Don’t Ban Them: Conflicting viewpoints are allowed

Hiding in Plain Sight by Nuruddin Farah infuriates me. If I believed in banning books, Farah’s is the one I would challenge. Not for the typical reasons people champion banning books, like sexually explicit content or for the use of profanities, but for its inaccurate depiction of Nairobi, Kenya — my homeland.

Hiding in Plain Sight was on my reading list for several months before I excitedly cracked it open in May of 2021. I had read the back cover and the first page of the book a few months earlier, and Farah hooked me. I was eager to explore it with my book club members. I presented the book, got them excited, and we settled into it in May.

The book started out well, and I was enjoying its lyrism. But as I continued to read, I began to experience discomfort with Farah’s depiction of Nairobi. About fifty pages in, he writes, “Nairobi has never enjoyed much stability,” and almost immediately after, he adds, “The instabilities…have continued till this day, making Nairobi one of the most violent cities in the continent.” A page later, he writes of Bella, a character in the novel, “she rejoices in the charm of Africa, even as she knows that such a friendly crowd can just as quickly turn violent.”

Was Farah writing about the Kenya I know? The country I was born and raised in? But I kept on reading. Two chapters later, the author spends several pages talking about McDonalds. His characters even visit their favorite McDonalds.

What McDonalds? I laughed in bewilderment.

There is not a single McDonalds in Kenya, let alone several to choose from in Nairobi.

Perhaps I am biased and granted I have not lived in Kenya for over a decade now (other than the occassional visits here and there), but it was irritating to read about the characters visiting non-existent McDonalds and their constant fear for their safety wherever they travel in the city. Granted, Kenya isn’t the safest country, but it’s also not teeming with crooks every way you look. There are places to avoid, and you certainly have to be mindful of your surrounding -but don’t we have to do the same even here in Canada? To pay attention to what’s happening around us? You should heed common sense precautions. Emphasizing the insecurity of Nairobi throughout the book builds on a stereotype that continues to hurt the country and its people.

Clearly, Farah didn’t do my Kenya justice in his writing, but would it be fair for me to propose banning his book? I could gather other Kenyans who are just as offended by his piling on existing biases and stereotypes. But what good would such as act do for us? As much as I could dedicate this whole essay to ranting about all the wrongs in Farah’s book, I recognize these are my issues based on my experiences.

Farah’s experience of Kenya (and the experiences of the characters in his book), are as a Somali man — not a Kenyan. His inaccuracies about setting are another thing entirely but maybe we could chock those up to the fact that Hiding in Plain Sight is a work of fiction?

As a reader and a Kenyan, I am displeased with Hiding in Plain Sight. Kenya, like much of Africa, already suffers from negative reputation for disease, poverty, corruption, you name it. The country does not need additional negativity and misrepresentation.

I work hard every day as a bookseller to encourage readers to pick up books from across the globe to expand their knowledge of our world. Now imagine my frustration when I read Farah’s book only to find more misleading information. But that does not mean I should attempt to have Farah’s book banned.

Or anyone else’s.

Most book banners claim they want to “protect” children or communities from subject matter they deem inappropriate for graphic violence, depicting the occult, offensive language, sexual identity, etc. But censorship creates fear and silences the lived experiences of people.

Banning books on LGBTQIA+ subject matter for example sends the message that the identities and experiences of LGBTQIA+ readers are offensive or irrelevant and should be silenced. Banning these books shuns queer experiences. Banning literature that discusses sexual abused tells survivors that society doesn’t want to hear their pain and somehow shames them for something that was done to them. Many authors who shed light on topics like sexuality, racism, the occult, domestic and/or sexual violence, etc. are being silenced yet they present important and sensitive topics that ought to be discussed. Normalizing these discussions empowers readers, survivors, and victims of varied experiences to talk about them. It gives them power to stand in their truth. It lets those outside their worldviews learn. It normalizes different experiences, lifestyles, and choices because every person’s life is relevant just the way they chose to live it.

Book banning preserves the comfort of the loudest complainers, many of whom have always been the people who are listened to. Underrepresented authors continue to be silenced and sidelined. Stories that discuss race, sexuality, identity, police brutality, etc., are uncomfortable topics. Many prefer not to examine their own opinions or have their views challenged. Banning books encourages intolerance in our already polarized world. It discourages publishers from exploring literature they believe would suffer the same fate. It discourages authors from telling these kinds of stories so, ultimately, entire groups of people remain unseen.

But are there bans that we should support? What about in the case of books like Hiding in Plain Sight that promote stereotypical descriptions of places? Or American Dirt that was challenged for the stereotypical depiction of Mexican immigrants? How about Dr. Seuss’ books, which were banned for racist and insensitive imagery? Or even the Little Bill series by Bill Cosby, banned not for its content but due to the criminal allegations against the author?

In my view, bans take away opportunities to see different viewpoints, to scrutinize, discuss and dissect them, to form our own ideas in a more informed manner.

As much as Hiding in Plain Sight gets so many things wrong about my home country, that is my view based on my experience of Kenya. The views of Kenya in Farah’s book are the characters’ own based on their lived experience (and perhaps Farah’s too). It is okay to have varying viewpoints on the same subject matter — in this case, the same country. Truly, I do not want Farah’s book banned. It adds another narrative to the experiences of Somali people who find refuge in Kenya. It’s one more story about the limited array of books depicting African countries like Somali and Kenya, and their people, as regular people, -a narrative desperately in need of normalization.

When Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was a speaker at The Reith Lectures, she discussed freedom of speech. She challenged readers to answer books that offend or infuriate them rather than ban them. Adichie argued that banning books destroys creativity as writers cannot freely and authentically create within the confines of fear. In true Adichie fashion, she said, “When it is easy to dress up a lie so nicely that it starts to take on the glow of truth, the solution is not to hide the lie but expose it and scrub from it its false glow.”

Let’s read books and talk about what they get right and what is fundamentally wrong with them. Banning books kills the opportunity for exploration and discussion. Reading them enables conversations. Reading widely develops the ability to think independently and grapple with ideas that are removed from our own. So, pick up that banned book. Tusome!