J.D. Salinger’s 1951 masterwork tore down the puritanical notions of what “coming-of-age” really is, and his book suffered greatly for it. Between 1966 and 1975, it was the most commonly banned book in American schools — teachers were fired left and right for integrating it into their curriculum. “Profane!” “Vulgar!” “Homosexual!” “Pornographic!” were the rails against it. Even today, there are multiple instances of complaints filed, especially those that point to Holden Caulfield’s diabolical influences on weak-minded killers like Mark David Chapman, who carried a copy with him when he assassinated John Lennon in 1980.
A heavily-themed but delicately and lovingly written novel is a collection of letters from a worn-down, forever-child Celie to her stolen-away sister Nettie. Alice Walker’s pivotal work of feminism and sisterhood was published in 1982. Yes, it contains some visceral depictions of rape at the hands of oppressive men, yes it showed Celie’s spiritual awakening through shades of intense love for another woman. In 1984, an Oakland high school deemed it held “troubling ideas about race relations…and human sexuality” (Banned Books Awareness). In 1986, a Newport News school library eliminated it from the shelves due to “profanity and sexual references.”On and on through the new millennium, the book has seen its challenges. Still, Walker holds her Pulitzer high.
John Steinbeck has seen his share of being demonized, as “The Grapes of Wrath” employed the terms “God” and “Jesus” in an unfashionable way back in 1939. With 1937’s “Of Mice and Men,” he looked to exemplify the language of the common folk through the relationship between the slow, loving Lenny and the sharp but flawed George, two migrant workers. According to the American Library Association, the book has been banned in various forums since the 1950s because of its promotion of racial slurs, anti-business and anti-patriotism propaganda, and vulgar language. The ‘n’ word and ‘G-d damn’ is seen sprinkled throughout the pages, but serves to characterize the mindsets of the characters even more.
Henry Miller opened the flower of human sexuality with his depictions of torrid, free-wheeling lives on the run during the 1920s and ’30s. First published in 1934 in France, it came fresh out of the box with a warning streaked across the cover: “NOT TO BE IMPORTED INTO THE UNITED STATES OR GREAT BRITAIN.” The U.S. government barred it because “[it] dealt too explicitly with his sexual adventures and challenged models of sexual morality.” (Banned Books Awareness). The director of the American Civil Liberties Union attempted a shipment into the States in 1950, only to have it confiscated. When it was finally published in America in 1961, over 60 obscenity lawsuits in 21 states followed. The U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled in 1964 that the book was not obscene, but potentially a masterpiece.
The “fatwa” issued on the head of author Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran in 1989 meant that the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad’s receiving of stricken Qur’an verses by a deceitful devil had offended him so much, Rushdie deserved to die for it. In Islamic communities across the world the book became instantly polarizing, and the banning began: India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Bangladesh, Sudan, Venezuela, to name a few. Bombings of bookstores, attacks on publishers, and slayings of translators spread thick the tension, splitting opinions starkly down the middle about freedom of print. In 1998, the fatwa was lifted, and Rushdie came out of hiding.
Harriett Beecher Stowe’s classic was published in 1852, and quickly became the best-selling novel of all time in America, second only in sold copies to the Bible. The outrage rolled out, as the book’s very hopeful depiction of emancipation, abolition, and equality enraged most Southern Confederates. Booksellers were attacked in America, and even in Tsarist Russia where religious purity foregrounded the book was banished. Not everyone likes “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” even today, as it has generated some lasting, continuously bigoted stereotypes of blacks like “Mammy” and “Pickaninny.” However, it’s a benchmark in history, for both literature and society.
Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson published this children’s illustrated picture book in 2005, a near-biography about two male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo who, basically, exhibited much of the same behaviors as penguin couples did. So the zookeepers introduced them to an egg, and together they brought “Tango” out of her shell into the world, their daughter. The American Library Association reported that the book was the most challenged book for three consecutive years, 2006-2008. It was removed from scores of bookshelves across America, in same cases replaced in the section where only adults could borrow it. Just in July 2014, Singapore’s National Library Board announced that they would destroy all copies of the book, although it was later merely moved to the adult section.
George Orwell’s infamous classic has been banned in 126 countries to date. At base level, even children can understand it as a short novel about a bunch of barnyard animals who revolt against their oppressive farmer, but it’s really about the dangers of totalitarian socialism, especially Stalinism. Naturally, the backlash erupted upon publication in 1946; Britain spoke out against its use of pigs as the upper class, U.S.S.R. banned it from all Soviet-ruled areas, Kenya outlawed it on account of pointing fingers at corrupt leaders. Most recently, it was banned in 2002 in all United Arab Emirates schools.
The depiction of the 11-year-old female protagonist’s rape by her father is what has provoked a rise out of parents, teachers, and school librarians since Toni Morrison’s brilliant and hard novel was published in 1970. Admonishment was made at Common Core — the Federal Department of Education’s initiative to challenge school curriculum — and their bid to integrate the novel into grade 11 reading criteria. In 2013, an Alabama state senator, Republican Bill Holtzclaw, attempted to ban Morrison’s “objectionable” book from all school libraries in the state. For a book which covers the cautions and heartbreak of racism, incest, and rape, many argued that swiping it away would only censor real and dangerous issues.
More offensive than the Bible, than any curse word, any flagrant nudity or unadulterated sex was this colorfully illustrated kid’s book written by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle in 1967. In 2010, the Texas State Board of Education’s member Pat Hardy announced that Bill Martin’s — author of “Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation” — works be yanked off the shelves, as they denounced American capitalist values. So off the racks went the anti-patriotic colorful brown bear, just for a moment. Book banning is so practical.
