Big Brother is Watching You

Big Brother is Watching You

I was fifteen when I was given The Kite Runner as a gift.

I didn’t know much about it. I didn’t know it would gut me.
I didn’t know that by the time I turned the last page, something in me would be quieter. And also louder.

Because that’s what that book did.

It took me to Kabul, to betrayal, boyhood, and the kind of guilt that sticks to your ribs.
It made me sit with shame, with love, with things that didn’t have clean endings.
It gave me a window into a world I had never lived in and a mirror that showed me feelings I didn’t have the language for yet.

It didn’t change my life.
It shaped it.

And now I think about how many kids might never get that moment.
Not because they don’t read.
But because someone else decided they shouldn’t.

In 2023, over 3,300 books were challenged or banned across the U.S.  Most of them? Books that talk about race, identity, queerness, grief, history, and truth.
Books like Gender Queer, The Hate U Give, All Boys Aren’t Blue, Maus.
Books that don’t always feel safe—but do make you feel seen.

A book doesn’t turn someone gay. Or radical. Or confused.
A book might make someone feel seen. Or heard. Or less alone.

And maybe that’s what’s actually frightening.

Maybe it’s easier to ban a story than to face the fact that a child might need it. Might be living it.

When I finished The Kite Runner, I sat there in silence for a long time.
Not because I didn’t understand it, but because I did.
More than I expected to.
More than I could explain.

Imagine never getting to have that.
Imagine a version of your life where someone else decides what you're allowed to feel.
What stories are “safe” enough for you to know?

We say it’s about protecting children.
But from what? From pain? From truth? From the discomfort of realising the world isn’t black and white?

This isn’t about safety. It’s about control.

And if we zoom out for a second, if we take a long, hard look-
Doesn’t it start to look familiar?

A government decides what can be read, what can be known, and what can be remembered.
A curated version of reality, where stories are stripped down and sterilised, and people are punished for seeing too much.

It’s starting to sound less like a free country and more like a fiction we were warned about.
Like 1984.
Like the Capitol from The Hunger Games, with its glittering distractions and censored truths.
Where books are dangerous because thinking is dangerous.

Where the erasure of stories is the erasure of people.

And here we are.
Telling young readers they’re not old enough to handle nuance.
When really, maybe it’s the adults who aren’t ready.

Because a book might show a kid who they are.
Or who they’re not.
Or who they could become.

And maybe that’s what terrifies the people pulling them off the shelves.

Books aren't just pages.
They're memory.
They're resistance.
They are how we remember who we are.

Take that away, and what’s left?

A world where stories are filtered, truth is rationed, and curiosity is a threat.
A world where comfort is more important than compassion.
Where the Capitol doesn't feel so fictional anymore.