I read banned books so it's no surprise that I support the American Library Association's (ALA) Banned Book Week every September. Over the years, many great books have been challenged and even censored. The ALA, which stands up for freedom of speech, highlights important literature that has stood the test of time in spite of censorship.
These books include The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Ulysses by James Joyce, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. The list goes on and on.
Many of the books that are challenged or censored come from taking content out of context. The ALA–and all librarians–believe that literature must be judged by its overall merit. You cannot condemn a book because you do not agree with language, sexual orientation or any subjective claim that seeks to undermine the merit ofthe book.
The ALA says over the last decade there have been 5,099 challenges reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom in the US.
The challenges break down like this:
�21,577 challenges due to "sexually explicit" material
�21,291 challenges due to "offensive language"
�2989 challenges due to materials deemed "unsuited to age group"
�2619 challenged due to "violence"' and
�2361 challenges due to "homosexuality"
There were 274 books challenged due to "occult" or "Satanic" themes and 291 books were challenged due to their "religious viewpoint." The Office of Intellectual Freedom said 119 books had been challenges because they were "anti-family."
(If these statistics seem strange and do not seem to add up, it is because books are often challenged on multiple grounds).
In the US, 1,639 challenges came from school libraries; 1,811 came from classrooms and 1,217 took place in public libraries. Even university classes found themselves with challenged books–114 in total while 30 challenges came from academic libraries.
Books are banned all over the world because they are deemed politically or morally inappropriate. They are often banned for religious reasons. The most famous challenge has to be to Salman Rushdie's magical realist novel The Satanic Verses.
On February 14, 1989 the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, put a fatwa on Rushdie, calling for his assassination for writing a blasphemous book. Rushdie went into hiding. Rushdie survived, but his translator Hitoshi Igarashi was killed. Venezuela imposed a 15-month prison sentence for reading The Satanic Verses. In Japan, readers could be fined for reading it.
Many classics that have stood the test of time started off on shaky ground. Today, the reasons for banning those books seem ludicrous.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was banned in 1932, a year after it was published. Ireland banned Brave New World because it considered its themes on childbirth to be controversial. Many states in the US tried to ban this novel for for its "themes of negativity."
John Steinbeck's novel of poverty and the Dust Bowl Era of the 1930s incurred the wrath of many readers. The Grapes of Wrath won a Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1939, but people objected to some of the scenes in the book–particularly one involving a nursing mother.
Henry Miller's autobiography Tropic of Cancer was banned in 1934 for its sexual content. The state of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Michael Musmanno wrote that Tropic of Cancer was "not a book. It is a cesspool, an open sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in the debris of human depravity."
The late Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart tackled the effect of colonialism in Africa. It was actually banned in Malaysia because it criticised colonialism.
In recent times, critics called for Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn to be banned because of its use of the n-word. While no librarian would condone racist slurs, it is difficult to overlook the literary merit of Huckleberry Finn and not realise that the misuse of this word during the time Twain was writing about could provide an invaluable teaching tool about why we do not use the n-word again.
This is Banned Book Week. If you're not in the habit of reading, I urge you to choose a book listed in this column to read this week. Stand up for freedom of speech. Make a statement. I dare you to read a banned book.