One of the co-proprietors of Booksweet, Shaun Manning, poses outside of the store for a photo. Paula Farmer | Washtenaw Voice.
By: Jacob Kuiper
Staff Writer
On a warm August evening a small group of literary rebels gathered to discuss the controversial book Speak, published in 1999 by author Laurie Halse Anderson.
The book focuses on fictional highschool freshman, Melinda Sordino, as she navigates the challenges of friendship, loneliness, and mental illness after a traumatic event. This book was the fourth most challenged in 2020, according to the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, for containing a “political viewpoint…to be biased against male students, and for the novel’s inclusion of rape and profanity.” According to the ALA, “challenged” means documented requests to remove materials from schools or libraries.
Never-the-less, Booksweet, a local Ann Arbor book shop owned by Shaun Manning and Truly Render, is determined to bring contentious titles to the community through their Banned eBook Club.
Shortly after opening their store in August 2021 book censorship caught their eye when a ban of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” was talked about in the Chelsea School District. Mrs. Render reflects on her surprise at this moment, “This is a problem that people think happens somewhere else….This happened in our county.”
Their attention was brought to it again in January 2022 when a school district in Tennessee voted unanimously to ban Holocaust memoir and graphic novel, “Maus.” It was shortly after this that they started to think seriously about starting a banned book club, “so many of our favorite books were being banned and challenged….We had so many orders for ‘Maus,’” Render said.
When asked why they wanted to start a community discussion Mrs. Render expressed her frustration with the current state of dialogue online, “I’m frustrated with conversations on the internet. It’s important to me that real people talk about real books in real life in real time. This is not a conversation I want to have digitally. They’re important conversations and they need to happen in real life.” Mr. Manning added saying, “we want events that bring the community together…. [The club] makes for a really grounded and interesting conversation.”
To explain their decision to not only carry, but promote controversial material, Mrs. Render voices confidence in the books to speak for themselves,“We trust the books to do their job and they come through everytime.” She goes on further to say that the heated emotions that some books elicit are something that more people should embrace, “It’s ok to be angry. It’s ok to be uncomfortable. I wish people knew that. And the best way to do that is with a book. What’s it going to do?… You can walk away at any point.”
Still, as seen throughout the country recently, many people are uncomfortable with books like Speak and want to see them eradicated from campuses and libraries. When asked if book bans really do protect children Mr. Manning responded, “Protect them from what?” He goes on to offer a defense for children who can relate to these stories, “How does this protect a child who has had these experiences…? [What is it like for a] child to never see themselves in any literature?… If a book is not for you it’s not for you, but don’t stop other people from experiencing it.”
Even if you can’t relate to a story, Mrs. Render explains that a reader can still learn from the experiences of others, “The best thing about books is that they are not you. It’s a privilege to live in someone else’s mind. That’s all a book is; you get to live someone else’s experience. [You get to] see the world anew; it’s distinctly not you sometimes.”
The next Banned Book Club will be September 16 with “Stamped” by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds. They will also be going over “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe at the Kerrytown Bookfest. Booksweet will donate 10% of the profits from Banned Book Club reads to the ACLU during Banned Books Week in September.
