Banned Books Week
This past week has been Banned Books Week, the week the ALA and American booklovers shine a light on the effort to censor or remove books from public libraries or classrooms and to celebrate the freedom to read.
The ALA has provided an interesting map of the books banned and removed from public facilities.
A resource from last year, but a still good one, is the National Coalition Against Censorship Voices Against Book Censorship Project — where may authors lent their voices to speaking out against book censorship. There are excellent entries here, but my favorites:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMPtYvZ8tM[/youtube]
and this is very powerful:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juRla77tFOY[/youtube]
It never ceases to amaze me how much effort that people will spend in controlling what you know or the ideas that you encounter. And I can’t begin to imagine the life of someone who has so utterly cut him or herself off from the acquisition of new ideas or knowledge. But they are out there and they are trying to control what you and your kids read. Those of us committed to knowledge and a life of ideas have not many choices other than to fight back and to make sure that the only people for whom information can be controlled are just the ones in their own homes.
These are the Top 100 Banned and/or Challenged Classics. What are your Top 5 favorite banned books?
Tags: Books
I’ve read 30 of the books on the Top 100 list. I guess I’ve got more reading to do. It’s amazing how many American classics you would miss out on if this list was ever adopted. Some of my favorites: To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984, The Lord of the Flies, Lolita, The Sound and the Fury, The Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22,One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Call of the Wild, The Jungle, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I recommend all these books. There’s some others on there that I read and didn’t like, like all of Hemingway’s books, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and anything by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Of course, some challenges to materials are silly and laughable, and others are sinister and worthy of condemnation. Still, as a former English teacher (I taught English for seven years) I have mixed emotions about how some of these incidents get classified.
Do we really want to say that an attempt to get a book moved the children’s section of the library into the young adult or adult section is the same as trying to get the book removed completely?
Is questioning the age appropriateness of a book being used in class by sixth graders really the same as trying to ban the book from the middle school?
To what degree is being a good parent trying to be involved with the public schools (something that we ought to be encouraging) being defined as being a bad citizen trying to violate the rights of all Americans?
Ultimately, it boils down to a bigger question, namely who controls the schools and the materials are purchased and used in them — the taxpayers and the elected school boards, or the teachers and librarians they employ? Who controls the operations of public libraries and how their money is to be spent — the taxpayers and elected officials, or the librarians they employ?
Unlike some, I don’t have any hard and fast answers to these questions, because as I long ago came to recognize that there is plenty of truth and good intentions on both sides in some of these cases.
I really need to read Huxley’s “Brave New World.”
Could never stand anything by Vonnegut though.
-Mike W.
I,ve read a large number of them and actually own thirty two of them { don,t ever agree to help me move, your back will be history just hauling books} the one that stood out for me was Rabbit, Run by John Updike, that entire 4 part series was fantastic. If you asked me for an underlining theme here it,s you should never show compassion for your fellow man. Most all deal with people being human and that,s upsetting to conservatives who feel we should all be cut from the same jib as June and WARD Cleaver, and need only deal with the most modest of problems. And keep are necktie tied thru it all.
Huh. I’ve read 70 of the 100 books on the banned/challenged list. I’m with UI, though in that I was never much of a Hemingway fan. I like Fitzgerald better than you, I think, UI but am not in a rush to re-read him. It is hard to pick my favorites of the banned books (and some of these — I gotta say — I can’t begin to get why anyone would really object to), but here goes: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; White Noise, by Don Delillo; The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair (this may be the first “Political” novel I read); Beloved by Toni Morrison; The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
Why would anyone want to challenge or ban Winnie the Pooh, for cryin’ out loud?
Sad to say I’ve read only about a dozen of them. Looks like I’ve got some reading to do. I think I read “Call of the Wild” when I was about 10 years old. UI, we’re going to disagree on Fitzgerald — I loved “The Great Gatsby.”