subject: Censorship as a Barbed Wire Fence [print this page] Barbed wire has clusters of short, sharp spikes set at intervals along it, and it is used to make fences; sometimes in warfare it serves as an obstruction. It is thorny and dangerous.
Although one can see through the mesh of the fence, it effectively blocks all passage through it, and the spikes at the top make climbing over unscathed impossible. Thus, by using barbed wire fence as our first metaphor, we illuminate how censors evoke barriers to free thought and speech when they block knowledge acquisition, intellectual development, as well as creative and critical thinking by calling for books to be removed from libraries, classrooms, schools, and districts.
We do not believe that reading to make meaning goes far beyond reading for the moment to practice skills; nor is it an exercise for assessment and evaluation purposes. Reading should enable all people, especially young people, to "read the world" (Freire, 1991) as well as the word. This is impossible if censors present obstructions to a clear view of the worlderect "barbed wire"making it impossible to gain access to the world through vicarious reading experiences. If we think of obstruction as an important entailment of a barbed wire fence, then standing on the outside looking in is one perception that we use to invoke our metaphor.
This perception conveys limited vision and runs both ways. On one side of the fence are the censors and those whom they want to control, standing behind and peeping through the mesh fence and over the barbed wire; on the other side is a book waiting to offer its readers a new, different, and fresh perspective.
Often censors stand on one side of the fence and make uninformed decisions about what books should and should not be read by students. Access to information is denied and more often than not, this denial is due to only a word(s), an isolated concept, or mention of lifestyles that censors find offensive. For instance, Briar Rose has been burned due to content related to homosexuality.
In fact, Briar Rose was "barbecued" because one character was admittedly gay, and we contend that the censors who did that burning stood behind a barbed wire fence blocking students who might read the novel from an opportunity to acquire knowledge. Using blurred and narrowed vision, the book burners denied young people access to information about the inhumane treatment of others and the horrific injustices that innocent people suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
How could the censors see and be critical of the gay man in the story and be so completely blind to the savage annihilation of gays during the Holocaust.
The gay character in Briar Rose is strong, and because of the censors' misplaced focus, they missed an opportunity to delve more deeply into a historical event that is often omitted from history textbooks written about the Holocaust. This omission perhaps is itself a longstanding form of censorship that blocks school children from a complete view of an important historical event.
Like all great authors, Yolen conducted extensive research about her topic while she was writing her novel. In a letter addressed to Yolen, one of her fans asked, "Is Briar Rose in any way autobiographical it's too real to be 'made up.' Where did you find out the information about the refugee center at Oswego Boy have you done a ton of research" (C. Tuteur, personal communication, August 6, 1993).
Yolen traveled to Poland and spent many months researching the plight of gays during the Holocaust; it is a horrendous and weighty historical event. It is perplexing to think that anyone would destroy the information, ideas, and ideals she offers with the strike of one match.
The Children's Literature Research Collections (CLRC) at the University of Minnesota owns a copy of Briar Rose, and on the title page autographed by Yolen, she wrote, "This is the only novel I was ever seriously late in getting inbecause it was so damned difficult to write." Here, as she does in other places where she talks about writing about the Holocaust, Yolen implies the physical and emotional strain she experienced while writing Briar Rose. In conducting her research about the Holocaust and assigning her the role of witness, she crossed over the barbed wire and walked through the steel mesh to see clearly the horrific conditions that killed innocent people, including gays.
This was, apparently, a deeply moving and laborious task, and it would have been easier to avoid gazing upon the horrors that she saw among the records she examined. Wiping away any narrow, blurred vision, Yolen wrote Briar Rose as a clear picture of what the worst of history has left us, and this is a picture that others who fail to cross the barbed wire would deny themselves and others.
