Cicada Books and Coffee’s Banned Together Book Club hosted its first meeting of the new year on Tuesday, Jan. 14, opening with Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.”
Meeting on the second Tuesday of every month at 6:30 p.m., the club aims to create a space for conversation on censorship. Upcoming titles include “Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “The Bluest Eye,” “The Hate You Give,” “Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books,” “Flamer” and “Brave New World.”
Dawn Helbert, the owner of Cicada Books and Coffee, hosted the meeting, and attendees discussed the moral complexities of the month’s reading. Club members debated the line between censorship and appropriateness.
Attendees took the floor to justify how censored the piece should be, leaving members agreeing that the piece should not be available in a school library, but should remain in public libraries.
Helbert’s perspective on the importance of banned content said there is value in the literature.
“Most of the members are anti-book banning,” Helbert said. “If you’re reading something that’s some kind of literature, wouldn’t that be better than finding out about this controversial subject in other ways? Why not read somebody’s possibly better philosophical treatment of it?”
She acknowledged that while age-appropriate access is important, outright banning books does more harm than good.
“Most of the books we’ve discussed, people have agreed that there are certain age levels where maybe a kid should not have free access, but that’s no different than parental controls on internet usage,” she said.
Helbert emphasized that the club welcomes a range of perspectives, saying she hopes to give readers an opportunity to explore censored books.
“I guess the main thing that happens is that it gives everybody that participates in it a chance to think deeper about why things are banned,” Helbert said. “What are the uses of it, what are the effects of it? So, it kind of gets everybody to think a little harder about what’s really going on with the banning of books.”
Helbert, who opened the bookstore alongside her daughter in 2018, has now started four different book clubs. Starting with Tasty Reads, a series on food history and cookbooks during the first year of opening, and now offering Shelf Improvement, Based on a Book and Banned Together.
As Banned Together Books continues into the new year, they hope to awaken a conversation on censorship and the themes that provoke it.
Bethany Jarrell can be contacted at [email protected]
