Banned Books Week at the Library!

"Artwork courtesy of the American Library Association"

“He act like he can’t stand me no more. Say I’m evil an always up to no good. He took my other little baby, a boy this time. But I don’t think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man an his wife over Monticello. I got breasts full of milk running down myself. He say Why don’t you look decent? Put on something. But what I’m sposed to put on? I don’t have nothing."

—Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Do you find the above passage shocking?

Are you feeling outraged?

Indignant?

We’ll give you a moment . . .

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is one of the most heart-wrenching and celebrated novels in literature. And thanks to “offensive” passages like the one above—it also one of the most challenged.

On September 23, Oldsmar Public Library will join libraries and schools across the nation to celebrate “Banned Books Week,” a week-long ode to our first amendment rights to free speech and the expression of ideas—even those sometimes considered “unpopular” with the masses.

From the 24-29, the Circulation Desk will host a “Banned Books” display where patrons are encouraged to “get caught” reading a banned book and take a mug shot celebrating their own fight against censorship.

All the titles featured have been challenged, restricted, banned, and even burned since their initial publication. In fact, in 1978, an instructor at Freemont High School in St. Anthony was even terminated for advocating One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to his students. According to Judith Krug of the American Library Association (ALA) in an interview with NPR: “They’re not afraid of the book; they’re afraid of the ideas.”

A great majority of the books finding themselves on “banned books” lists every year are also hailed as classics of literature—many having won awards or considered to be an integral part of the American canon. One such book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, has gotten quite cozy in its banned notoriety, finding itself a “marked” book for over fifty years now.

According to Business Insider, Lee herself once famously responded to a proposed ban of her novel in 1966, writing a letter to the editor of the Richmond News Leader, that, “Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board’s activities, and what I’ve heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read.”

Her charge, as it turns out, isn’t so far off the money. According to Marshall University, one parent admitted during a meeting discussing the ban of Toni Morrison’s Beloved—to not having read the entire book!

Thankfully, due to the efforts of librarians, schoolteachers, booksellers, and patrons like you, those voices in the fight for intellectual freedom have far out-cried any seeking to suppress. Perhaps summing it up best, is a statement found on ABA (American Booksellers Association) released from the Kid’s Right to Read Project (KRRP) during a challenge of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower:

“(He) has every right to feel this way about how he seeks to raise his own children. But the relevant law prevents school administrators from granting one parent control over the education of other children, or from privileging the moral values of some parents over others.”

So this upcoming week at Oldsmar Public Library, come celebrate your Constitutional rights to read and the freedom to think for yourself!

Come check out a banned book! Go on . . .

We dare you.

Image by: Simon & Schuster Via BuzzFeed

*If your organization is currently undergoing a challenge or ban against a particular work of literature, you can seek confidential support from the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom by reporting online at http://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/report or calling 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4226.

Written by Brittany Baum