“When another writer in another house is not free, no writer is free.”
Every year on November 15 PEN International launches its Day of the Imprisoned Writer campaign, highlighting the cases of writers around the globe who are imprisoned or facing prosecution and calling for urgent international action to release and protect them. Free speech and a free press are treasured features of any society, and writers often serve as the link between truth and lies.
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“When billionaires talk about freedom, watch your wallets. Behind Elon Musk’s blather about free markets, free speech, and free choice is his goal to be free from accountability.”
Robert Reich, regarding Elon Musk’s recent takeover of Twitter
Reich went on to say: “The “free market” increasingly reflects the demands of big money. Unfriendly takeovers, such as Musk threatens to mount at Twitter, weren’t part of the “free market” until the late 1970s and early 1980s. Before then, laws and regulations constrained them. Then came corporate raiders like Carl Icahn and Michael Milken. Their MO was to find corporations whose assets were worth more than their stock value, borrow against them, acquire enough shares to force them to cut costs (such as laying off workers, abandoning their communities, busting unions, and taking on crushing debt), and cash in. But the raiders’ antics often imposed huge social costs. They pushed America from stakeholder capitalism (where workers and communities had a say in what corporations did) to shareholder capitalism (where the sole corporate goal is to maximize shareholder value). Inequality skyrocketed, insecurity soared, vast swaths of America were abandoned, and millions of good jobs vanished.”
“In the end, if Jimmy and Susie are curious about any of the above, they can do what everyone else does – get a room at the Motel Six and grab the Gideons.”
Chaz Stevens, a Florida resident who has asked the state to remove the Christian Bible from schools and public libraries because its content is inappropriate for children
He took issue with the many Biblical references to rape, bestiality, cannibalism and infanticide and proceeded to question whether the Bible is age-appropriate, pointing to its “casual” references to murder, adultery, sexual immorality, and fornication. “Do we really want to teach our youth about drunken orgies?”
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Once again, it’s time for “Banned Books Week” – the annual event where we free speech advocates and other enlightened souls are forced to counter the anger of the holier-than-thou crowd who somehow feel imbued with the power to tell everyone else what they can read and see. Help support literacy and education. It’s they’re the best tools against ignorance and arrogance. This is a battle we’ll never win. But it’s always worth fighting!
Here’s a list of the most frequently challenged books, categorized by year and by decade.
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Many social movements begin with the simplest of acts. In the fall of 1975, a group of parents called Parents of New York United complained to a local school board that school policies on library books were too “permissive.” Among the offensive tomes were Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” and Langston Hughes’ “Best Short Stories by Negro Writers,” which, the parents moaned, were “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy.” In response, the school district removed the books in February of 1976. But a senior high school student, Steven Pico, and four classmates challenged the board’s decision; claiming the books were removed simply because “passages in the books offended [the group’s] social, political, and moral tastes and not because the books, taken as a whole, were lacking in educational value.” Other libraries and free speech organizations filed briefs on the students’ behalf, and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982 as Island Trees School District v. Pico.
While many parents surely were upset that a group of high school kids had the audacity to circumvent their authority, the more significant issue was the school board’s actions. And, on a grander scale, who has the right to determine what is acceptable and unacceptable?
As the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once declared, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
Shortly after the SCOTUS reversal of the aforementioned school board’s decision, “Banned Books Week” was founded. Since then it has grown into an international event with the goal of ensuring that true freedom begins with our ability and the right to read and see pretty much whatever we want. There’s a reason, after all, why the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is first.
Like any legitimate scribe, I strongly support the right to free speech and free expression. We in these democratic societies don’t often appreciate the importance of it. But speak with anyone who grew up in a totalitarian state – where people are told what to read and how to think – and you’ll realize the value of it.
Sadly this battle will never be won. We will ALWAYS have to combat those who feel that, since they’re offended by something, no else should have access to it either. In the current chaos of extreme political correctness and assaults on the media by a deranged American president, none of us should have to tolerate the narrow-minded choices of others.
Keep writing and keep fighting!
Banned Books Week runs this year from September 23 – 29.
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I should have mentioned this earlier, but it’s “Banned Books Week” in the United States – a time set aside every year to acknowledge the sanctimonious morons who have decided they are the ones who can choose what the rest of us can read and see. It’s the usual assault on free speech and freedom of expression moralists have been waging for centuries; a battle we writers and bloggers understand will never really be won. This is an annual event the American Library Association hosts every year. I personally feel it should be a year-long event and not relegated to a single week. The ALA maintains a list of frequently challenged books, but this year’s list features books that include the usual transgressions: sex, homosex, nudity and other various and miscellaneous adult-oriented themes that some think should be shielded from the eyes of America’s overweight, technologically-savvy youth.
Below is just a partial list of this year’s offensive tomes. For the complete list, check out the ALA web site.
Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, Thorndike Press; Little, Brown.
Removed as required reading in a Queens, NY Middle School because the book included excerpts on masturbation. Challenged on the tenth-grade required reading list at Skyview High School in Billings, MT because “[t]his book is, shockingly, written by a Native American who reinforces all the negative stereotypes of his people and does it from the crude, obscene, and unfiltered viewpoint of a ninth-grader growing up on the reservation. Pulled from Jefferson County, WV schools because a parent complained about the novels graphic nature. Challenged in a Sweet Home, Oregon, Junior High English class because of concerns about its content, particularly what some parents see as the objectification of women and young girls, and the way alternative lessons were developed and presented.
Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits, Dial Press.
Challenged in the Watauga County, NC High School curriculum because of the book’s graphic nature. After a five-month process, the book was fully retained at a third and final appeal hearing.
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale, McClelland and Stewart.
Challenged, but retained as required reading for a Page High School International Baccalaureate class and as optional reading for Advanced Placement reading courses at Grimsley High school in Guilford County, North Carolina, because the book was “sexually explicit, violently graphic and morally corrupt.” Some parents thought the book is “detrimental to Christian values.”
Akram Aylisli, Stone Dreams, Novella published in Druzhba Narodov.
Burned in 2013 at various locations around Azerbaijan. The novella is sympathetic to Armenians and recounts Azeri atrocities in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia twenty years ago. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stripped the author of his title of “People’s Writer,” and a pro-government political party announced it would pay $12,700 to anyone who cuts off the ear of the 75-year-old novelist for portraying Azerbaijanis as savages.
Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler, World History, Prentice-Hall.
Challenged, but retained in the Volusia County, Florida, high schools, despite a thirty two-page chapter on “Muslim Civilizations” that covers the rise of Islam and the building of a Muslim empire. Protestors believe the Volusia high schools are using the world history textbook to “indoctrinate” students into the Islamic religion and recommend student volunteers tear the chapter out of the 1,000-page book.
Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Doubleday.
Challenged, but retained in the Northville, Michigan, middle schools despite anatomical descriptions in the book.
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, HarperCollins.
Temporarily removed from the Alamogordo, New Mexico High School library and curriculum because of what one parents calls “inappropriate content.” The British author wrote in “The Guardian”: “Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading. Stop them reading what they enjoy or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like – the twenty-first-century equivalents of Victorian ‘improving’ literature – you’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and, worse, unpleasant.”
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, Knopf, Vintage International.
Challenged in Legacy High School’s Advanced Placement English classes in Adams County, Colorado, because it was a “bad book.” Challenge on a suggested reading list for Columbus, Ohio, high school students by the school board president because it is inappropriate for the school board to “even be associated with it.” A fellow board member described the book as having “an underlying socialist-communist agenda.”
Norani Othman, ed., Muslim Women and the Challenges of Islamic Extremism, Sisters in Islam.
Banned by the Malaysian Ministry of Home Affairs in 2008 on the ground that it was “prejudicial to public order” and that it could confuse Muslims, particularly Muslim women. The Malaysian High Court overturned the ban on January 25, 2010, and on March 14, 2013, the Federal Court threw out the government’s appeal to reinstate the ban.
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, Pantheon Books.
Removed, via a district directive, from all Chicago, Illinois, public schools due to “graphic illustrations and language” and concerns about “student readiness.” After students fought back via Facebook, twitter, protests and radio and television programs, the school board issued a letter telling high school principals to disregard the earlier order to pull the book.
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I still can’t believe, in the 21st century, we still have to deal with people who feel they have the right to determine what the rest of us can and should read. Now, comes this gem from the Grand Canyon state. Arizona has comprised a list of books it wants to abolish from schools and libraries. They include:
Notice most of them are by Hispanic writers, and one apparently has the audacity to question the dignity of Christopher Columbus. Don’t you know Antonin Scalia is pissed about that! The state legislature’s HB 2281 is the crux of this madness. Oddly, among the tomes on the chopping block is William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Now, I’m certain that alone will send the American Library Association into a frenzy. But, one group, Librotraficante, already is fighting back. The term is Spanish for “book trafficker,” which probably has Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio screeching louder than Sarah Palin after a helicopter-based moose hunt. But, the group has vowed essentially to smuggle books into the Arizona to help keep people literate and therefore, free. That’s a pretty sad reality, but it’s obviously necessary.
As a writer, I can’t stand the thought of living in a society that actually censors some books just because a group of self-righteous idiots don’t like them. If they don’t like them, do the same as you would with a TV program you despise: don’t watch it! Damn! It’s that simple! I hate Survivor and Jersey Shore because I think they’re two of the stupidest programs on the air. But, I could care less if someone else wants to watch them; that’s their business. Please do your part as a citizen of the U.S. or whatever country you live in and don’t let a small cluster of folks tell you what you can read. That’s not just an American value; it’s a basic human right.
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Chief Writing Wolf 