Banned Books Week 2009
It’s that time of year again… September 26−October 3 is Banned Books Week. This is an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment.
Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.
Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.
The books featured during Banned Books Week have been targets of attempted bannings. Fortunately, while some books were banned or restricted, in a majority of cases the books were not banned, all thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, booksellers, and members of the community to retain the books in the library collections. Imagine how many more books might be challenged—and possibly banned or restricted—if librarians, teachers, and booksellers across the country did not use Banned Books Week each year to teach the importance of our First Amendment rights and the power of literature, and to draw attention to the danger that exists when restraints are imposed on the availability of information in a free society.
As one could easily guess, most challenges to books arise because the book contains some reference to sex, drugs, curse words, or LGBT lifestyles. Some people would rather pretend such things didn’t exist by preventing others from reading about them. I understand opposing certain things, but denying reality always seemed a bit too extreme for me. I recall how annoying it was in high school when parents would raise some stink that the book we were reading in AP literature actually made reference to sex. They would insist that their (18 year old) child not be exposed to such reality and instead read an alternative “safe” option. I found this so nauseating that it almost kept me from attending a Christian college to study literature since I assumed the censorship would just be that much worse at an all-Christian institution. I went anyway, and yes, met with some censorship but not as much as I’ve continued to encounter in the greater church world.
I’ve known people fired from churches simply for owning books by Brian McLaren and N.T. Wright. When we were under the gun at our baptist church, our library was censored and Mike was taken to task for quoting the “heretical” Karl Barth. Instead of thoughtfully engaging issues some people made the issues disappear by simply pretending they didn’t exist. And the church as a whole has done a good job at it too. Whole sections of the church don’t know that any theology exists apart from the last 50 years of evangelical thought or that Dispensational theology isn’t the way the church has always believe. There’s good reason why people lose their faith in college – when confronted with the messiness of religion, or theology, or textual studies their sheltered minds are taken by surprise and they feel lied to and betrayed by the church that did it’s best to keep them from encountering reality. But some still think it’s better (or at least easier) to pretend than to deal with the messiness that is reality. Instead of wrestling with church history or helping our kids respond with love to all the people they encounter, the very discussion gets banned. So kudos to Banned Books Week for forcing us to face those fears instead of hiding from them. For not letting ideologies be used as silencing weapons of oppression.
So to celebrate this affirmation of reality let’s share our favorite banned books. (For all the books banned and challenged from May 2008-May 2009, check out this bibliography. And the most frequently banned classics are listed here.) So do you read to your kids books about a family with two mommies? Do you encourage a new generation to discover the angst of Holden Caulfield? Do you enjoy the fantasy realms of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Or do you like deepening your faith by digging into theology? How do you affirm the access to knowledge and the beauty of wrestling with ideas?
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
Yay!!! Thanks for highlighting this week. I love that image, too.
I think my favorite banned book is The Color Purple, but I’m still thinking about it.
The blog Jacqui’s Room by picture book author Jacqui Robbins has had an excellent (and funny) series of posts recently about sharing banned books with her children: http://jacquirobbins.blogspot.com/search/label/Banned%20Books
What is the procedure by which books are banned in the USA? I thought it was supposed to be a free country.
One of my favourite banned books was Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma bums. Now it is no longer banned.
In America it is that books are banned from certain schools or city libraries, or sometimes from being read in public places. A small interest group can do things like take all the copies of Harry Potter from the libraries and host a book burning to challenge a book, or get it officially removed from the city or school.
Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Bible and Huck Finn would all be at or near the top of my list of favorite banned books.
There are better ways to combat bad ideas than by banning them, but the human impulse toward exercising thought-control vs. anything deemed threatening or harmful remains alive and well.
I knew it was a frequent target, but was surprised to see on the website you linked that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the 5th most-challenged book of the 1990’s, 4 spots ahead of Heather Has Two Mommies.
Pretty impressive for a book more than a century old that was initially banned in many places upon its publication in 1885, albeit for altogether different reasons.
There’s a difference between banning books, and getting them taken off of a school curriculum. My daughter just went through board meetings to stop her school from teaching a particular book. She made it clear that she disagreed with the subject (which was amnesty toward illegal immigrants) and felt that her teachers should not be pushing such an issue on their students. She also made it clear, that she encourages those who do wish to read the book to go to the library or book store and gain a copy for themselves. She wished it not banned, but simply replaced with Huckleberry Finn (which they took out of the curriculum in place of the book in question). I was very proud of her for finding a median of not teaching the book, but not completely destroying it either.
Speaking of books: I am currently reading yours. Wonderful writing and wonderful research on your part. Kudos to you.
My favorite banned/challenged book is Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, with Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop a close second. The problems of censorship itself aside, the idea of reading Cather and finding her unacceptably controversial is astonishing to me.
My favorite on the classics list is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And I’m very disappointed that Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is not on the list. What kind of banned book list is this? Or am I just that old?
I’m surprised the Potter series didn’t make the 2008-09 list. They’re so much fun; I enjoy exasperating my fundie “friends” on Facebook by being a “fan” of Rowling (and Charles Darwin, too).
My favorite book on this 08-09 list is the one my wife is currently reading–Phillip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass.” This book, the first of the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, is so strange I wonder why anyone, even a Catholic school, would bother banning it. I’m sure that most readers regard Pullman’s portrayal of the church as a caricature at best.
I’m not actually sure I like the series–my tolerance for strangeness has its limits–but I “enjoyed” seeing it on the list.
Books I’ve both read and liked from the lists linked in the post:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Lord of the Flies
Brave New World
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Supernaturalist
My Brother Sam is Dead
The Kite Runner
Wicked
The Golden Compass, and trilogy
My Sister’s Keeper
The Lovely Bones
*A People’s History of the United States
Also, numerous Judy Blume books (often objected to and banned), the Harry Potter Series, Lord of the Rings Series. Never liked Catcher in the Rye, but I have read it.
I doubt I will “ban” any books from my children. My parents never did. If they are interested, I will let them read it and then discuss it with them. I’ll explain, as needed, and say, “Some people believe this. Others believe that. I believe xyz. What do you think?”
I find it amusing at times that many (most?) of the books we consider as classics these days were once banned or at least highly controversial books in their day. They challenged the culture and pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable conversation. They fought slavery, and racism, and sexism and really made a lot of people angry. But now they are safe – because those issues aren’t the all-consuming issues in our cultures these days. I have a feeling the books that are most banned these days will be read as classic required reading in 50 years.
Ok, so in the USA the books are not actually banned by the government, making it illegal to possess or distribute them? It’s just that someone or some group doesn’t like them.
Steve, that’s right. For example, a group (or individual) can bring pressure to bear on:
(1) a school, to remove a book from its curriculum (required reading), or even from its school library; or
(2) a public library, to have a book removed from the library altogether, or to have the book moved to a different location in the library – not in the children’s section, or behind the reference desk available upon request; or
(3) A bookstore (most often Christians pressuring a Christian bookstore), to not carry a controversial or “dangerous” book.
Usually these protests/requests/demands are denied. Sometimes they are successful, as in the case of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being removed from so many public school curricula (where it was a mainstay for over a century as one of the classics of American literature) that whereas it was once the 5th most challenged book of the 1990’s, while still seen as controversial it is now not at the top of most lists of frequently challenged books because it’s just not in that many schools’ curricula any more due to so many schools responding to the pressure by removing it from their curriculum.
But it isn’t a case of the government banning books and telling private citizens that they can’t purchase them or read them in their own homes.
On the other hand, just as someone has the right and courage to push the boundaries by writing something, we should admire those who say stick up for their own personal beliefs by not allowing a book they believe harmful to not be sold in their store or for a child (my daughter) to say “I do not approve of the message you are sending” to her school. I do not believe anyone should have the right to have their freedom taken away. If they want to read a book, no one should stop them. But those who have just as strong convictions as an author of the opposite convictions, they should be able to make a public statement as well.
THAT does NOT fall under the same category as banning books. THAT is exorcising the same right as the authors whom you disprove of.
Kim – It’s one thing to exercise your freedom of speech to tell others why you don’t approve of some book, but it’s quite another to use your personal disapproval as a reason to prevent others from reading it as well. When there are differing opinions present (as there always will be), is the best solution to remove a book from the curriculum and thereby refuse to think about or discuss controversial issues, or to keep the book and use it as an opportunity to discuss differences openly and respectfully?
While your daughter may have been courageous in taking action, personally I think she took the wrong approach. Getting a book removed from the curriculum is not a “median” solution in my opinion. It is still a “ban” – a limited one, yes, but a ban nonetheless. And it is a ban based on one person’s personal opinions. Essentially your daughter is saying that her personal opinions should trump all further discussion of the issue in a classroom setting – she doesn’t like the opinion represented in the book, therefore none of her classmates should have the opportunity to discuss the issue in class. In my opinion, a “median” approach would have been to raise one’s concerns about the book with the teacher and/or administration of the school, and asked that they ensure that the book is not just presented uncritically and that there is time given for discussion of opposing opinions. Isn’t that the point of school? To teach kids how to think about difficult issues, not just shelter them from ever having to consider anything that might challenge their existing beliefs?