed suit. Books with themes of racial injustice and queer identity are frequently placed under review for profanity or sexual content.
Debbie Supplee is Cape Henlopen High School’s librarian. She is known by students to be deeply passionate about people having access to diverse and thought-provoking literature.
“The library is the one place that everybody has access to everything and that you get to read something, discern what you’re reading, and think about how things are presented. You guys are emerging adults and it’s good for you to start making some good decisions.” Supplee explained.
In 2014, The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth, was removed from the Cape Summer Reading list after a parent challenged it for vulgar language.
“What they did was they said they would take it off the summer reading list.” Debbie Supplee said, “So it wasn’t banned, it just was not requested for kids to read for summer reading.”
The book in question is a coming of age story about the titular character, Cameron, who is sent to a conversion camp after being forcibly outed as queer to her aunt. Cape Henlopen High School made national news that year for the title's removal, and there was severe public outcry from both sides.
Eileen Springfield, who teaches language arts at Cape and was working there at the time, described to us a strange and fraught period that transpired.
“Nobody got fired, I think they wanted to- I believe that they wanted to. They wanted to blame someone.” She said.
She then explained her suspicions that the book was removed for more than just profanity, as was cited by the school board.
“They said it was because of the language that was in the book, but almost every book on the list, every book we read today has language.”
According to PEN America, the stories most often targeted contain characters of color, themes of activism, and depictions of queer identity.
“Among the 1,648 unique banned book titles in the Index, 674 banned book titles (41 percent) explicitly address LGBTQ+ themes or have protagonists or prominent secondary characters who are LGBTQ+.”
Conservative voices will continue to shift the landscape of public schools and libraries, and more moderate administrators will bend at the behest of mob rule.
Following up on her comment about the school board wanting to fire someone, Eileen Springfield spoke about the language arts department’s united front. She said, “When they asked us who to blame, we all said, all of us.”
Comentários