The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965 (Grove Press)
Objectors have called this seminal work a
“how-to-manual” for crime and decried because of “anti-white statements”
present in the book. The book presents the life story of Malcolm
Little, also known as Malcolm X, who was a human rights activist and who
has been called one of the most influential Americans in recent
history.
Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1987
Again and again, this Pulitzer-prize
winning novel by perhaps the most influential African-American writer of
all time is assigned to high school English students. And again and
again, parental complaints are lodged against the book because of its
violence, sexual content and discussion of bestiality.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown, 1970
Subtitled “An Indian History of the
American West,” this book tells the history of United States growth and
expansion into the West from the point of view of Native Americans. This
book was banned by a school district official in Wisconsin in 1974
because the book might be polemical and they wanted to avoid controversy
at all costs. “If there’s a possibility that something might be
controversial, then why not eliminate it,” the official stated.
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
Rather than ban the book about
book-banning outright, Venado Middle school in Irvine, CA utilized an
expurgated version of the text in which all the “hells” and “damns” were
blacked out. Other complaints have said the book went against objectors
religious beliefs. The book’s author, Ray Bradbury, died this year.
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936
The Pulitzer-prize winning novel (which
three years after its publication became an Academy-Award Winning film)
follows the life of the spoiled daughter of a southern plantation owner
just before and then after the fall of the Confederacy and decline of
the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. Critically praised for its
thought-provoking and realistic depiction of ante- and postbellum life
in the South, it has also been banned for more or less the same reasons.
Its realism has come under fire, specifically its realistic portrayal –
though at times perhaps tending toward optimistic -- of slavery and use
of the words “nigger” and “darkies.”
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939
Kern County, California has the great
honor both of being the setting of Steinbeck’s novel and being the first
place where it was banned (1939). Objections to profanity—especially
goddamn and the like—and sexual references continued from then into the
1990s. It is a work with international banning appeal: the book was
barred in Ireland in the 50s and a group of booksellers in Turkey were
taken to court for “spreading propaganda” in 1973.
Howl, Allen Ginsberg, 1956
Following in the footsteps of other “Shaping America” book Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg’s boundary-pushing poetic works were challenged because of descriptions of homosexual acts.
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
Ellison’s book won the 1953 National Book
Award for Fiction because it expertly dealt with issues of black
nationalism, Marxism and identity in the twentieth century. Considered
to be too expert in its ruminations for some high schools, the book was
banned from high school reading lists and schools in Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin and Washington state.
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906
For decades, American students have
studied muckraking and yellow journalism in social studies lessons about
the industrial revolution, with The Jungle headlining the unit. And yet, the dangerous and purportedly socialist views expressed in the book and Sinclair’s Oil led to its being banned in Yugoslavia, East Germany, South Korea and Boston.
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1855
If they don’t understand you, sometimes they ban you. This was the case when the great American poem Leaves of Grass
was first published and the New York Society for the Suppression of
Vice found the sensuality of the text disturbing. Caving to pressure,
booksellers in New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania conceded to
advising their patrons not to buy the “filthy” book.
Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940
Richard Wright’s landmark work of literary
naturalism follows the life of young Bigger Thomas, a poor Black man
living on the South Side of Chicago. Bigger is faced with numerous
awkward and frustrating situations when he begins working for a rich
white family as their chauffer. After he unintentionally kills a member
of the family, he flees but is eventually caught, tried and sentenced to
death. The book has been challenged or removed in at least eight
different states because of objections to “violent and sexually graphic”
content.
Our Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1971
Challenges of this book about the female
anatomy and sexuality ran from the book’s publication into the
mid-1980s. One Public Library lodged it “promotes homosexuality and
perversion.” Not surprising in a country where some legislators want to
keep others from saying the word “vagina.”
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, 1961
The book was actually retained after a
2003 challenge in Mercedes, TX to the book’s adult themes. However,
parents were subsequently given more control over what their child was
assigned to read in class, a common school board response to a
challenge.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
Parents of students in Advanced English
classes in a Virginia high school objected to language and sexual
content in this book, which made TIME magazine’s list of top 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963
Sendak’s work is beloved by children in
the generations since its publication and has captured the collective
imagination. Many parents and librarians, however, did much
hand-wringing over the dark and disturbing nature of the story. They
also wrung their hands over the baby’s penis drawn in In the Night Kitchen.
The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez, 2002
The works of Chavez were among the many
books banned in the dissolution of the Mexican-American Studies Program
in Tucson, Arizona. The Tucson Unified School District disbanded the
program so as to accord with a piece of legislation which outlawed
Ethnic Studies classes in the state. To read more about this egregious
case of censorship, click here.
(complete list)
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