Banned Books Week
This week is, for those of you who don’t know, Banned Books Week, all week. But with the so-called ‘Banned’ books (largely within the US, these are all based on those purposely excluded from specific libraries and schools) including the likes of To Kill a Mockingbird, His Dark Materials, Harry Potter and The Kite Runner, does the public really have a right to determine what others can or cannot read? The irony is, books such as Mein Kampf are not on the list of top banned books; taken from the BBC:
- And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
- His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
- TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
- Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
- Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
- Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
- Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
- The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
- Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Of those, I have only actually read The Kite Runner, and that was a fantastic novel – sure, it’s dedicated to the maturest of readers (there is child rape scene near the beginning and bloody fight towards the end, as well as sexual references), but in comparison to that of Twilight, which has made a massive culture influence (for the greater bad of the literary community, so-to-speak), it’s problems are minimal. I’m 15. If this were banned from a school library, it might not affect me much – I buy most of my books – but it’s an active restriction of civil liberties. Free Speech grants not only a speaker’s right to say something, but touches on the hearer’s right to hear it.
Number 1. is hardly surprising. And Tango Makes Three is a story about a couple of gay penguins, based on a real life story in New York Zoo. Of course, much of the fairly conservative America still needs time to adapt to such liberal attitudes, but nonetheless, has the bar on literary banning been lifted a notch too high, or should all books be available to everyone regardless?
Just recently, JK Rowling, who has sold 600 million+ copies of her books globally, has been denied the Top US Literary Honours list. I’m sure whoever wrote this BBC post is being slightly biased – no doubt there are more reasons – but JK Rowling accused of preaching witchcraft by senior US senators? Really? Because of course Tolkien was trying to say, “Looks! Iz sayin that the world before us was full of elves!”
