Jennifer Clement. Image: Raymond Hamlin
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
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US Election Eve: PEN America’s New Book Banning Report
‘The Many Branches of Censorship’
In many discussions at Frankfurter Buchmesse, particularly in the new “Frankfurt Calling” issue-driven series of events, the topic had to do with censorship in what appears to be a rising number of markets.
Not only in the United States—where far-right efforts to ban books are affecting thousands of titles annually—but also in nations from Mexico to France, various efforts at censorship, sometimes in the hands of the state, are threatening “the trinity of freedoms” on which publishing is reliant: the freedom to publish, the freedom to read, and the freedom of expression.
When delegates to the International Publishers Association‘s (IPA) 34th International Publishers Congress convene in Guadalajara in early December, one of the key sessions will feature Jennifer Clement, the immediate past president of PEN International (2015 to 2021), the only woman to have held that position since the organization was founded in 1921.
She has been succeeded in that role by the Kurdish novelist from Turkey, Burhan Sönmez, whose work is represented by Nermin Mollaoğlu of Istanbul’s Kalem Literary Agency.
And as PEN International’s president emerita, Clement—who also served as president of PEN Mexico from 2009 to 2012—is also a frequently awarded author, who has published at least five novels and two works of memoir, as well as short fiction, poetry, anthologies, and translations.
Her 2018 Penguin Random House / Hogarth release, Gun Love, was longlisted by the United States’ National Book Awards.
Katy Waldman, writing about the book for The New Yorker, said that the novel, set in Florida, offered “a glimpse of what a poetics of gun violence might look like. In this book, the machinery of violence purchases a sense of belonging—of thrilling, life-or-death simplicity.”
During her tenure at the helm of PEN International, Clement oversaw the creation of the organization’s PEN International Women’s Manifesto and the Democracy of the Imagination Manifesto. While leading PEN Mexico, she was instrumental in the effort to get a law on the books making the killing of a journalist a federal crime.
And in our exchange with Clement for our Frankfurt Show Magazine, we’ve asked for her experienced analysis of what actually prompts parents in particular to see book-banning efforts and other attempts at censorship as appropriate?
‘Book Banning Is a Global Problem’
“First and foremost,” Clement says, “I’d like to underscore my appreciation for the publishers who are courageously fighting book banning along with libraries, schools, parents, and freedom-of-expression organizations around the world. It’s a badge of honor to publish a banned book and, by doing so, stand for the strong belief that literature and art in general touch on our common humanity.”
“Attempts to control the imagination almost always lead to xenophobia, hatred, and division.”Jennifer Clement
To the point that questions of race and sexual orientation seem to drive the bulk of book-banning action, Clement says, “The attacks against freedom of expression around identity are almost always politically motivated.
“Whether linked to religious sensitivities or family values, autocratic governments or right-wing movements wanting to retain or garner power, know well that minorities are an easy mark to promote othering and breed enmity.
“This also serves to distract from the real issues of economic hardship, inequality, and the threat to an ideal of human rights for all. Book banning is a global problem, which is growing. At PEN International, we cite Belarus, Brazil, China, Hungary, the Russian Federation, the United States—where books seem to be more dangerous than bullets—and Turkey as places where the practice is becoming a scourge.”
‘Banned Books Can Equal Banned Lives’
As focused as many in the publishing industry understandably may be on book bans, Clement says, “Book banning is only one of the many branches of censorship.
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“Within a recent historical context,” she says, “it relates back to the burnings of “impure” books in Germany during the Second World War and the salvaging of Catalan literature sent out in buses to France under the Franco regime.
“More recently, one cannot but recall the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, the recent assassination attempt on his life, and the publishers and translators who were attacked or killed for having anything to do with The Satanic Verses.”
Her reference, of course, is to Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of The Satanic verses, who was stabbed to death in 1991 in his office at Tsukuba University in Tokyo. Rushdie, himself, would be attacked onstage at New York State’s Chautauqua Institute in August 2022. His latest book is Knife, from Penguin Random House.
“One can imagine this slogan,” Clement says: “Banned Books Can Equal Banned Lives.”
Another Freedom Threatened: ‘Freedom of the Imagination’
The question, of course, is always how best to counter censorship.
“Self-censorship is the most insidious and dangerous form of censorship. Can writers write and can publishers publish if they are afraid of attack, book banning, or even death?”Jennifer Clement
Much of the battle in the States, as Publishing Perspectives readers know, is being fought in courts by publishers and associated organizations, frequently with the support of Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
But countering suppression of these freedoms, as Clement points out, must take many forms, many types of resistance.
“Freedom of expression has to be fiercely defended,” she says. “When a book is banned and a writer is silenced, one has to ask who is the police? Who decides?
“I think we’re seeing [that we require] more than a slow process such as ‘better education.’
“Resistance is mounting, with students staging walkouts, parents mobilizing support, publishers protesting, publishing in defiance of bans, and legislators introducing bills against the practice. Both PEN International and PEN America have championed this with important campaigns.”
In her own country of Mexico, Clement says, “Forty-seven journalists have been assassinated in the last six years, and there is no outrage from the government and the crimes have been met with impunity. In addition, in recent years, writers—who are also often journalists or political analysts and have written against the government—have been fired from their jobs or silenced. This is a threat to democracy.”
And at the highest level, Clement says, “We have to look at the context of book banning because it intersects with cancel culture and fear.
“Self-censorship is the most insidious and dangerous form of censorship,” she says. “Can writers write and can publishers publish if they are afraid of attack, book banning, or even death?
“The freedom of the imagination is at risk and must be upheld and honored,” says Jennifer Clement. “Attempts to control the imagination almost always lead to xenophobia, hatred, and division.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on the International Publishers Association is here, more on the IPA’s biennial International Publishers Congress series is here, and more on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and related programs and initiatives in book publishing is here.
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A version of this interview first appeared in our Frankfurt Book Fair Show Magazine in mid-October. You can download a copy of the magazine free of charge here.
You’ll read our focused coverage of issues and events Frankfurt’s Guest of Honor Italy program; book market trends in Brazil, France, the Philippines, the Czech Republic, and Poland; perspectives on the international rights trade from Matthes & Seitz Berlin’s Meran Mentzel; commentary from independent publishers from Greece, Colombia, and Kenya, an exit interview with the outgoing IPA president Karine Pansa of Brazil; a wide-ranging interview with Scholastic chief Peter Warwick; perspectives on audio in Italy from Mondadori’s Miriam Spinnato; and more.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.
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