{"id":7721,"date":"2022-09-22T01:16:21","date_gmt":"2022-09-22T01:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/?p=7721"},"modified":"2022-09-22T21:43:56","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T21:43:56","slug":"banned-challenged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/books-we-read\/banned-challenged\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned or Challenged"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cBooks Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us\u201d is the theme of Banned Books Week 2022, observed from September 18 to 24 this year. Committed to intellectual freedom, Books We Read joins the American Library Association\u2019s annual event, which has brought together the entire book community<\/a> to support the freedom \u201cto seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.\u201d<\/p>\n

Browse all our related posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Banning books has long been practiced as a form of censorship for various reasons, mostly falling into two categories over time: indecency or political subversion,<\/a> although in greater variety<\/a>. One of my most memorable encounters with banned books takes me back to the \u201cSamizdat<\/a>\u201d era in the early 1980s in communist Hungary, when a samizdat translation of Animal Farm<\/em> by a translator with a pen name Z\u00faz Tam\u00e1s<\/a> (roughly \u201ccrushed by others\u201d) was published in 1984, barely escaping the secret police. Although Orwell\u2019s name was mentioned in a collection of English essays edited in 1963, no text by the author was published until the communist system collapsed in 1989. Censorship during that time would affect political taboos such as criticism of Marxism-Leninism, the Soviet Union, the single party system and, ironically, the existence of censorship.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, although pessimism or \u201cdecadence\u201d in a book was the second main cause of rejection, books such as Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s Slaughterhouse Five<\/a><\/em> or Sylvia Plath\u2019s Bell Jar<\/a><\/em> were published in multiple editions in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively, in brilliant translations. At the same time, although on high school reading lists in the United States for those lucky to have been given the freedom to read<\/a>, these books had been challenged and banned multiple times along with other classics<\/a> listed by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom.<\/p>\n

\"Cover<\/a>Another memorable banned book for me is The Glass Castle<\/a><\/em> by Jeanette Walls, a memoir \u201cabout the author\u2019s unconventional, poverty-stricken upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents, one a frustrated artist and the other a brilliant alcoholic\u201d \u2013 as summarized in the first bibliotherapy-themed guide<\/a> for our ALA-funded \u201cReading for Recovery\u201d project in 2015-2016. The project was inspired by our reader\u2019s advisory initiative in the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies Library, where we discovered, based on simple metrics, that certain books in the collection circulated more often than others, with The Glass Castle<\/em> on the top of the list. Even though various staff members felt differently about the book, there was a consensus that similar titles, listed as read-alikes, can be used to promote reading for healing among people with substance use and their loved ones.<\/p>\n

Listed as #9 on the Top Banned Books in 2012<\/a> out of 464 challenges recorded, The Glass Castle<\/a> <\/em>didn\u2019t make a great first impression on me at all, probably because of my high expectations after reading raving reviews. However, the audiobook, narrated by the author herself, made a huge difference. Voices of diversity<\/a>, audiobooks have been a game changer for many of us strapped for (reading) time due to other commitments or vision issues. Listening to The Glass Castle<\/em> ten years later not only bolstered my lifelong practice of re-visiting some books from time to time, but also confirmed the choice of the book as the highlight of the Reading for Recovery project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Challenging a book related to child abuse for its language is pathetic. A book that starts with a three-year-old girl burning a large part of her body because she\u2019s cooking a hotdog for herself on the gas stove. Or where a five-year-old defends her drunk father as \u201cWhen my daddy passes out, he never pisses himself.\u201d Or when a child\u2019s birthday wish is that daddy should stop drinking. The language should match the story, whether it\u2019s Bruce Willis walking on broken glass in Die hard<\/em> (\u201cYippee-ki-yay, melon farmer<\/em>\u201d \u2013 seriously?) or a memoir from the perspective of a child with a heavy drinker father. The story is dark, disheartening, moreover, often devastating, heartbreaking, and true. There are millions of children living in poverty, hunger and distress, and literature must not turn a blind eye to them. Banning a book on this topic sounds like sweeping the issue under the rug.<\/p>\n

\u201cChildren of alcoholics\u201d is a Library of Congress Subject Heading<\/a> with its own call number HV532 (in case someone chooses the privacy of browsing the shelves in the library as our users did in the Alcohol Library), a topic researched by socially conscious scholars and discussed by counselors across the school system.<\/p>\n

The same applies to Sylvia Plath\u2018s semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar<\/a><\/em>, which was banned for its profanity and sexuality as well as its overt rejection of the woman’s role as wife and mother<\/a>. I decided to re-read the book recently because of a new addition to the\u00a0recreational reading collection<\/a>, a fascinating story, part true, part fictive, entitled The last confessions of Sylvia P.: a novel<\/a> <\/em>by Lee Daniel Kravetz. Masterfully combining three storylines into a novel, he adds to the legend and growing body of literature on Plath, inspiring us to revisit this unique author. I did and never regretted it. Without any reference to contemporary external stressors such as social media, I believe The Bell Jar<\/em> still speaks to broad audiences today providing perennial discussion topics on mental health.<\/p>\n

Finally, as our guest of last Summer Tales, Carmen Maria Machado said about parents challenging her book In the dream house\u202f: a memoir<\/a>, <\/em>which describes domestic violence, psychological and emotional abuse in a queer relationship: \u201cbanning my book won\u2019t protect your child<\/a>.\u201d Instead, how about using banned books as a parenting tool<\/a>?<\/p>\n

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Banned or challenged books mentioned in the text<\/h4>\n