September 26 – October 3 is Banned Books Week.
BANNED BOOKS week.
As a writer, I look at this and shake my head. The thing is, the books are “banned”, as in, prohibited…but they are certainly not unavailable. There are lists of “banned books” everywhere, and so you KNOW which books are to be shunned, and these lists are… are… mind-boggling.
Here’s one, a list headed “Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States”:
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Christine by Stephen King
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women’s Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil’s Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth
(full list at http://www.adlerbooks.com/banned.html )
Judy Blume? Madeleine L’Engle? Harper Lee? John Steinbeck? Margaret Attwood? Walt Whitman? Mark Twain?
For that matter, Greek tragedies written in something like 400 BC? Medieval writers like Boccaccio and Chaucer? Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night?
The WEBSTER NINTH NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY???
Are they serious? What possible criteria could be used for these selections? And what’s left to read – Dan Brown…? (Oh, wait…)
In a piece entitled “Books Suppressed or Censored by Legal Authorities” (read it at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html ), more jaw-dropping examples are given. James Joyce’s Ulysses, selected as the best novel of the 20th Century by the Modern Library, was banned in the USA for 15 years as “obscene” (oh really? The guy who found it so was actually able to understand it…?). Obscenity was also cited in the banning of Voltaire’s Candide (satire, people. SATIRE. Go look it up.)
The article cites not only Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s Decameron – but apparently, also, “…various editions of The Arabian Nights [were all] banned for decades from the U.S. mails under the Comstock Law of 1873. Officially known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act, this law banned the mailing of “lewd”, “indecent”, “filthy”, or “obscene” materials. The Comstock laws, while now unenforced, remain for the most part on the books today…” (In the case of Lysistrata, at least, we have an alternative explanation – the thing is profoundly anti-war. And being peace-loving is somehow… unpatriotic. Oh, wait…)
They banned Leaves of Grass, the defining work of Walt Whitman, because of the use of “explicit” language in some poems. South Africa banned Frankenstein as “indecent, objectionable, or obscene”. (Fine, the South Africans also banned Black Beauty – possibly nobody actually figured out that the thing was about a HORSE…) Lady Chatterley’s Lover (have you READ this thing? Do you realise how TAME it is compared to some of the more fiery literature of today…?) has been the subject of obscenity trials both in the USA and the UK for years, well into the middle of the twentieth century.
In some cases it is teachers – TEACHERS! – who fuel the fires – as late as 1999, the dawn of the 21st century, a teacher in a Savannah high school was reported as requiring parental permission slips for students to read things like Hamlet, Macbeth, or King Lear (citing “adult language” and references to sex and violence… uh, no kidding… let’s just ban history from the high school curriculum entirely, shall we…) and another school pulled Twelfth Night from the curriculum citing a prohibition of “alternative lifestyle instruction” (they thought Twelfth Night was going to turn all their Junior High students into instant transvestites?!) California – enlightened, liberal CALIFORNIA – apparently banned Little Red Riding Hood… because… because she was taking WINE to her GRANDMOTHER. Shock, horror.
Here’s another list of Banned Books. Aside from a bunch of books explicitily (as in, mentioning this in the title – I of course have no idea how “explicit” some of these things are between the, er, sheets of the book itself) concerned with GLBT themes, including things like AIDS, and knowing that such things get people of a certain mindset to get upset even without remotely knowing what the books are actually ABOUT, other than their theme, there is the usual crop of double-take “What were they thinking” responses. A few of them:
Paula, Isabel Allende
I know why the caged bird sings, Maya Angelou
One more river, Lynne Reid Banks
Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Giver, Lois Lowry
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
(More at http://www.abffe.com/bbw-booklist.htm.)
And once again, I am left clutching my aching head. Maya Angelou is objectionable for WHY? Lois Lowry’s book is objectionable for WHY? The Joy Luck Club – are you KIDDING me?
Here’s a few more, from another site:
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (a 1932 book, ferchrissakes. Does it offend your modern sensibilities? Well, please, by all means, simply don’t read books written before 1999. Oh, wait. Harry Potter’s a-coming…)
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
Lord of the Flies, William Golding (We had this one as a set book, required reading, at school, at one point. I HATED it, but that’s neither here nor there – the Toronto School Board (Oh, Canada!…) banned this from its schools claiming it was racist for using the word ‘nigger’…)
Perhaps the most wildly appropriately of all, the book which is the poster child for censorship, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, got caught up in this net. Here’s what they say about it at the site: “This book is about censorship and those who ban books for fear of creating too much individualism and independent thought. In late 1998, this book was removed from the required reading list of the West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi. A parent complained of the use of the words “God damn” in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.”
Picture me sitting here holding my head in my hands.
Who are the people who think they ought to be in charge of what I am and am not allowed to read, know, learn, understand?
Here’s a partial list of acknowledged censors and bookbanners – present and past – in the United States:
Anti-Defamation League
Barnes and Noble, bookseller, San Diego, California
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Christian Voters League
Columbus Metropolitan Library
Comstock, Anthony – special agent for the U.S. Post Office
Concerned Women for America – Beverly LaHay, president
Drake, North Dakota – school board
Dworkin, Andrea – feminist writer
Educational Research Analysts – Mel & Norma Gabler, founders
Graves County, Kentucky school board
Lake Lanier Regional Library system in Gwinnett County, Georgia
MacKinnon, Catherine – feminist
Marion High School, Foxworth, Missippi
McCarthy, Joseph R. – U.S. Senator
Meese Commission
National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored Peole (NAACP)
National Assn. of Christian Educators (Robert Simonds, founder)
National Federation of Decency (Rev. Donald Wildmon, exec. dir.)
National Security Agency (NSA)
New England Watch and Ward Society
Olathe, Kansas – school system
Parade Magazine – national magazine
Rafferty, Max – CA superintendent of public instruction (1963)
Rib Lake, Wisconsin – school board
Roberts, Cokie – ABC News Commentator
Roman Catholic Church – Index of Prohibited Books
Sixty Minutes, CBS News Program Feature Story on Internet
Stahl, Leslie – 60 Minutes News Commentator
Talmadge, Eugene – governor of Georgia (1941)
U.S. Bureau of Customs
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service
U.S. Information Agency (USIA)
U.S. Justice Department
U.S. Postal Service
U.S. Treasury Department
West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi by School Superintendent
And here, just for comparison value, is a different list of bookbanners – the company these concerned Americans are keeping:
Alan Dutton, C.A.E.R.S – Canada
Ayatollah Khomeni of Iran
Canada Customs at B.C. border crossing (1998)
Canadian government
Canadian Jewish Congress – Canada
City of Westminster, London, England
David Matas, B’nai Brith – Canada
Franco of Spain
Frederick William II of Prussia
German Communists and Nazis
Greek ruling military clique (1967)
Irish government
Mayor Linda Larson, Town of Oliver – Canada
Sol Littman, Simon Wiesenthal Centre – Canada
Soviet Union government
Supreme Court of Australia
Synod of Canterbury at St. Paul’s, London, England
Ujjal Dosanjh, Attorney General, British Columbia – Canada
So what I am I to take home from this comparison? That when Ayatollah Khomeini practises book banning, it’s just another piece of kindling for the stake at which the man is to be burned for his many sins. But when a “concerned parent” somewhere in the more devout counties of the American South starts squawking about his or her kid having access to “The Origin of Species” in the school library… that’s okay?
I don’t think so.
If you believe in God, believe this.
He gave us brains. To think with. To analyse with. To make our own decisions with.
He gave us free will. To do what we thought best. If it damned us, it damned us – that is the point of it all. Where, explicitly, in any organised (or disorganised, for that matter) religion is it written that any human being is responsible for the eternal life and salvation of any other human being…? To the point of enforcing action or thought perceived to be conducive to it in this lifetime…?
Here’s something to think about. Worried about indecency or obscenity in books? Worried about “inappropriate language”? Worried about the “fact” that if your kid reads a Harry Potter novel they will acquire – for REAL – the enthusiasm, knowledge and aptitude to run around your back yard waving a willow twig at piles of autumn leaves and screaming “Wingardium Leviosa!” and expecting the leaves to take wing and fly?…
Don’t read them.
But nobody has a right to ban a book, to stop ME from making up my own God-given mind, exercising my own God-given free will. I was not born a slave to any (wo)man, to be subject to other people’s whims, fancies, aberrations and terrors. What scares YOU does not scare ME. What scares me, quite frankly, is willful ignorance, the arrogance of thinking that one human mind knows “best” what’s good for everyone else, the snuffing out of knowledge because it doesn’t fit dogma, the self-serving fear that enlightened minds will choose something other than what those in positions of power might want.
Free the books. Free the human mind and the human spirit. If you believe in God, trust his creation.
And go read at least one “banned” book this week. Just because.
I don’t know what could be more frightening than the thought that people ban the books we create…that we can’t do anything about it in many cases…and that when we point out the ridiculous nature of most book banning, all we get are blank stares. Thanks for this reminder of the problem; we have to be the solution.
-DNW
Censorship is like plaque in the arteries of life and thought. It’s always there building (narrowing) until everyone’s freedom is constricted. Glad someone put some of the examples out to remind us. Thanks, Alma.
And thanks to the wizard, David N Wilson (“admin”), for getting the comments button to go live on the main page. A long ton of details have to be managed/solved in this exciting new formatting of StorytellersUnplugged, and it should be appreciated that both writers and readers have a few stalwarts — Joe Nassise for getting the original ball rolling and David Wilson for ramping up the concept and momentum — to step in and do the heavy lifting.
Sully
Thanks for writing about this Alma. It’s sad and tiresome and evil but it never gets old and every writer i know has a different take on it. As does every reader – we all goggle at the lists and wonder what alternative planet WE live on where we celebrate books, creativity and imagination. And give thanks that we DO live there.
Patti Abbott on her webpage offers “Forgotten Books Friday” where fans and reades and everyone offers up a title or a writer whose work they admire, appreciate and worry about. Last year, i suggested to Patti that we spend one Friday offering our thoughts about banned books of all sorts.I think I wrote about Madeleine L’engle, a genius of a writer who was a big and small “C” Christian. Go figure.
I simply MUST know what “How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell” is about and will reserve it at the library. Kids’ books are often so amazingly great. And lists like this do raise my hackles (wherever they are) and they DO make me wanna go “oh YEAH! Wull, wull, I’m going to read them. So there!”) and I do. Some.
As i understand how it goes with most of these book banners, they object to “fantasy” and to anything that stretches a child’s imagination – thus the hatred of the Potter books, of Le Guin, etc. i still remember an ALA sponsored display some years back about banned books, citing a complaint about THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK saying that it was objectionable because “it is such a downer”.
And if you want to celebrate all this, I offer that there is a “banned books bracelet” I own it. There are now two, one for adult books, one for young adult. Wear it with pride.
That is insane. Who would have thought that some of these great american classics would have gotten banned. I mean… Judy Blume? Seriously? I might be able to understand CUJO, or something like that, but “Blubber”? What ever happened to our bill of Rights? Thanks for the useful info!
Amen.
You know, the concept of people banning books is both saddening and heartening. Because if people are worked up about literature, it means people are still reading and that the written word still has power. OK, so the pro-censor folks try to twist the meaning of said words, or object to them. Words still have power. So, the next time someone says that books are passe and no one reads and no one cares — this list can prove them wrong.
Recently, the principal of a Catholic High School in Southern Ontario, Canada removed To Kill a Mockingbird from the senior (!) Literature curriculum. Made for interesting, and heated, discussion in the letters to the editor page.
A smashingly interesting article. All those books…
Hard not to be amused, considering the books people find offensive. Geeze.
Nonetheless, I get a real tickle out of knowing that, in this day of TV and internet, books are still sometimes seen as dangerous and corrupting. My money’s on the books for enlightenment, any day. WOOT!
However, I do feel the need to pick on one itsy-bitsy little little nit…
The following two quotes really aught to go side-by-side.
“…a teacher in a Savannah high school was reported as requiring parental permission slips for students to read things like Hamlet, Macbeth, or King Lear…”
“A parent complained of the use of the words “God damn” in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.”
Having a teacher for a mom, I can vouch that many teachers require permission slips precisely so that books won’t be banned subsequent to parental complaints (or teachers reprimanded for exposing children to ‘obscene’ material). I admit that it would be great if this precaution wasn’t necessary, but any teacher who isn’t careful can find themselves in a nicely heated stew-pot (tastes just like chicken soup, so I’ve been told).
At least this teacher was going to teach the material. I’ll admit there are some who wouldn’t want to, which is the saddest thing, yet.
So like a said: an itsy-bitsy little nit.
It’s a Great post. At least someone gave it a thought about Storytellers. It will make the people consider about it again about banning the books. Thank you