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September 27, 2016 5:57 AM   Subscribe

Banned Books Week Launches With Call to Read Books the 'Closed-Minded' Want Shut [The Guardian] ““But librarians would argue that the best way to guide your children’s reading is to read with them, and talk about what you read. For every parent convinced that a book is evil, there are two other parents who think it’s wonderful. So you have the right to guide your own children’s reading – but not to dictate or suppress someone else’s,” said LaRue. “The truth is, [these] issues are already a part of many children’s lives, and suppressing books about them doesn’t help anyone. In fact, these books may tell children that they are not alone, that what’s happening to them is not unique, and it can be survived. The world can be a dangerous place, but reading about it makes it less so.””

The Banning of Books in Prisons: 'It's like living in the dark ages.' [The Guardian]
“Dan Slater’s new non-fiction book Wolf Boys recounts the story of two Mexican-American teens in Texas seduced by the violent cartels across the border and the Mexican-born Texas detective who hunts them. It is grim and violent, yet it is a detailed and thoughtful look at American society and the war on drugs. It has also been condemned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Directors Review Committee, which declared Wolf Boys off limits to all Texas prisoners before it was even published this month.”
D.C. Will Hide Once-Banned Books Throughout the City This Month [The Washington Post]
If you enter just the right business or library this month, you may stumble upon a hidden book that was censored or challenged at one point. And if you find it, it’s yours for the keeping. The D.C. public library system is hiding several hundred copies of books — which were once banned or challenged — in private businesses throughout all eight wards to celebrate Banned Books Week. The “UNCENSORED banned books” scavenger hunt kicked off Sept. 6 and will run through the month. Each book is wrapped in a cover that explains why that book was banned or challenged. For example, J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” will say “Anti-White” because in 1963, parents of high school students in Columbus, Ohio, asked the school board to ban the novel for being “anti-white.”
Missing From The Shelf: Book Challenges and Lack of Diversity In Children's Literature [Pen America] [.PDF]
A persistent pattern of attempts to remove certain books from public schools and libraries, combined with a lack of diversity in Children's and Young Adult (CYA) book publishing, narrows the range of stories and perspectives available to U.S. students. Combining quantitative research with interviews from teachers, librarians, students, authors, publishers, and advocates, Missing from the Shelf: Book Challenges and Lack of Diversity in Children's Literature describes instances of soft censorship playing out in schools and libraries nationwide.
Frequently Challenged Books - Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2015 [ALA.org]:
The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) receives reports from libraries, schools, and the media on attempts to ban books in communities across the country. We compile lists of challenged books in order to inform the public about censorship efforts that affect libraries and schools. The top ten most challenged books of 2015 include:
1. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
2. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”).
3. I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group.
4. Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”).
5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”).
6. The Holy Bible
Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
7. Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”).
8. Habibi, by Craig Thompson
Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
9. Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence.
10. Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).
Are the Web Filters at Your School Too Restrictive? [The New York Times]
Five years ago we asked students about the web filters used in their schools, and the question became the single most commented-on Student Opinion question we’ve ever asked. In honor of Banned Websites Awareness Day, held on Sept. 28, and the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week taking place all this week, we’re asking this same question again: Are web filters in schools still an issue? What websites, blogs and social networks are blocked in your school? How has this affected teaching and learning for you?
In response to our 2011 question, students generally used their comments to express a deep frustration with the web filters at their school. They complained how “absurd,” “ridiculous,” “stupid,” “suffocating” and “creepy” they thought their school filters were. Students pointed to a host of popular sites that were blocked, such as YouTube, Buzzfeed, Wattpad, Tetris, Instagram, Google Translate, Wikipedia or streaming music sites like Pandora. And they resented how filters stymied their ability to do online research on a range of subjects — on plants, for example. Nat wrote, “It’s censorship, plain and simple, when you can’t access more than a handful of news sites and some purely educational, not opinion-based sites.” Most students agreed with that sentiment.
posted by Fizz (17 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
Funny timing! Last night we stood in front of the banned books display at the local library, and my 12-y.o. asked what banned books are.

I told him that a book that made somebody so mad they didn't want anyone else to read it probably had a pretty powerful idea in it. (OK, not every banned book has a big idea in it, though: some are just junky. But it's worth checking.)

He loves reading so he wasn't surprised at the notion. I would be happy to have him read, say, 1984 or Willa Cather; we'll see where his curiosity takes him. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:07 AM on September 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


wenestvedt, Banned Book Week was the impetus that pushed me towards reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov during my adolescence. I've since grown up to have a life long affair with Nabokov's works. Even if I didn't fully comprehend everything contained within that novel at that age, and the various reasons for why it was banned, I knew that it was 'taboo' and that was enough to pique my interest. Sometimes you just need someone to forbid a thing, in order to make it that much more irresistible.
posted by Fizz at 6:14 AM on September 27, 2016 [4 favorites]


My mom had all of us reading by the time we were around 4 years old; Dad was out to sea with the Navy a lot, so Mom was home alone and outnumbered 5 to 1: teaching us to read gave her a bit of peace and quiet.... Mom was no fool! The only time you could say she ever "censored" our reading was her A-#1, top-of-the-line punishment: if you'd behaved really, really rotten that week, you couldn't get new books on Mom's library card --- other than that, she might have made an occasional comment about "are you sure you can read all that?" for really serious books (like when I picked up Kipling's Kim in second grade), but thank heavens she never censored content.

Hmmm, that Nasreen's Secret School looks interesting....
posted by easily confused at 6:42 AM on September 27, 2016


My mom guided my reading very little. She had a large personal library and nothing was off-limits. Once she found me reading a trashy popular novel--one with all kinds of violence and sexual content, as well as some strong undercurrents of misogyny. She said something like, "Are you sure you want to read that?" and I was like dunno. And I read it.

Looking back I think a more active role might have been better, especially when it comes to issues about how certain people are portrayed. I'd want to guide any child of mine towards better portrayals of women and other minorities. But without forbidding anything, I think. And she could have talked to me more about it.

There were definitely a lot of things I didn't get. I didn't know that book was misogynist, for example. I didn't know what "misogyny" was; at the time I thought girls were icky anyway.

But I think I turned out pretty well-adjusted! That misogynist book did far less damage than, you know, decades of living in a culture where misogyny is everywhere. And my unsupervised time on the internet (seriously, mom?) may have taught me that people are deeply, deeply weird, but I haven't been scarred for life.

Like, books are powerful, but a single book is not usually going to do the kind of damage people fear. That kind of damage is cumulative.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:49 AM on September 27, 2016 [5 favorites]


The nightly news on TV is so much worse than any of these books.
posted by benzenedream at 8:02 AM on September 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is an odd juxtaposition of an article about censoring books for prisoners with an introductory paragraph about censoring books for children. The two cases aren't similar.

We already routinely censor what books libraries make available to children. That's what library children's rooms are for. If there is a question about whether the book is suitable for children, you put it in the adult collection, and then the child's parent can either check the book our for them or get them an adult library card. That problem is pretty much solved to everyone's satisfaction, it seems to me.

The situation in prisons is much, much worse, because there is a legal requirement that prisons provide law libraries, but no requirement that they provide any other sort of library service. Many don't. Those that do cut library budgets as soon as money runs short, so that the libraries have next to no hours and next to no materials. This is worse than censorship. It is systematic intellectual starvation. Prisoners are thrown back on their own poor resources when it comes to obtaining books, and even that is interfered with. We take young people in the most active, adventurous, exploratory parts of their lives and ensure that they will spend years with nothing to read.

http://libreas.eu/ausgabe6/003shir.htm#f3
posted by ckridge at 9:02 AM on September 27, 2016 [1 favorite]


ckridge, I apologise if the juxtaposition seems a bit odd. Both are stories that The Guardian is exploring this week because it is Banned Book Week, so I lumped them in together. Was trying to keep all of these articles together in the same post because they shared that common theme.
posted by Fizz at 9:04 AM on September 27, 2016


The nightly news on TV is so much worse than any of these books.

Which is what always frustrates me most about these kinds of issues that center around morality/censorship. I think so much of it has to do with the fact that many of these are books that are being taught in school. I guess it's the fact that these parents and concerned citizens are worried about the ways in which a school system is influencing their child. And as you said benzenedream, there are other influences outside of the school system that impact these kids in more significant ways: television, radio, Internet, commercials, what they see their parents/guardians/adults doing.

But something about books and schools seems to bring their inner fascist out in individuals.
posted by Fizz at 9:26 AM on September 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


I always find myself kind of frustrated with the way that ALA reports challenges. I understand the desire to keep things anonymous, but I feel like the aggregate lists lack important information.

Let's take the first one from the 2015 list:
1. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group.
"unsuited for age group" could be reasonable, depending on what the age group we're talking about is. I'm not sure that I'd want a sexually explicit book to be in the Children's Corner in the local library. But in the library at a public high school? The reasons for the challenge seem clearly frivolous. Maybe a public middle school would be in a grey area, (though probably not -- this is John Green) but it depends on what the "offensive language" or the "sexually explicit" bits are.

Then there's:
6. The Holy Bible
Reasons: Religious viewpoint.
We've previously discussed trolly lefties challenging the Bible for the lulz, but if it were being shelved with the Science or History books I could see a challenge being appropriate, if the librarian in charge couldn't be swayed to move it to a more appropriate section.

So basically, I'd like to know what kinds of libraries/sections the books being challenged were in, at least. And I'd love to know more about the resolutions.

The prison library censorship thing is maddening: Prisoners should be able to read any book you can buy on Amazon*, and if a prison librarian thinks that a given book would be of value to the prisoner community, that should trump any concerns about "the content."

*obviously, relying on a commercial entity like Amazon to do government censorship isn't the right solution, but it's quick shorthand for an organization that has an incentive to avoid stocking really gross stuff while still allowing lots of things that individuals might have a problem with.
posted by sparklemotion at 9:37 AM on September 27, 2016 [3 favorites]


Fahrenheit 451 was very enlightening to me as a kid. It showed me that the impulse to ban "inappropriate" or "dangerous" books is on the same continuum as book burning and totalitarianism. Fizz, your "inner fascist" comment is spot on.
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:39 AM on September 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


Looking back I think a more active role might have been better, especially when it comes to issues about how certain people are portrayed. I'd want to guide any child of mine towards better portrayals of women and other minorities. But without forbidding anything, I think. And she could have talked to me more about it.
I also had very permissive parents. I was reading Stephen King, VC Andrews, and stuff like The Executioner's Song and The Stranger Beside Me in elementary and middle school. Strangely enough, the only thing I read that gave me pause was actually a children's book I was assigned to read in school. The book, Julie of the Wolves, was about a 13 year-old Inuit girl married off to a neuroatypical guy named Daniel who attempted to rape her on their wedding night. As a person who was reading VC Andrews in sixth grade, the content didn't "bother me," per se, but I felt instant shame over the teacher's decision to completely skip over that part of the narrative when we were discussing the content and reading out loud. I had never seen sexual content as "wrong" or anything to be concerned about until that moment. This whole incident really stuck out in my mind, obviously, because I've been out of sixth grade since 1988. I made a conscious decision not to bring up my concerns with my mother because I was certain she would be confused about my irritation with the teacher and possibly question her decision to give me free reign in the family bookcases.

Now, in retrospect, I think the teacher's decision to assign a controversial book without addressing the source of the controversy in class was cowardice. Teachers at that time were free to select from a large group of books to assign and she picked the rapey one. If you pick it, own it. If you can't bear the thought of parental wrath or the discussion of marital rape or sexual agency with 12 year olds, pick Bridge to Terabithia or Where the Red Fern Grows or something.
posted by xyzzy at 10:06 AM on September 27, 2016 [5 favorites]


I am heartened by the quaint notion that enough kids read books these days that one or some other, even taught in school, might have any effect whatsoever on the polis.
posted by chavenet at 10:13 AM on September 27, 2016


We already routinely censor what books libraries make available to children. That's what library children's rooms are for. If there is a question about whether the book is suitable for children, you put it in the adult collection, and then the child's parent can either check the book our for them or get them an adult library card. That problem is pretty much solved to everyone's satisfaction, it seems to me.

I am phrasing this very carefully because I do not mean to imply that censorship of children's books is in any way equivalent to the prison book censorship you describe, which is absolutely terrible. (The Prison Lit Project is a great nonprofit doing work in this area, btw.) But it is also far from a solved problem. The example that popped into my mind, although there are many similar cases, is Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This is very clearly a middle-grade children's novel, and one of the very few children's books about Native American characters that's set in the present day; it fills an important void on the library shelf. It's also constantly challenged because masturbation is briefly mentioned (in a book with a twelve-year-old boy protagonist, the horror). It really wouldn't make sense to put it in the adult collection; if it's successfully challenged, it's gone from the shelves entirely, and with it, probably, any chance contemporary Native American kids have of reading a book that reflects their experience (not to mention any chance other kids have of learning about that experience).

(I talk about censorship of children's books, btw, not because I think it's more important than prison lit censorship, but because it's a topic I know about. I hope this FPP also attracts comments from people familiar with prison library systems; that's not me, but I'd love to hear more about it.)

The third link beneath the fold says this:

The report also shows that books by or about people of color, people who identify as LGBT, and people with disabilities ("diverse books") are significantly more likely to be challenged or banned even as they make up a disproportionately small fraction of all published literature, making narratives depicting the full range of human experience less available to students.

I'd be interested to know why this is true of books about people of color (like, is there a book about white kids with two lines about masturbation that gets banned as frequently as Alexie's book? Do people actually look for stuff like this as an excuse to ban diverse narratives, or is it implicit bias, or what?), but when it comes to books about LGBT characters, well, it's obvious why they're banned, and it's not cool.

I really love this interview with Rainbow Rowell about censorship of her book Eleanor & Park. (I didn't realize until I reread it just now that Mallory Ortberg is the interviewer, whaaaat!) Particularly these closing lines:

Some girls have terrible stepdads who shout profanity at them and call them sluts – and some of those girls still manage to rise above it. When these people call Eleanor & Park an obscene story, I feel like they’re saying that rising above your situation isn’t possible. That if you grow up in an ugly situation, your story isn’t even fit for good people’s ears. That ugly things cancel out everything beautiful.

Which I think really captures the way people who ban books for things like profanity ignore context. So often it's the "bad" people in the story who are speaking these lines, which are meant to show that they are bad. I remember as a teenager finding one of my favorite books, Baby Be-Bop, in some online right-wing list of inappropriate books for teens. In the summary they quoted a line from the book without context and said it was "one of the most offensive lines we found in any book." It was, indeed, an incredibly offensive line - spoken by the abusive stepdad of one of the main characters. It was pretty obvious from the rest of the summary that the book was banned because of LGBT content, but that line, taken out of context, was their trump card. (It was grossly homophobic! Ugh, the irony!)
posted by sunset in snow country at 10:30 AM on September 27, 2016 [6 favorites]


Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James

Bit conflicted on this one. On one hand, the 1st Amendment has no accounting for taste. On the other hand, banning a book like setting a legal drinking limit or slapping a Parent Advisory sticker on a CD, probably leads to more teens seeking out forbidden knowledge, smoking cigarettes and reading the Tropic of Cancer; now they are left with vaping and a book of small ambitions.

Can we all make a concerted effort to demand truly incredible books be pulled from shelves at the next school board meeting so kids will want to read them? Or, maybe if you're Forbidden List is already stocked with literary treasure, ask the board to publish the list, so kids will go to the county branch for these gems?
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 12:32 PM on September 27, 2016 [2 favorites]


When my stepkids were growing up, we told them that they could help themselves to any of the books on our shelves, but that there were about 8 books we didn't want them reading. We didn't tell them what books they were or where they were in the house (not all in the same place). Not sure what we would have done if they had actually stumbled onto any of them, but it never happened.

My 7-year-old, told the same thing, has decided to take this as a personal challenge to find and read them all. We have a metric butt-ton of books in the house, and he still prefers books with pictures in them, so it's pretty unlikely to happen anytime soon.

But deep down, I suspect this may be what we were going for in the first place.
posted by Mchelly at 12:43 PM on September 27, 2016 [6 favorites]


Mchelly, are you certain your stepkids never found those books? (Speaking from personal childhood experience...)
posted by Lyme Drop at 1:34 PM on September 27, 2016 [4 favorites]


I saw Carl Hiaasen speak last week, and he mentioned how great it is when librarians in Waco ban his books, because he sells way more books as a result.
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:36 PM on September 27, 2016


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