You don’t like writing essays. Especially not essays to present to the class. James and his friends in the back always talk, and your voice is quiet, so you have to speak louder and louder until you feel dangerously close to shouting, and then Mr. Hong finally snaps at the boys to show respect. Your knees knock and your hands clutch your paper and you try to talk fast but not too fast ‘cause you gotta present for at least three minutes, and all the while you just want it over with.
But this time might not be too bad. You’re looking at the assignment sheet that has a cute ‘lil globe with a face in the top right corner. Mr. Hong likes cute stuff. Always puts it on his papers. You’re in sixth grade now, but the cute stuff makes you feel like you’re ten years old again. Kinda nice, sometimes.
“You can write about any unit that we’ve gone over,” Mr. Hong says. “From the first American settlers to the Vietnam War. Remember to use your notes and past assignments. You’ll have a week to work on the paper, with help from me or Miss Nat in the Media Center. Next Friday we’ll present, then we’ll be done for the year.”
Great Grandpap had been a Tuskegee Airman. He’d died before you ever got a chance to meet him, but Mamma loves talking about him. “A real hero,” she says. “Proved what us Black folk could do in the air, and he did it with style. You oughta be proud of him, baby, ‘cause I know he’d be proud of you.”
The assignment stays in your head all day, through math and lunch and the bus ride home. You could get stories from Mamma. Photos and medals up in the attic. Get a book from the Media Center just to hit the cited source requirement. For once, you’re actually excited about an essay presentation.
Mamma shares your enthusiasm, warm mahogany eyes brightening as you explain the assignment. “Wait here,” she says before disappearing upstairs. She comes back after a few minutes, a giant box in her arms. “This is everything Grandad saved from his time in service,” she says, plunking it on the table in front of you. “You allowed to bring in relics?”
Maybe? You’ll ask Mr. Hong tomorrow. But it’s cool to sift through the box, memories and family ties wafting together and making you sneeze a bit. There’s a medal for Distinguished Service. Some rough and aged letters–you can hardly read the messy writing. Guess you and Great Grandpap both have bad penmanship. A military cap. A necklace with the cross. And photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.
You end up staring at a picture of Great Grandpap by his plane. He’s young. Probably the same age as your sister right now. His face is a patchwork of shadows cast by the wing. His smile gleams. You can feel his pride radiating across eighty years and four hundred miles, warm and sharp and earned.
You go to sleep that night thinking about planes, papers, telling off stupid James, and a man you never got to meet.
The Media Center always makes you jittery. The air is thick with quiet, to the point where you sometimes have to breathe in real hard just to make sure you can get any air at all. Miss Nat sits your class down in the writing area, Mr. Hong by her side. “You can look for any book you think might help you,” she says, lanyard and keys jingling. “You can use the computers to search up your topic as well. Just be mindful of others working here. If you need help Mr. Hong and I will be walking around.”
You choose to walk the shelves first, scanning the World War II section to see if anything jumps out at you. There’s odd gaps between books. Large, sometimes spanning an entire shelf.
Maybe other history classes have the same assignment.
The Media Center catalog could probably narrow down your options. You wait for a monitor to free up, then finally sit down on that hard red stool and type in Tuskegee Airmen. The ancient system whirs and clicks, a loading bar filling up.
Nothing.
Okay. Maybe go broader with the search. World War II Tuskegee Airmen.
Still nothing.
Try another key word? African American pilots.
The computer fan spins, the loading bar stiltedly fills, and when the new page loads, you feel like smashing your face in the keyboard. Nothing.
“Something I can help you with, hon?” Miss Nat materializes over your left shoulder, snapping you out of your frustration.
You ask if there are any books about the Tuskegee Airmen, or if there’s any mention of them.
Miss Nat isn’t old, but there are a lot of wrinkles on her face. The wrinkles on her forehead appear as her brows furrow, and the smile lines around her mouth go slack. “I’m sorry, hon, but I’m afraid we don’t. They were taken out earlier this week.”
Oh. Well, it kinda makes sense. You can’t be the only student that chose that topic. You ask Miss Nat when the books might be returned.
“Why don’t you choose a different topic to write about?” she suggests, bowling over your question. “The Great Expansion is always interesting, or if you want to stay in the World War II era, we have a lot of books about D-Day.”
No. You don’t want to change topics. But you thank Miss Nat anyway and wander the shelves, pretending to take out random books to look at whenever Mr. Hong walks by. When you’re called to line up to go back to class, you see you’re not the only one without a book. At least half the class is empty-handed.
Talia shrugs when you ask her about it. “Wanted to write about the Trail of Tears,” she says. “Only book I could find with it was for third-graders. Bare bones information. Sucks, you couldn’t find anything at all.”
On the bus ride home, you press your forehead to the window, let it rattle and bang against the glass like your thoughts against your skull. Maybe you could ask Mamma or Dad to take you to the public library over the weekend. Or maybe you could do an Internet search. Mr. Hong never said you had to get your cited source from the school library.
Mamma frowns as you tell her what happened. “Nothing?” she asks. “You couldn’t get anything about Grandad’s service?”
All through the evening, through Dad coming home from the firehouse, through dinner, through Facetime with your sister, Mamma has a tightness to her mouth. Kind of tightness she has when the neighbor takes their trash out too early, or when you leave a mess in your room. Before you go to bed she tells you that you won’t be taking the bus, that she’ll be dropping you to school and walking in with you. “I wanna figure out what’s up with that library,” she says.
True to her word, Mamma takes you to school on Friday. She walks you into the front office, kisses your forehead, and sends you off to your first period with a quick but felt love you baby. You notice she’s wearing her nice brown heels, the ones with the brass buckles. She calls them her power pumps. Only ever wears them to church or important events where she needs “that little extra oomph.”
All through the day, your mind is fixated on the principal’s office. What’s Mamma doing? What’s she saying? Sure, not finding the book you needed from the Media Center was rough, but why does she care so much? You can find a workaround.
Mr. Hong takes your class to the Media Center again. Why, you don’t know. Anyone who got a book yesterday is set, and those who didn’t probably won’t be able to find one. But all concerns fly away when you catch sight of Mamma by the Media Center desk, chatting with Miss Nat like they’d been lifelong friends.
Mr. Hong gives an abbreviated version of Miss Nat’s welcome speech, then shoos your class off to the shelves. You trot over to Mamma when she waves at you. “How’re you doing, baby?”
You’re good. Just confused. You ask Mamma what she’s doing here, and she answers “I was just talkin’ with Miss Nat about your book problem. You mind telling her exactly what happened yesterday?”
Uh, sure. You recount yesterday’s frustrations. How the shelves had been emptier than normal, how the computer turned up zero search results, how bored you’d been just wandering around, trying to look busy.
Miss Nat and Mamma both look like bobbleheads by the end, nodding and humming with each sentence. You end by saying thank you to Miss Nat for the suggestions of other topics, but you really want to write about the Tuskegee Airmen because Great Grandpap had been one, and did she know when the Media Center would have those books back?
Miss Nat and Mamma exchange a look, and Miss Nat says, “Hon, I’m so sorry, but I don’t think we’ll be able to have those books for a while.”
“Tell you what,” Mamma says. “You go and work on some other projects, and tomorrow we’ll figure out how to get you your book.”
Sounds reasonable. Definitely better than doing next to nothing for an hour. You give Mamma a hug, thank Miss Nat again, and go claim a table to work on a reflection for English.
Out of the corner of your eye you watch the desk. Mamma and Miss Nat talk in hushed voices, then Mr. Hong joins them. There’s something about the three of them whispering together that gives you pause. Why would they care so much about some missing books? It’s a library. They’ll be returned. Could just be adults being adults. Sometimes it’s a mystery why they do what they do.
Mamma picks you up after school. Her fingers clutch the steering wheel, and there’s a twitch to her jaw. You’ve never seen Mamma like this, like a kinda quiet anger. She doesn’t even talk back to the folks on the radio.
You ask if you can go to the public library tomorrow to get a book for your report. Mamma swallows. Merges lanes. “I don’t think they’ll have what you’re looking for, baby.”
Why not?
Mamma doesn’t answer, and you know better than to think she didn’t hear you. She stops at a red light. The truck in front of you has a MAGA sticker.
“Baby, listen to me.” You look over at Mamma. Mamma, who’s strong and fierce and looking like she’s one blink away from a tear splashing down her cheek. It’s uncomfortable seeing her like that. Moms aren’t supposed to look like that. “There are some people out there that…that would rather pretend some parts of history never happened. They’d rather pretend that things have been a certain way since the dawn of time, but by doing that, they ignore people and events that are so important to right now.”
The light turns green. The MAGA truck speeds off, crossing the intersection. Mamma turns right, toward home. She keeps talking. “No one can change the past, but these people want to change the future by erasing the past. And one of the ways they do that is by getting rid of evidence of the past.”
Like books?
“Exactly, baby, like books.”
You think of the boxes in the attic, of the military cap and the messy letters and the cross necklace and the picture of the man who pushed his way into a space not designed for him and made it his own. How could anyone look at his grin and say no thank you?
“If you remember anything of what I’m telling you,” Mamma says, indicating and turning into your neighborhood, “make it this. Remember that just because someone wants to ignore you, ignore what you’ve done and what you’re doing, it does not mean you are any less important. You are smart, baby, so smart, and you’re hard-working, and you’re kind, and you’re here. Don’t you forget that, and don’t let anyone else forget that either. You are here.”
As soon as Mamma parks in the driveway, you dart out of the car, dash to the driver’s side, and pull her into a tight hug. She sounds like she needs it. You kinda need it, too.
Mr. Hong ends up waiving the cited source requirement for a lot of students. On presentation day, you skip to the front of the class, and though you’re supposed to be reading from your paper, your essay is pretty much memorized. You talk fast, only remembering to control your speed once in a while–there is a time requirement to hit. Your voice pitches up and down, you bounce on the balls of your feet, and when you pass around the photograph of your ancestor by his beloved plane, the awed murmurs of your classmates sends honey-sweet pride rippling through you. Yeah, that’s your Great Grandpap they’re looking at. Even James is quiet, listening to you ramble on.
Great Grandpap didn’t let anyone forget he was there. He made noise, annoyed a lot of people, but in the end, he made his mark. He is remembered. You’ll make sure of that.
You end up getting an A on your paper. Mr. Hong gives you a sticker of a smiling star.
It’s cute. You wonder if Great Grandpap would think it’s cute, too.
◆
Exegesis
According to a study conducted by Pen America last year, a total of 1,648 books were banned in the U.S. Of those 1,648 books, twenty-one percent of them contained the subject matter of race and racism. Taking it a step further, ten percent of all banned books had themes of civil rights and activism. When broken down like this, it is chilling to see exactly what is being taken off of library, bookstore, and school shelves.
Of course, talking about banned books and the act of book banning is always treacherous territory. Why is the book being banned? Who was the book intended for? What was the author’s intent behind publishing the book in the first place? Most of the sentiment behind banning books has to do with wanting to protect children from unsavory material, or themes they may not be ready to comprehend yet. But what do we do when the line between protecting children and silencing people becomes blurred?
When looking at the titles and content of some banned books, it becomes clear that this movement has spiraled out of control. For instance, the book Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi was banned in Clay County, Florida. The book was written as a way to talk about race with children in a safe, positive, and controlled manner. Also banned in Clay County was The Prince and the Dressmaker, a graphic novel by Jen Wang. This book was intended to have entertainment value rather than educational value, and featured characters of the LGBTQ+ community, including a main character who is genderqueer.
Perhaps those who can best voice the frustration of book bans are the children themselves. In February of last year, the New York Times took comments from teenagers who were fed up with seeing books disappearing from shelves. Teada, from Gray New Gloucester High School, said “Simply banning books because they’re too much of a “sensitive topic” will only harm young readers. Books are supposed to enhance our understanding of topics, history, etc. The books that are on the list of being banned are all books that help readers understand certain topics to a significant extent.” Many other children spoke to a similar sentiment, pushing for the return of the banned books.
In my story, I used the second-person perspective. Even though I used a very specific topic–the Tuskegee Airmen–the act of book banning can target anyone. Racial history, religious history, LGBTQ+ history, mental health, and disabilities have all been targets of book bans. In doing this, we erase ideas, events and perspectives that would help us grow as people. It’s natural to want to protect children from what is deemed as negative, but when taken to an extreme like this, book banning does more harm than good. In trying to protect children, we take away their access to diverse literature, in turn limiting their knowledge, social skills and ability for complex thinking. Book bans don’t help anyone–they stunt us, as individuals and in society.