“Censorship” – Photo Credit: Kat Pérez
One of the reasons I wrote Now or Never is because I know all too well what it feels like to have to hide what you think and feel because of who you are. Throughout the book, Arthur struggles to be heard, seen and accepted, and Mitch engages in self-destructive behavior because he doesn’t feel that coming out is possible.
For that reason, I’m passionate about ending censorship. Whenever someone tries to suppress someone else’s ideas because those ideas make them feel uncomfortable, it does considerable damage to others. There are some people who won’t like what Now or Never has to say, just like there are some people who don’t like what books that bring other social issues to light have to say, and some of them may try to stop these books from being placed in school libraries, taught in classrooms or even being published at all.
Most people who want to censor books have the best of intentions. They want to protect their children from what they believe to be bad ideas. The problem is that nobody can learn how to tell good ideas from bad ones if they are only exposed to the ideas that someone else approves of.
For this reason, and for the reason that the book itself is designed to stop people from feeling like they have to censor themselves in order to survive, I stand up for the right of all authors–even those whose ideas I passionately disagree with–to publish their books and for those books to be made as available as possible.
If your school is trying to censor books you and your classmates want to read or teachers want to teach, you can report it to the National Coalition Against Censorship (http://ncac.org/)