Booksellers, authors: No to book bans, yes to representation

Although books featuring LGBTQI+ characters have been present on Trinidad and Tobago bookshelves for years, a social media firestorm began on June 22 when books featuring LGBTQI+ characters were spotlighted on the shelves of RIK Services Ltd Booksellers. Many people, including religious leaders, have since called for the books to be banned and the bookstore to be boycotted.

Sunday Newsday contacted booksellers to see how they felt about the calls for the books to be banned, as well as TT authors whose publications include queer characters to find out how they felt about the situation.

Nigel R Khan Booksellers owner Nigel Khan is against the bans, and wonders why protesters don’t take their case directly to the publishers in New York or even to to the UN.

“I don't think we should be banning books or refusing education. We’re in the business of providing education. I think it goes beyond the bookstores in TT, because we are just purveyors of the merchandise. If we go this way, are they going to ban shows on Netflix as well? You also have access to the internet, I mean, it’s there in every aspect of life, so it’s just about learning and acceptance and understanding.”

He said the culture of misinformation has influenced people far too many times.

“A lot of people were misinformed in the first place when they said those books would be used in schools. It’s not the case at all, so terrorising the bookstores is akin to shooting the messenger. We are just placing education out there for everyone. We’re in the business of education and upliftment.

“Remember people used to think the world was flat, so I don’t think we should be discriminating and preaching the gospel of hate because something you hate, or someone you hate, might be who you love dearly so just don’t discriminate and be open.”

Owner of Paper Based Bookshop Joan Dayal said the store, which carries only Caribbean authors, carries books by LGBTQI+ authors, and has never had any objections to them being stocked.

“I'm very much against the call by certain people to boycott the store that carries the book in question. I don't agree with the call for the banning of certain books from entering the country.”

At Scribbles and Quills Limited, owner Radeyah H Ali said the store carries a wide range of books for all ages and in all genres.

“We do carry some LGBTQI+ books which are in the young adult genre, and this was based on customer requests and general popularity of the titles. We haven’t had any customers object to any of the books we carry thus far.”

She also disagrees with the call for boycotting bookstores based on the books they carry, and said customers are free to not purchase any book they don't like.

“I believe that bookstores are a source of knowledge and books are an avenue for us to learn about the world. Books open up our minds to understanding experiences that we may not experience in our own lives and it give us that extra insight of what other people’s realities can look like. Books also help us to put our own experiences into perspective and helps us to gain a better understanding of ourselves. I feel like the boycott of any bookstore based on the titles they sell is abhorrent and discriminatory.”

Ali said she also does not support bans on books entering the country.

“People’s voices ought not to be muzzled in that manner. The discretion always remains with the consumer to discern what they choose to read. I believe that this should remain an individual choice and not a governmental one, irrespective of the subject matter.”

Author Andre Bagoo, who has published poetry, prose, and non-fiction books, said this is not the first time supposed concern for children had been weaponised to perpetuate bigotry.

“It starts with the myth that children are incapable of understanding crucial aspects of the world around them, must be sheltered from self-evident truths unfolding in full view, and culminates in selective attempts to isolate ‘problematic’ or ‘controversial’ content from the classroom under the guise of sensitivity. Never mind the deleterious impact of censorship on LGBTQ teens who are more vulnerable to mental illness and suicide.”

He said it is essential that young LGBTQI+ be able to see themselves represented in literature.

“We live in a country in which we speak about protecting children and yet we actively fan the flames that endanger them. Children are not safe in their homes, they are not safe in the official ‘safe houses’ meant to accommodate them and they are certainly not safe in schools, where officials are loathe to act to take action to protect them from bullying and discrimination.

“The leaders, the legislators and the religious officials have abdicated; if you are queer, you are basically on your own growing up. In this context, it’s even more crucial for queer people to be able to look somewhere and find mirrors of themselves; to be reminded that we are not defined by society’s hate but rather by our own inherent self-worth. If in the real world we are yet to be equal, perhaps in the great imaginary we can be.”

Published author David (not his real name), who is in his 20s, also said it was important for young people to see themselves represented in stories.

“Being queer, or truly being marginalised in any other way, is a very isolating experience where young people can often struggle to put words to their feelings: their new feelings and beliefs about themselves, their fears of being judged or hated by their peers and loved ones, and simply how to be safe, make wise decisions, and advocate for their own dignity.

“It's important for those queer people to see a version of themselves that doesn't have to hide from their loved ones in order to feel loved, doesn't have to diminish themselves in order to not suffer violence, and knows that no one can twist their feelings for their own gain—knowing those things makes queer youth safer.”

He said it was also essential for all young people to know that people who are different are not abnormal, are just living their lives just like everyone else, and deserve to be respected instead of cast out.

“For a nation with 'tolerance' as one of its watchwords, it's vitally important as a community to foster that tolerance through empathy, and one of the most powerful sources of empathy is fiction—an opportunity to see the lives of others deeply and complexly.”

He said the hateful and homophobic rhetoric which erupted online again shows that LGBTQI+ people, especially the youth, aren’t safe.

“They make up a large proportion of the victims of physical and sexual abuse in the Caribbean and worldwide specifically because those who prey on them know that this rhetoric reduces their avenues for safety and dignity. It doesn't increase the safety of children, because it makes a smokescreen from the actual higher percentages of in-home abuses that are committed by heterosexual close relatives more than happy to distract from their harms.

“Time and again it has proven that it actually makes it harder for those children, regardless of orientation, to learn how to keep themselves safe and harder for authorities to either take real harm seriously or act upon it effectively. And it just makes it harder for the queer youth who otherwise love their families and are seeking that love in turn to ever find that love, which makes them even more unsafe even into adulthood.”

David said as a writer, he thought young people should be reading more widely. He said parents were free to not buy certain books for their children.

“Publicly declaring that there is a kind of book you want no other child to read, and feeling free to add that it's because you are afraid or distrustful of the people in those stories and want those people segregated from public life, is another matter entirely, and atrocious on its face. It seems obvious that children who are reading widely enough to be thoughtful and critical of their world, and deeply more knowledgeable of themselves, are more likely to do fine, be safe, and become the kinds of adults that make our society greater.”

Author Lisa Allen-Agostini, whose young adult novel Home Home features two female characters in a long-term homosexual relationship, said the fear that erupted around the book’s possible presence in schools is paranoia.

“The mechanisms keeping children away from queer literature are well and in place, so they don’t have to worry about that. They’re not going to put queer-themed or even queer-friendly literature on a school booklist. Whoever started that rumour clearly doesn’t understand how bookstores work, where bookstores are free to carry any book and it doesn’t have to be a schoolbook. Bookstores actually sell books outside of school textbooks and that might be surprising to them, because they may not have ever bought a book other than a school textbook.”

She said she modelled the lesbian couple after people she met while doing a writing residency in Canada while in her 20s.

“I would say people who have a problem with queer stories think if they expose children to queer literature, or queer characters in stories, it will somehow contaminate the child. Well, we know this is rubbish. What it does is that it makes the child less hateful towards other people who are different from them and, on the off chance that the child might actually be queer, it gives them a space for them to not feel like garbage or like they need to die or they don’t deserve to have happiness, all those things our queer kids go through when they don’t see that there are other people like themselves, or that they’re not the devil, because they might be queer.”

She said her current work in progress features one trans and two bisexual characters, and is set in TT.

“If you’ve ever read my work you know I write about common and garden variety, not extraordinary, but just normal Trinidadians. The book is set in the steelband community too, so I’m hoping that by looking at possibly controversial but certainly necessary and contemporary things that people are going through now, we can continue and widen the discussion, and make it more open and more accessible to everyone.

“I follow a Trinidadian in the Netherlands on social media who’s transgender and doing gender reassignment now, and really feeling like a human being for the first time in their whole life, and that’s amazing. Why do you have to go out there to experience that life without being threatened?”

All three authors said they include LGBTQI+ people in their work because they exist and deserve to be seen as ordinary people living their lives like everyone else.