Book Banning Then and Now: "Words on Fire" Speaks to Today

 

By Tim Haddock

02/25/2025 at 3:20 PM

 

Jennifer A. Nielsen's "Words on Fire" tells the story of Audra, a young girl in 1893 Lithuania who becomes a book smuggler, risking everything to preserve her country's language and culture during a Russian occupation and press ban. This review explores the book's themes of censorship, resistance, and the power of words, drawing parallels to current events and other challenged books.

 

 

Imagine living in a country where books that are written in the native language are banned. Newspapers and news sites using the country’s language are banned too.

There was a time in Europe when this was a reality. 

“Words on Fire” by Jennifer A. Nielsen puts readers in that scenario.

 

A lot of what happens in “Words on Fire” is happening in the United States right now. It’s happening in Ukraine. Canada, Greenland and Panama are facing the same threats.

 

It’s a story that happened almost 150 years ago, but it is as relevant today as it was then.

 

“Words on Fire” is set in Lithuania in 1893 during a Russian invasion and occupation. At this point in history, Lithuania is experiencing a press ban. At the time when the United States was ending the Civil War in 1865, Russia was banning books from being printed in Lithuanian. Newspapers printed in Lithuanian were also being banned. Russia was trying to extinguish anything written in Lithuanian while it invaded the country.

 

By 1893, the Russian army was spread throughout Lithuania. In “Words on Fire,” the Russian invasion reaches the farmhouse of a 12-year-old girl named Audra and her family.

 

The Russian soldiers arrest Audra’s parents and set her home on fire. Before her parents are taken away, her family separated, Audra’s mother Lina gives her a package to deliver to a woman in a nearby town. Audra escapes before the Russian soldiers arrive but barely.

 

She delivers the package to a woman named Milda, who tells Audra about what is happening in her country, what is happening to her parents, and what was so important about the package she delivered.

 

Milda is part of a book smuggling operation. She is the collector of books in Lithuania that the Russians are trying to destroy. The Russians are trying to destroy the language, the culture and the history of Lithuania. 

 

Sound familiar?

 

Audra becomes a warrior in the fight to save her country’s history and language. She becomes part of a group of child smugglers who are asked to save and deliver books to people who know how to preserve and keep the history of their country from disappearing.

 

Book bans and press bans were part of Audra’s world and part of Lithuania’s history.

 

Imagine if Spanish-language television or Korean-language media outlets were banned in the United States. Imagine if English was the only language newspapers and news outlets could use. Imagine if only American history was documented or taught in schools.

 

That is what was happening in Lithuania in the late 1800s.

But imagining a country banning books is not hard. The United States has been doing it for decades. At least the United States has been trying. It never  works, but it doesn’t stop it from happening.

 

One of the books on the banned list in America is “Wicked.’’ The hit movie and award-winning play started as a book series. It is the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz.” It is targeted by some groups because it contains witchcraft, sorcery, and dark magic. That is enough to make some people uncomfortable.

 

But it is also a story about the perils of organized religion, discrimination and challenging authoritarianism. The taboos of “Wicked” are much deeper than witches and their powers.

 

Another book on banned lists is “The Diary of Anne Frank.” It is the story of a Jewish girl and her family in hiding from the Nazis during World War II. It has some very dark themes, about demonization and dehumanization of a minority group of people. But it also portrays the predominantly white Nazi movement as the monstrous killing machine sweeping through Europe at the time. For some reason, that makes white people in America incredibly uncomfortable. Instead of seeing how evil and horrible the Nazi movement was, there are some people who want to ignore it ever happened. They would rather cast a blind-eye to the Holocaust.

 

“The Hunger Games” is another book on banned lists. It is a book about a dystopian American future that forces children to fight to the death for entertainment for the elites. It is also used as a reminder to the lower classes that the consequences for resisting control from the ruling class is pain and death.

 

There are some stories that need to be told and shared. There are moments in history that need to be reviewed and revisited so they are not repeated. There are some people who have wanted to remove those types of stories from public consumption for centuries. Those people are the dangerous ones.

 

Audra becomes one of the brave warriors during the Russian invasion of Lithuania. Her name means storm in Lithuanian. But she didn’t learn the meaning of her name until she became a book smuggler and found out why her parents chose it for her. 

“But my language had become illegal, which meant I had no name,” Audra says in the book.

 

She and all the Lithuanians were being erased from existence. It was why saving the books was so important.