Musings On This World Book Day

For work, I dived into the origins of World Book Day and I was pretty surprised. The first Day of the Book in the Spanish region of Catalonia was the brainchild of a publisher and big fan of Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote what is considered to be the first modern novel.


Books, roses, and charities
What happened during the early World Book Days? Bookselling, I presume – specifically, outdoor bookselling, pasar pagi style, plus maybe some writer meet-and-greet sessions. The sources I searched don't say what happened during those early Book Days. But the original date was 7 October, to mark Cervantes's birthday.

The Day of the Book was moved to 23 April because fall weather can be a bit nippy for outdoor book-browsing, and book lovers can browse. This date coincided with the long-running St George's Day, and since then, the Day of Books and Roses became an annual Catalonian affair. Besides book stalls and author signings, roses are also sold on the day, in honour of St George.

UNESCO adopted the date as World Book Day, using it to commemorate several other authors besides Cervantes but there's some debate as to what the date signifies for each author. Some say Cervantes and William Shakespeare died on 23 April but no, no, others say, because the countries adopted different calendars, so Shakespeare died on some other date.

Rather than split hairs over this detail, UNESCO stuck with 23 April. But unlike the UNESCO event, World Book Day in the UK and Ireland is more of a charity do that kicks off on the first Thursday in March. Starting from 1998 in the UK, children in full-time education are given book vouchers. There's even a World Book Night, run by a charity organisation.

Besides World Book Day, Spain also gave us the World Book Capital initiative. Madrid once held a string of book-related events throughout a year, and some thought this practice should go global. Madrid became the first WBC in 2001 and, in case anyone has forgotten, Kuala Lumpur was designated WBC in 2020.


A gloom descends
How inspirational. Some of us would perhaps feel wistful at the thought of sparking something similar. Did Vicente Clavel envision that his idea would become a world event? And isn't the story of Don Quixote about the power of a dream?

Looking around though, being sanguine about books and publishing right now is kind of, well, quixotic. And following dreams didn't quite work out for Don Quixote.

Just as Michelle Yeoh's Oscar win has gotten folks asking questions, many in the book industry probably wondered what would our reading and publishing landscape look like "if things were different". Having ideals is well and fine, but they tend to wither in the face of realities.

In Afghanistan, women and girls are being denied an education, and a private library was forced to close by the Taliban (women "have no right to read books"?). The authorities appear unmoved by the support Afghan women are getting from some of their menfolk. Back home, our Indigenous languages and local dialects are in danger of dying out; some have gone extinct. And the theme for this year's World Book Day is Indigenous languages.

Books and copyright, the two things World Book Day celebrates, are being contended in the case of the Internet Archive vs Hachette. The Internet Acrhive, an American digital library, scanned and distributed books via its National Emergency Library during the start COVID-19 pandemic. Several publishers led by Hachette filed a lawsuit against IA, crying copyright infringement. A judge sided with the publishers, but a final judgement is still pending.


Books on fire
But perhaps the biggest pall cast over this year's World Book Day, besides what's happening in Afghanistan, is the stepping up of book bans in parts of the world. In the US, more books have become targets of censorship, particularly those that deal with racism and prejudices against ethnic, religious and sexual minorities. Right-wing and Christian nationalist groups are involved, and some state officials have enacted laws that prohibit certain titles from being taught in schools or made available in school libraries. And they are thinking of going after publishers too.

Book-ban proponents say they want to shield children from "obscene" material but what's obscene is how minorities in America are (still) treated and how ingrained prejudices against them are. Another obscenity is the rampant fetishisation of LGBTQ+ individuals that reduces them to what they do in bed, when that is just a tiny part of their identity.

Literary advocacy group PEN America's report on the growing censorship in US schools and libraries paints a gloomy picture. Its Index of School Book Bans lists 2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 titles by 1,261 authors, from July 2021 to June 2022. Authors of targeted books are fighting back, and libraries, institutions and other advocacy groups are joining in.

Filipino author and journalist Miguel Syjuco warned about creeping censorship in his opening keynote for the Cooler Lumpur Festival of ideas back in 2014, saying that "the house is on fire". Didn't take too long for the flames to grow fiercer and spread wider, and not just because of climate change.

I'm keeping an eye on this, as is Book Riot, though standing in solidarity with besieged writers, librarians, educators and students in affected places feels like a hollow gesture when considering our own censorship issues. Fighting a state can be financially and emotionally taxing if one is not prepared, so kudos to those taking a stand.


A quixotic undertaking?
World Book Day 2023 looks set to be dismal. But should it be? Books and other literary materials are a soft target for censorship hounds during shaky sociopolitical situations. That such materials are targeted this way can be a testament to the power of the written word, validating the Catalonian reverence for books that led to the creation of their own day.

Banning books to "arrest social change" is "irresistible to short-termist authorities" despite its tendency to fail, wrote book critic John Self last year for Banned Books Week, but he also noted that it is a miracle "that marks on a page or screen can enable communication from one brain to another on the far side of the globe, or the other end of the century."

And that miracle comprises works of all genres under the sky, from the lone nom de plume on Wattpad chiselling out chapter after chapter to blockbusters by marquee authors under publishing titans. All of whom deserve a place in the sun, in an e-reader, or on a bookshelf. It must be preserved, even as others try to erase it.

Also, everyone in the book industry plays a role in the development of minds and the progress of a people and a nation, so we must demonstrate that we can be entrusted with that role and carry it out responsibly. That would include fighting unwarranted censorship, even though it would mean working within the framework of a country's laws and norms.

The struggle doesn't have to be violent or law-breaking, nor should it. Someone at Tor.com spoke out against book bans and suggested ways to help the fight against them. And here are some stories about how some parents, teachers and librarians are pushing back against challenges to books.

We've all come a long way since language and writing were invented, and the road ahead is longer still. But I believe we're well on the way towards an ideal book-loving society that nurtures and defends the craft and industry of words.

Getting there will feel like tilting at windmills, but the day of the book will come.