Jonah Winter’s editorial, “My books are banned by the right and the left – State politicians aren’t the only ones silencing voices,” on page 5P of the February 19, 2023 issue of The Dallas Morning News is an alarming report on the state of book banning and publishing.

In my February 2, 2023 post, School District Bans Books, I asked how publishers will respond to these restrictions. Will they print your book if it has an unsuitable passage? Jonah Winter’s editorial sheds new light on my question.

Mr. Winter is the author of more than 40 nonfiction children’s books. He wrote that before this year he had never experienced the “sort of media attention this latest right-wing book ban” has received. Winter’s children’s books on baseball legend Roberto Clemente were banned from public schools in Duval County, Florida. The largest city in Duval County is Jacksonville which until recently was the home of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. His name stayed there, on a public high school, until 2014. So I wasn’t surprised to hear that Duval County was banning books about successful people of color. Nor would I be surprised that any book of mine had been banned in Florida generally. In 2016, my book Hillary, about former presidential candidate, first lady and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was banned in two Miami schools.

Jonah Winter, “My books are banned by the right and the left – State politicians aren’t the only ones silencing voices,” The Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2023, p. 5P

My Book is Banned

In my book about Clemente, a tiny part of the story involves the racism he encountered. This came mainly from sports journalists who made references to his being a hothead and lazy, both of which were inaccurate characterizations of him, derived from racist stereotypes about Latinos. The fact I included this in my book is probably why it got banned by the Duval County school district, which banned 175 other books as well. No specific reasons were given, leaving us to guess. And those books weren’t just banned. It is a felony for any teacher to show those books to students.

Jonah Winter, “My books are banned by the right and the left – State politicians aren’t the only ones silencing voices,” The Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2023, p. 5P

Winter’s book on Clemente has sold consistently since it was published in 2005. This recent book ban has only increased the book’s visibility and the book “was selling better than ever” according to its Amazon sales rank. “When my book on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was banned in York County, Pa., last year, the news had a similar impact on sales. Book-banning, the “cancel culture” of the right, doesn’t hurt a book or an author.”

My Book is Not Publishable

I’ve had two book contracts canceled because of my identity in relation to the subject matter. I am a white man. The irony of the big to-do being made over the banning of my Clemente book by conservative activists is that, were I to try and publish that exact same book today, I would not be able to get it published because of progressive activists.

In today’s world of children’s books, governed by the ideological mantra of “own voices,” I am not allowed to tell the story of anyone who’s not white or male.

Jonah Winter, “My books are banned by the right and the left – State politicians aren’t the only ones silencing voices,” The Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2023, p. 5P

According to Winter,

It matters not to the publishers that my books on Clemente, Sotomayor and Frida Kahlo are still selling well, years after their publication dates. Those books, were I to submit them today, would not be published. Nor would my award-winning book from 2015, Lillian’s Right to Vote, about the history of racism in America through the lens of voting rights and the eyes of a 100-year-old Black woman. The editor of that book told me, when I asked her, that she would absolutely not publish that book were I to submit it to her now — nor any other books on people of color or women, which account for most of the books I have written.

The publishing community wants books to be written by the appropriate or own voices.  An Own Voices book means being confident that the worlds created or described in a book are represented as authentically as possible. “Own Voices authors and illustrators create not with an observer’s gaze, but with the cultural nuance from being an active member of that culture.”  According to the website Little Feminist, “Writing characters of color with white gaze, as well as writing books about a disabled character by an able-bodied person, and so forth, can be demeaning and sorely inaccurate if you are not immersed in that culture.” Own voices means that books about Blacks can only be written by Blacks, Hispanics by Hispanics, and women by women.

Jonah Winter, “My books are banned by the right and the left – State politicians aren’t the only ones silencing voices,” The Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2023, p. 5P

I have expressed my concern about my ability to write a book on Blacks or racism because I don’t know what it is to be Black and have never experienced racism.

Mr. Winter concludes his editorial by asking which kind of censorship is worse for authors,

Mr. Winter concludes his editorial by asking which kind of censorship is worse for authors,

The kind that increases the visibility of a book and sells more copies, or the kind that silences an author quietly, behind the scenes. The kind that restricts an author from writing about the subject matter he’s always written about, or the kind that robs a book’s right to exist. There’s no question mark, because there’s no question.

Jonah Winter, “My books are banned by the right and the left – State politicians aren’t the only ones silencing voices,” The Dallas Morning News, February 19, 2023, p. 5P