Last week, groups of librarians, publishers, journalists and authors marked the annual Banned Books Week to “celebrate the freedom to read.”
The event brings attention to the works that have been banned by states and communities, often for issues that people decide they would just rather not address. The books range from modern pop lit (Twilight, My Sister’s Keeper, Harry Potter) to classics that used to be standard reading (To Kill a Mockingbird, Black Boy, The Giver).
Like any self-respecting journalist, I did my best to turn an evergreen blog post — reading J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” — into a timely piece pegged to a news event. I even finished the book late last week so that I could actually post the blog during Banned Books Week.
Somewhere between setting the book down, and sitting down here at the keyboard I got a little distracted. I partly blame my previous post, which involved a lot more effort than usual, but will give credit to general laziness and the need to clear out space on the DVR.
“Catcher in the Rye” is one of those books that it seems like I should have read a long, long time ago, but somehow slipped by. I have been trying to plow through some of that backlog, and in the process have apparently been reading some “scandalous” books.
In the past three years (my lists from 2008, 2009), I have read three of the top 100 banned books of this decade. Those corrupting titles include “Of Mice and Men,” “The Kite Runner” and “Fahrenheit 451.” In my life, I have probably read about a third of that list.
I found it particularly interesting to see “Fahrenheit 451” on the list, since the plot is largely driven by a world in which all books are banned and destroyed on sight.
The American Library Association has a map of book bannings, as well as lists that detail why certain powers that be wanted those words hidden. A lot of their reasoning falls in a few categories they don’t want students exposed to — sexuality, racism and profanity.
One listing for Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” says the book was banned because of the way black characters were portrayed. As in the case of most of these instances, someone is missing the fact that those elements present the very thing that can foster incredibly useful conversations.
The ALA listing says there was worry about African American students feeling uncomfortable discussing the text. I read the book in ninth grade English, a class taught by a black woman with several black students. We didn’t skip over portions or sanitize our conversations. We talked about the issues, the implications of race relations in that era and how they affected the very conversations we have today. In short, we used what is probably the seminal novel for such a discussion to have, well, those discussions.
I’m not saying second graders should be reading “The Kite Runner,” but the parents of 10th graders shouldn’t overreact to one scene in one chapter that happens to set an important emotional tone in the story.
I’m glad my parents had a different philosophy, which I can best describe as reading = good. There’s a book fair at school this month? Great, here’s some cash. There’s a magazine drive and you want to subscribe to something? No problem. You have a summer reading list? Let me know which ones you are reading, and I’ll get them (as opposed to the huge number of kids who never bothered to open a book over the summer).
Ok, end of rant.
I have described in the past my general process for the book blogs — mainly dog-earing pages that have something I think I want to discuss later.
The bad part about waiting so long to talk about “Catcher in the Rye” is that I haven’t the slightest clue why I tagged any of these pages. But at least I am pretty confident I haven’t been totally corrupted by the “sexually explicit” material full of “offensive language.”
