Navigating Florida’s Book Bans as a Writer, Teacher, and Mother
While visiting Lauren Groff's new Gainesville bookstore, The Lynx, I thought about what it means to be a writer, teacher, and mother living in Florida during our wave of book-banning.
In preparation for visiting Lauren Groff's new Gainesville bookstore, The Lynx, I started reading Florida, her short story collection that had been on my TBR shelf for a minute. As a native of the state, I was eager to see whether Groff captured my own feelings for Florida, but what I ended up noticing was something else entirely. I caught myself thinking about the stories that involved a mother, usually one who writes.
The author and her son at The Lynx
While letting the Florida stories stew within me and soaking in the overall vibe of The Lynx, I found my son in the children's section, where he had gravitated to on his own. I wondered if the experience of motherhood changes when you're a writer and which part of my identity comes first. Am I a mother who writes or a writer who is a mother? I introduce myself in my article pitches as "a writer, teacher, and mother living in Florida." While teaching is a job and motherhood is the most important job, what is writing?
On the one hand, you can get paid for your writing, so it can be a means to an end, but on the other hand, writing can become a disease. I, for instance, can no longer live my life without my mind trying to find the angle in all of my experiences, a large part of which involves parenting. I always wanted to be a writer but found the gumption to actually become one when I had my son. So, deciphering which came first is a real chicken or egg conundrum.
As I met my son in the magical nook with Where the Wild Things Are decor, I browsed the shelves and chose a beautiful pop-up version of The Little Prince for us to read together. When I showed him my selection, he told me he had already found Shel Silverstein's Falling Up and wanted that. He had been introduced to the author's work a month earlier when his teacher ended the school year with a poetry unit in which she helped each student write their own poem for a class anthology. The experience garnered my son's enthusiasm for poetry and writing, which I, as a mother, haven't been as successful in conjuring. Things like that, I've noticed, are easier to accept when they aren't coming from his mother. Since I wanted to reinforce his own literary choice, I agreed to buy him the book and placed The Little Prince back on the shelf. Putting my perspective as an English teacher into play, I know it's better to let my students choose their own books and that forcing them to read or write anything never yields my desired results, which would be to fall in love with literature or experience the therapeutic satisfaction that comes with writing something true in their own unique voice.
The author’s son in the children’s section at Lauren Groff’s bookstore in Gainesville, Florida
When I started teaching, I could select short stories or novels I knew my students would like. I was trusted to do my job if the texts I chose were age-appropriate and helped me achieve a particular learning standard, such as character analysis. But when the pandemic came, so did an attitude toward teachers that questioned everything we were doing in the classroom. Quickly, we got directives from our school board to not use anything that hadn't been previously approved by them and to ask permission if we wanted to use anything outside of the state-approved textbooks or computer-based materials. This included supplemental worksheets and film adaptations of novels or short stories we read together as a class. An entirely new and high level of stress had been added to a job that was already very stressful.
While it felt like I had to learn how to teach all over again, I held onto my independent reading practice, in which students had to always have a book they chose to read when they finished their work or for Fridays when I designated time for their own reading. I had one student who would proudly come in every week and show me the latest banned book he was reading; he and his dad were on a mission to read as many banned books as possible. But I knew all too well that not every student had a parent like that at home or was coming into my class from a home where they saw people reading routinely. So when one of my classes asked me about book bans, I told them what I would have said before our politically stifling climate: I told them the truth. No one can ever really ban a book, at least not yet. Therefore, if my students ever discovered that there was a title their school library did not have, whether banned or not, all they had to do was walk next door to the public library and check it out or place a hold on it. They liked knowing that, as the knowledge that hits a chord can feel empowering. And since I couldn't help but nudge them toward reading anything at all for their own pleasure, I shared one more thing I've noticed; banned books are often the best book recommendations.
The Banned Books display at The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida
I never got into the game of teaching English to push children away from books. Of course, it was the opposite, to help every student find the titles that resonated with them and find themself on the page, as those were the only things that pulled me from the depths of my own challenging youth in a home with a parent who happened to not read or write. While I can't get every one of my students to read a book, I'll take whatever I can get in the way of piquing their literary interest; any publicity, after all, is still good publicity, and banned books have been good for business. As a mother, I so appreciate my son having a teacher who wasn't afraid to veer slightly away from the curriculum to encourage poetry writing and a principal who supported her in doing so. Not every teacher is still pushing, and not every school administration is supportive. I know that my son growing up around a mother who is always reading and has already read to him matters. But I also know that he needs to find that spark himself. It cannot come from me alone. As a teacher, forcing him to read or write will only push him further away from my passions. I've come to view book bans as little nudges to check those stories out as they promote curiosity and prompt the question, what's that all about?
I had been particularly interested in visiting Groff's new bookstore because I love books and because she had reportedly decided to open The Lynx in response to the state's wave of book bans. As a reader, I felt that in her store, I was around my people, which is something readers sometimes have to work harder at finding than others. I admired her banned book sections and noted who else was browsing. Not all but many of the patrons were young women, who were likely nearby University of Florida or Santa Fe College students. The space Groff had created proved a couple of things: print is far from dead, and book banning isn't exactly achieving the demise of certain titles. I, for one, have only witnessed an increase in reading among my students, largely due to our fellow readers, who are pushing back against the censorship of the human experiences portrayed in those banned books.
A snap from the inside of Lauren Groff’s bookstore The Lynx
Most people know that book banning is a problem, and of course it is, but I often think that if we really don't want our kids to do something, we should avoid telling them not to do it. Before the pandemic, I had seen one banned book display. Post-pandemic, I've lost count. For every banned book, there is a banned book display following closely behind. So, if my own child or one of my students is reading anything they have chosen for themselves, I am not going to complain about the sheer miracle happening before me. In fact, I'll experience the calm that comes with the feeling that not all is lost and our kids are, in fact, going to be all right.
It doesn't matter whether I'm a mother who writes or a writer who is a mother because they're both essential yet separate from each other, just as my son is separate from me and has his own unique experience of the world. It doesn't really matter what book he chose. What matters is that there was a space for his mother to take him to where he had the right to decide for himself.
Ashley Archambault is a freelance writer.