Can I just tell you how much I HATE it when somebody tells me I can't do something simply because THEY don't want me to do it? HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT. I'm not talking about giving me a good reason for not doing something; I'm talking about censoring me based on their prejudices. Tell me I can't do something for those reasons and I'll move hell and high water to do it.
As a writer and an avid reader myself, I do self-censor. I don't like books that are racist, sexist, any kind of phobic so I don't read them. But that's my choice. I'm glad when publishers give a heads up when their books contain that kind of stuff. If that floats your boat, so be it but I choose to avoid it.
Now, that being said, I get all tore up when I hear about books being banned. Some holier than thou folks getting together and deciding that a book has questionable material therefore NOBODY should read it. Let the hair pulling and book whipping (imagine a pistol whipping with a book instead) commence.
The American Library Association sponsors the Banned Books Week each year to call attention to this travesty and urges everyone who hates this sort of censorship to read one of this year's banned books. This year's Banned Books Week is September 28-October 2. As usual classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye are on the list. I'm sure you read them back in the day in school but it never hurts to go back and read them again. But there are also more pop culture stuff on the list too... the Twilight series, Jodi Piccoult's My Sister's Keeper and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Imagine if somebody somewhere told you that you couldn't read the last Harry Potter book! Them's fightin words!
If you have the time, check out the comprehensive list of banned books at ala.org and read one. Thumb your nose at the folks who want to tell us what we can and can't read.
That is just insane! I didnt even know about the banning of books. Those books are really amazing books, for the most part. People need to grow up! This is America, we proudly enjoy freedom of the press and many others, if they dont like it, go elsewhere or ignore it! What difference does it make if people want to read these books? Why ban them?? Thats the most frustrating piece of work I heard in a long time. Banning books will only lead us to a more uneducated America in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteWhat we ought to be doing is encouraging children, teens AND adults to read. Expand their horizons, actually LEARN something. Do you have any idea how many people I run into who haven't read a book in years? And I'm in academia. Scary!!!
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I can understand self-censorship (like I said, if I don't like a subject material or am offended by it, I don't read it) or not letting your children read things that are too adult for them, but it pisses me off to no end for somebody somewhere to give themselves the power to tell me what I can and can't read. Huck Finn is banned most often because people see it as racist. #1- for the time in whick Mark Twain was writing it, it wasn't racist and #2- it is a good example to show how far we have come. Same thing with To Kill a Mockingbird. But rather than embrace that point of view (or do their own self-censoring) folks would rather pitch hissy fits and demand that others be as offended as they are. I say ban them from bookstores and libraries if their sensibilities are that delicate.