One for the books

Celebrating the written word and all its freedoms

The 2015 Canada Reads' panel members are debating which Canadian book breaks down barriers. Last year's champ, Wab Kinew (centre) is moderating the CBC book debate. Photo: Matt Barnes
Published: March 17, 2015, 7:00 am
Updated: 3 years ago
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Craig hopes that the winning 2015 CBC Reads book is the one he's championing, An Inconvenient Indian.

Craig hopes that the winning 2015 CBC Reads book is the one he’s championing, An Inconvenient Indian. Matt Barnes

In the frigid, pre-dawn blackness a line of prisoners stumbled through snow and ice, driven onward by blows from their Nazi overseers. As he marched, Viktor Frankl focused on thoughts of his wife and, miraculously, found peace and hope.

“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”

Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist, tells this powerful story in his 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, a chronicle of his time in the Auschwitz death camp. In it, he helps the reader find meaning in life, even in the face of the worst horror and suffering.

I have always found inspiration in books. And this week, along with  four other Canadians, I will square off on CBC’s Canada Reads, each promoting the one Canadian-penned book we think breaks down barriers and everyone in the country needs to read.

I’ve realized Canada Reads is more than just a literary faceoff, a nerdy take on Survivor. It’s a celebration of a freedom we all too often take for granted—the freedom to read books.

I’ll be speaking for another book that has inspired me: Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America. There will be a spirited exchange of words and ideas and, one by one, four books will be voted off until only one remains.

Over the course of some pre-debate interviews, I was asked about the books that have had the most impact on me. As I named them it struck me that the three most important books of my life were all affected by censorship.

Man’s Search for Meaning was never a banned book. But it was written in the aftermath of a regime that thrived on censorship. On one night alone in 1933, the Nazis torched 20,000 books they found objectionable. To this day, a discrete but haunting memorial marks where they burned — a single pane of glass, set in the cobblestones of an open square in the heart of Berlin. Beneath is a barren white room lined with empty bookshelves.

Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, has inspired, not just me, but people around the world with the story of Mandela’s journey from firebrand militant to peacemaker and statesman.

As with Frankl’s book, Mandela’s personal story was born of censorship. Until its fall, South Africa’s apartheid regime rigidly controlled what could and could not be published. Mandela began writing while still in Robben Island prison, scribbling notes on tiny pieces of paper when the guards weren’t looking. Friends smuggled the papers out. They were compiled in book form years later when the fist of government censorship finally unclenched.

Like so many teens, a younger me connected with J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, finding solace and kinship in protagonist Holden Caulfield’s struggles with alienation and identity. For over 50 years, Salinger’s classic was declared persona non grata in many libraries and schools across North America for a plethora of perceived offences, from vulgar language, to overt sexuality, to encouragement of youth rebellion.

As recently as 2009, it appeared on the list of the most-challenged books in the United States.

I am reminded of Catcher as I read about the controversy hanging over one of the Canada Reads books, When Everything Feels Like the Movies by Raziel Reid.  There’s a petition afoot to strip the young adult novel of its Governor General’s Literary Award because of its “vulgar language” and adult themes.

But here’s what struck me — even among those who want to revoke the award, no one has called for the book to be banned. That speaks volumes about our country, and Canadians’ respect for the role of the written word in a healthy democracy.

So to all my Canada Reads opponents I say, bring it on. Together we’ll celebrate one of Canada’s greatest freedoms, the freedom to read a great book.

Craig Kielburger is social activist and best-selling author who has inspired a generation of young people to be active global change makers as co-founder of Free The Children and We Day.

 

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