Does your city or community's high school or library ever have a "banned books week" or a banned books exhibit?
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Kraigmo (
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December 28th, 2010
Many schools and libraries have a “Banned Books Week” or a banned books exhibit, in which they display books that have been banned by other libraries or school districts.
Does your community do this?
Or is your community more likely to be the one to ban certain books?
If you have any experiences of how different towns censor, or highlight the problem of censorship, in regards to library books, please share.
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13 Answers
Actually my town library had exactly this exhibition only last month. People round here are quite liberal.
We don’t have much of a problem where I live (Spokane, WA) with censoring our literature/art, at least not that I am aware of. In fact, we have this awesome festival each year Get Lit! that celebrates everything about literature. It’s fun and a great way to spend a few days each spring. Gonzaga U. invites a decent amount of authors to campus each year. This year, I got to meet Jimmy Santiago Baca and Naomi Shihab Nye. Keya Mitra, Rick Moody, and Daniel Orozco are coming in the next couple of months, although I am not sure which ones to go to.
A local independent bookstore celebrates by discounting banned books and hosting book clubs for the entirety of the week. They couldn’t make rent and had to close down recently, though. They were my second favorite bookstore :(
That is really interesting. I didn’t even know books were banned any more.
I thought that ended with Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
Not that I know of. But then there are no banned books here either.
The American Library Association has a banned books week in November in which they publicize the names of books titles that have been banned at some point. My community college library usually has a display of those titles for circulation druing that week. Most titles that have been banned in libraries are usually due to a vocal minority of patrons or interest groups and many libraries now-a-days will try to withstand the pressure from would-be banners.
The library where I worked celebrated Banned Book Week with by filling lots of display cases with books that were once banned.
@anartist censorship is a constant battle. There has been a concerted effort to ban the Harry Potter bools for promoting witchcraft and wizardry. Diary of Anne Frank was pulled from a school in Virgina for “being sexually explicit and promoting homosexuality”. even “A Wrinkle in Time” was banned for promoting a discussion about religion.
Our local library and our high school library both participate in the ALA’s Banned Books Week.
@zenvelo, Diary of Anne Frank was pulled from a school in Virgina for “being sexually explicit and promoting homosexuality”
Holy shit, really? That seems like quite a stretch for whoever made that claim.
@zenvelo, interesting selection. I’m still baffled by the fact that Anne Frank’s diary is on there. I guess I’ll have to read the updated version with the added material. I lol’d heartily at the dictionary being on that list, though, because my friends and I (and I’m sure every kid at some point) used to look up “dirty” words to see what the definitions were back in like… elementary school.
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) tracks, publishes news about, and regularly participates in legal actions against censorship, banning, and other kinds of interference with freedom to read. They sponsor Banned Book Week literature and events. I have been receiving their electronic newsletter (available free) for years and highly recommend it.
Berlin features a memorial about books banned by the Nazis.
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