In years to come, we might call it the Steinbeck problem. Of Mice and Men is one of the most banned books in the United States and will no longer be studied at GCSE in Wales from September – a reaction to the racism and use of racial slurs within the text.
Is this something to mourn, or cause for wild celebration? It is complicated. Indeed, it represents a near perfect literary and moral conundrum for the education system of a multicultural, multiracial society. Especially one plagued with culture wars fought in bad faith.
On one hand, Of Mice and Men is widely considered a literary classic. It was, at one point, studied by 90% of teenagers taking English literature GCSEs, for good reason. It is superbly well written, accessible and a deeply thoughtful moral fable on how we treat each other. On the other hand, some of the contextually necessary yet deeply racist language within it (including the N-word) could be psychologically and emotionally damaging to Black children in particular – especially Black children in super-minoritised positions. Think of the only Black child in, say, a rural school. That’s potentially a life-defining experience – one that I have personally lived.
But should the primary and secondary education system, which is tasked with nourishing the precious young minds of our future generations, really be a place where we are balancing psychological and emotional harm with literary excellence? Asked about Of Mice and Men’s removal from the syllabus, the Granta-listed writer Derek Owusu said: “It’s nonsense, an empty gesture … especially when books like To Kill a Mockingbird are worse because the racism is cloaked in liberalism.” As fate would have it, To Kill a Mockingbird (which I gifted a graphic novel version of to my 10-year-old daughter for Christmas) is also on the curriculum chopping board in Wales.
Naomi Evans, an author, teacher and one half of the Everyday Racism collective, which is leading a project on enhancing antiracist education, sees it differently. “Schools need to become far more dynamic in what they offer their students when it comes to English literature, but there is a lack of confidence and time to allow them to prepare for this,” she said. “The result is they become stuck in a cycle of teaching the same texts year in, year out, whether they are problematic or not. The argument that we need to keep some of these texts because they allow us to explore issues of racism is redundant. When we explore issues of racism it shouldn’t be dominated by white authors’ perspectives. We have a plethora of accomplished academics of colour and our students should have an equal opportunity to learn from this discourse.”
The Black Writers’ Guild, an organisation founded in 2020 to represent the interests of Black British writers (of which I am a director and co-founder), does not have a position on Of Mice and Men or its removal from the curriculum. As a principle, we frown deeply on any form of censorship. But it would be an error to equate the removal from the curriculum with censorship. We would welcome and encourage the idea of vastly enhancing the curriculum with the excellent work of Black British writers. This would be a fitting way of ensuring that our understanding of issues and the language we use is reflective of modern multicultural Britain (not to be mistaken with Great Depression-era America). With that said, left to my own devices, Of Mice and Men would be replaced with The Autobiography of Malcolm X, one of the most important and inspiring stories of the 20th century.
Trigger warnings – a comfort cushion between artistic freedom and emotional and psychological harm – are often derided as the mark of the “snowflake” society. But the people with the power and platform to do the deriding are often oblivious to why such warnings exist. As Ta-Nehisi Coates explains in his excellent new book, The Message, we don’t come to the table as equals – as people equally affected by what we are about to experience or witness. A survivor of serious assault is likely to be affected by or react to a depiction of a serious assault quite differently to someone lucky enough not to have been subject to one.
The same goes for the inheritor of ancestral racial trauma sat in a classroom with beneficiaries of such trauma. But the conundrum continues: how will the beneficiary of the trauma learn about the history and impact of these experiences unless they are taught? Unless they are exposed to the horrors and their impact in a controlled environment so as not to repeat them? Left to develop in a vacuum, a young person is more likely to absorb racism (or ableism) from society than antiracism. Hence books such as Of Mice and Men, sensitively and contextually taught, can play a role.
In October 2023 I was lucky enough to attend a (predominantly white) awards season preview of American Fiction in central London. Years before that, I watched Get Out in a diverse cinema in Stratford, east London. It was a similar experience to that of watching Bamboozled (a satire on race and the TV business, which happens to be Spike Lee’s most underrated film) a couple of decades earlier. All brilliant films, all watched in seemingly great company. Yet all of the audiences were of a different racial mix and there was a discernible yet understandable difference in who found what funny. And in who was comfortable laughing at different points.
There is censorship – no one wants that – but then there is duty of care, which is also a great responsibility. We have to be careful about both. I’m afraid the Steinbeck problem never did begin with Of Mice and Men, nor will it end with Steinbeck.
