Banned Books and Silenced Writing: A Matter of Life and Death

This text serves to inform and discuss 



Banned Books and Silenced Writing: A Matter of Life and Death

It’s easy enough to think of a book ban as a mere formality; an annoying inconvenience to you, the reader, and to the author who will, of course, miss out on money as well as have to see their reputation be attacked. But book bans, being part of a greater political landscape, can mean more than just a book quietly disappearing from a list or from a shelf in your local library. For authors, having their books banned can result in harassment and threats – sometimes, even, to their lives. 

Here is a list of a few authors who have experienced the darker effects of book banning firsthand:


  • Ovid was exiled from Rome and had to live in Romania

  • Dante was exiled from Florence

  • Salman Rushdie, having lived under death threats from Iran’s Supreme Leader since 1988, was attacked and nearly killed at an American literary festival in 2022

  • Jeanine Cummins faced death threats after the publication of her novel American Dirt in 2020

  • Ellen Hopkins was accused of “grooming children” and “pedophilia” for her YA novels (quoted from Publishers Weekly)

  • Abbad Yahya faced lynching threats and was forced into exile after the Palestinian government banned his book Crime in Ramallah in 2016

  • Dinko Gruhonjić, a Serbian journalist and writer, has faced death threats and smears since 2024, being one of several Serbian journalists targeted for “their independent and critical reporting” (quoted from PEN International)


As we can notice, several of these instances are no more than a few years old, raising questions about just how “free” the world of today truly is. Of course, people will always have opinions, and any work of art needs to be able to interact with a certain dose of criticism – but when criticism turns into death threats and forcing writers into exile, when the urge to silence and vilify becomes greater than the urge to listen and discuss, that’s when we must reexamine the role of book banning in our modern societies. Instances like these, continuing to take place all over the world, remind us yet again of the very possible real-life implications of book bans and how authors, in the face of these implications, continue to write – sometimes, even, with their lives on the line.


Sources:


https://apnews.com/article/salman-rushdie-attacked-9eae99aea82cb0d39628851ecd42227a

https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/american-dirt-author-receives-death-threats-amid-national-stir-over-novel/ 


https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/95934-children-s-authors-on-the-real-world-cost-of-book-banning.html 


https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/04/01/521094950/facing-death-threats-and-a-ban-on-his-novel-a-palestinian-author-flees 


https://www.pen-international.org/news/serbia-death-threats-against-dinko-gruhonjic-condemned 

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