Glenna Stearman Park, Jane Darrah: Patron Saint of Banned Books

“Saint” Jane Darrah Gates, 1942-2020

The avalanche of books banned in recent years* inspired me to think about my own experiences with banned books and take action. I intentionally read banned books, purchase banned books at appropriate age levels as holiday gifts for my grandchildren, and follow the news of book banning activities in the U.S. and other countries. The American Library Association and Pen America supply scrollable, shoppable lists of every book currently banned in the U.S., monitoring political initiatives that restrict American’s freedom to read as they choose, including reasons why various books attracted so much negative attention. (At left, Glenna Stearman Park)

But first, before I got into all that, I remembered how our East High classmate Jane Darrah introduced me to my first banned book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Jane brought the novel to school with all the juicy parts marked, so she could share them with us at Senior Corner, which was next to the library and outside the big study hall. She engaged us with the salaciousness of an entertaining experience in study hall that made us queue up for a turn with the book. Jane stood outside study hall like Lady Liberty, collecting the book each hour and passing it to the next study hall readers. She cautioned us to be very discreet. Holding the Puritan crosses on our little necklaces, over our sweaters, but next our hearts, we took turns in study hall reading the juicy parts of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  

When we drove out to the Dodge City Basketball Tournament in the spring of 1960, Jane brought along Lady C to entertain us in the hotel at night and when we were in between games. Marilyn Tompkins Bellert (left) remembered what happened. “We would gather in someone’s room and help ourselves to Cokes and snacks. At Jane’s instigation, we girls took turns reading aloud the passages she had marked, while the rest of us screamed at the language and the action. We listened, laughed, squealed, applauded, and listened some more. Jane and several other girls had parts of the novel memorized and would recite passages as a chorus, protecting the shy among us from having to read. I have never read the whole novel, but I still clearly remember parts I heard in Dodge City.”

Jane Darrah (right) innately understood freedom of expression and delivered an early lesson to more timid or inexperienced friends.  She led us with merriment and occasionally mischief, but her clarity of purpose was based in a firm understanding of her right to read anything she wanted.  With due respect, I believe Jane’s valuable sense of self qualifies her to be canonized as the East High Patron Saint of Banned Books. 

At one of our later class reunions, Vesta Patterson (left) and I found amusing and very unlikely the fact that Jane, Vesta, and I (Glenna) had grown up to be teachers. Our sense of fun did not make us think of that career field.  With Jane leading the way, we each seemed to have a fairly clear idea of ethical behavior and found ourselves well-suited to the profession. Being an art teacher, I was lucky to have very sophisticated bosses who generally expected the unexpected out of me. I often put art posters up on the walls, and one day my principal came by and suggested that I post an occasional nude—especially sculptures.  She said so many of our students spend their summers in Europe and we don’t want them to act like damn fools when they see a nude sculpture.  I was so thankful!  Especially since today there are some schools where art books are banned or kept off the shelves and available only if  a student has “a need to know!”

As part of following today’s news on these restrictions on freedom of speech, I read about the history of banning books. I learned that a book criticizing the customs and heavy-handed religious leadership of the Plymouth Colony was banned in 1637, the first book banned in our country. Here is a list of books most often banned in the 1950’s, when we were in middle school and high school. Many of these are still being challenged, as parents or community members attempt to remove them from school and public libraries.

• Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover
• George Orwell, 1984
• Allen Ginsburg, Howl and Other Poems
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
• William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
• JD Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

How many of those classics had you read by 1960? More than half? Some of us read Huck Finn and The Sun Also Rises as high school assignments. The truth is that kids and adults will gravitate to books that are banned. The most common reasons for withdrawing books from public access today are racism, gender identity, and sexuality, subjects of great interest to everyone, especially young people. 

In middle school many of us read Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, published in 1947.  The illustrated and the graphic novel versions of the story have been banned off and on since the 1960’s, because of mature subject matters and aspects of war.  Apparently, illustrations of Anne’s words are more offensive than her language, since the text versions remain on shelves in Florida, Texas, and Missouri, where the graphic versions are banned.  In Florida, Moms for Liberty believe that the stories of the Holocaust definitely need to be taught, but the part about Anne walking near nude statues and another part where the girls compare their boobs, should be removed. What seems to be extraneous detail to an adult censor is actually significant to establish the sense of the innocence of a girl in physical transition, like the girls comparing breasts. We need the situations described to recognize Anne’s vulnerability and innocence.  Her behavior is common among young girls. It also exemplifies her candor in writing her story in her diary.

Story-telling is an ancient cultural norm in societies where the older generation passes learned truths on to subsequent generations and that has developed into an art form called literature. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei warns that discrimination is narrow-minded, ignorant, and corrodes belief in ourselves. If the story tellers censor their own words, that is an insult to themselves and makes a weaker art form. Banning books also deprives readers of opportunities to learn and think about their history, their lives, and their culture.

My personal favorites among banned books are so compelling that I come back to read them again.  Here are titles I commend to you:

• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which brings us a really tragic moment of empathy about a little black girl’s understanding of beauty.
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes was two years on the NYT Bestseller list.
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
• Captain Underpants by Dave Eggers, books that help millions of little boys love reading.
• Maus

Thinking about my favorite books, the banned and the not banned, inevitably reminded me of Pride and Prejudice and my great friend Mary Lohrenz(left). Mary and I stayed in contact over the many years and always talked about the books we were reading. An English major, Mary was a faithful advocate of all of Jane Austin’s works. We argued all the time about the various Austin novels. I said they were sappy and she maintained their standing as art.  I think how Mary, who also had a library degree, would be demonstrating in the streets over this shameful barrage of banning books!  

*In 2023, PEN America found 3,362 instances of individual books banned, affecting 1,557 unique titles. This represents an increase of 33% from the 2021-22 school year. The bans occurred in 33 states, with Florida leading the nation, according to PEN America’s latest Banned in the USA report.  

Editor’s Note: Click on the links below for more about classmates mentioned in this story.

• Remembering Jane Darrah Gates, 1942-2020
• Remembering Vesta Patterson Lee, 1942-2012
• Remembering Mary Lohrenz Fox, 1942-2020
• David Kroenlein, Remembering Carol Kendall Dalton and Mary Lohrenz Fox