Books have always been an essential part of my character. When I was little, I’d walk around everywhere with a doll tucked under one arm and a book under the other. Reading was a form of escapism for me. I reveled in the idea that through books, I could live many lives and experience countless things. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that choosing to read books was also a radical political move.
As the Trump administration dismantles the Department of Education and cuts public library funding, I realize that the United States is making sure the majority of Americans, and particularly Latinxs and people of color, are undereducated and underrepresented in academia. As these new policies attack people’s right to a quality education, our greatest form of resistance now is to pick up a book and read.
Books are powerful. They are replete with knowledge and wisdom. So much literature serves to document humanity’s struggles, hopes, discoveries, and ideas. When we read, we can empathize with complete strangers, question our own morals, or stand firm in our beliefs. Books allow us to think critically, to be better educated.
For centuries, dictators attempting to gain full control of a society have feared the power of books. That is why so many have been banned, burned, or censored. Take the infamous bonfires of Nazi Germany for example, in which Germans burned thousands of books by many authors (mostly Jewish) whose work went against the Nazi party. It is scandalous to burn a book, because as the English poet John Milton put it, “Who kills man kills a reasonable creature, but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.”
No one in the United States is burning books (I hope) but Americans are slowly losing their access to books and literacy, which almost has the same effect: what good is a book if you can’t read it?
Historically, many communities of color have been denied literacy. Take the anti-literacy laws of the Antebellum South for example, where Black people were banned from learning how to read or write for fear that they’d rise against slavery. Or the rural areas in many Central and South American countries, where Indigenous communities can not access schools or are denied a full education because of their gender or limited financial means. I know a lot of first-generation Latinxs whose parents and grandparents didn’t learn how to spell their names until they migrated to the U.S.
Before the Chicano Power Movement of the 1960s, Latinx education in the United States was terrible as well. Mexican-American students were attending underfunded high schools with extreme dropout rates. According to the Library of Congress, they got the same curriculums as students with mental disabilities, were prohibited from speaking Spanish, and were discouraged from applying to colleges and universities. Those high school students who did manage to graduate did so at an 8th-grade reading level. It wasn’t until thousands of Chicano students in East L.A. protested that things began to improve.
Trump is attacking our access to a fair and equal education. Contrary to popular belief, the Department of Education – the one he’s trying to dismantle – does not set the curricula for public schools. That is done at the state or district level. The Department does provide funding to public schools in severely underfunded areas, without which they’d be forced to shut down, leaving millions of K-12 students at risk. The Department also enforces civil rights laws that guarantee everyone equal access to an education and protects students from discrimination, be it because of their age, sex, gender, or disability.
Without it, we are in danger of reverting back to pre-Chicano Movement times. Communities in rural areas, most of which are full of Latinxs, will be left in the dust – they don’t have the funds to send their students to private schools or accommodate children with disabilities.
By cutting public library funding, many people will lose access not only to books and literature, but to the services libraries provide – like free access to computers and the internet, language learning classes, and adult literacy programs. More than 130 million American adults already have low literacy levels. By removing free resources from communities already in desperate need, people without any other way of accessing an education will be left without a second chance at learning how to read and write.
Humanity is evolving, in some cases for the better. As we do so, we’re creating great works of literature, books that represent who we are as people and the knowledge we’ve gained from past mistakes. By taking away a people’s ability to read and write, we take away their ability to learn and to gain all the wisdom that has been passed down through generations. We leave them without the means to write their own stories and share their own experiences.
My own mother didn’t learn how to read or write until she was in her 20s. Nonetheless, she encouraged my love of books since I first learned to read in kindergarten. Every time I pick up a book, I think of all of our immigrant parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents who didn’t have access to a proper education and never learned how to read or write. They fought for us to be able to read today.
As we continue fighting for free and equal access to education for all and promote the importance of literacy in Latinx communities, I encourage everyone to read. In the face of educational oppression, the fact that you and I are able to read at all and choose to do so, is already a huge step in the right direction. Let’s read in the name of all those who can’t and all those who fought for us to have this opportunity.
