Banned Books Week 2014September 21 – 27

Literary Fiction

The Lovely Bones

By Alice Sebold

2008/2009Moved to the faculty section of the John W. McDevitt Middle School library in Waltham, Mass. (2008) because its content was too frightening for middle school students. Source: May 2008, p.97. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/content/banned/bannedbooksweek/ideasandresources/free_downloads/2009banned.pdf

2007/2008Moved to the faculty section of the John W. McDevitt Middle School library in Waltham, Mass. (2008) because its content was too frightening for middle school students. Source: May 2008, p. 97. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/content/banned/bannedbooksweek/ideasandresources/free_downloads/2008banned.pdf

2006/2007Challenged at the Coleytown Middle School Library in Westport, Conn. (2007).  The school superintendent acknowledged that the book is "for mature readers" and also acknowledged that "the book is appropriate to be part of a middle school library collection serving

students from ages 11-14, many of whom possess the maturity level to read this book."  Source: Mar. 2007, p. 71.http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/content/banned/bannedbooksweek/ideasandresources/free_downloads/2007shortlist.pdfMy thoughts:I think that this book is important for kids of middle school and high school age to read because (as I stated in my review) they need to be aware of what can happen and to take caution.  Predators like the villain in The Lovely Bones are out in the world and, as I've stated before, we can't shield our kids from the truths of our world.  They will find out for themselves soon enough and being informed is the best preparation. (You can read my review of The Lovely Bones here:http://www.truebookaddict.com/2010/01/review-lovely-bonesbook-and-movie.html

About the book (from Library Thing):My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer. This is Susie Salmon. Watching from heaven, Susie sees her happy suburban family devastated by her death, isolated even from one another as they each try to cope with their terrible loss alone. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love, do all the things she never had the chance to do herself. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet ..."The Lovely Bones" is a luminous and astonishing novel about life and death, forgiveness and vengeance, memory and forgetting - but, above all, about finding light in the darkest of places.

About the author:Alice Sebold (born September 6, 1963) is an American novelist. She has published three books: Lucky (1999), The Lovely Bones (2002) and The Almost Moon (2007). Sebold was born in Madison, Wisconsin. She grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and graduated from Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania in 1980. She then enrolled in Syracuse University. She was raped while walking home through a park off campus. She reported the crime to the police, who remarked that a young woman had once been murdered in the same location.

Sebold returned home to Pennsylvania to live with her family for the summer before beginning her sophomore year at Syracuse. After some months at home Sebold returned to Syracuse to finish her bachelor's degree and to study writing. Months later, while walking down a street near the Syracuse campus, she recognized her rapist and reported him to police; she later testified against him, and he received the maximum sentence.

Following graduation from Syracuse, Sebold went to the University of Houston in Texas for graduate school. She did not complete her graduate studies, but fell into drugs. Then she moved to Manhattan and lived there for 10 years. She held several jobs as a waitress and tried to pursue her writing career. Sebold wanted to write her story through poetry, but that, and attempts at writing a novel, did not come to fruition. She used heroin recreationally for two years, though

claims she never became addicted. Sebold recounted her substance abuse to students at an Evening of Fiction workshop by saying that, "I did a lot of things that I am not particularly proud of and that I can’t believe that I did."

Sebold left the city and moved to Southern California, where she became a caretaker of an arts colony, earning $386 a month and living in a cabin in the woods without electricity. She would write under a propane lamp. In 1995, Sebold applied to graduate school at University of California, Irvine (UCI).

Alice Sebold's first published book, many years in the making, was a memoir of her rape as an eighteen-year-old college freshman. She later returned to Syracuse University, the scene of the rape, and finished her degree.<specify> She studied writing, and wanted to write her story then, but kept failing. "I wrote tons of bad poetry about it and a couple of bad novels about it--lots of bad stuff," Sebold told Dennis McLellan of the Los Angeles Times. She explained to McLellan why the novels were not successful: "I felt the burden of trying to write a story that would encompass all rape victims' stories and that immediately killed the idea of this individual character in the novel. So <the novels> tended to be kind of fuzzy and bland, and I didn't want to make any political missteps."(Source: http://www.shelfari.com/authors/a734591/Alice-Sebold/)

In an interview conducted by Ann Darby of Publishers Weekly, Sebold said of The Lovely Bones: "I was motivated to write about violence because I believe it's not unusual. I see it as just a part of life, and I think we get in trouble when we separate people who've experienced it from those who haven't. Though it's a horrible experience, it's not as if violence hasn't affected many of us."

Sebold's second novel, The Almost Moon, continued what The New Yorker called "Sebold's fixation on terror." It begins: "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily."

Like Water for Chocolate

By Laura Esquivel

2013Removed from the reading list at Nampa (ID) High School because it was considered too racy for sophomores.

2005Challenged at the Arrowhead High School in Merton, Wis. (2004) as an elective reading list assignment by a parent because the book contains “sexually explicit and inappropriate material.”

Source: http://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/books/likewaterforchocolate.asp

My thoughts:I will grant you the fact that there is some sexually explicit material in the book, but I'm not very fond of sex in books and this was not anywhere near as bad as some of the books I've read.  I think most high school students are mature enough to read this book.  It would be a shame to deprive them of reading a book that colleges are assigning in their upper level classes AND this book is so culturally rich.  It is a great learning experience in Mexican culture and history.  I guess you can tell that I loved this book!

About the book (from Goodreads):Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its

winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit. The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story.

About the author:A teacher by trade, Laura Esquivel gained international attention with Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances and Home Remedies and The Law of Love. In both books she manages to incorporate her teaching abilities by giving her readers lessons about life. During an on-line Salon interview with Joan Smith, she said, "As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self understanding and this is something that can't be taught." With the intensity of a committed teacher incorporating glitzy stunts into the curriculum to get the attention of her students, Esquivel took a bold step when she incorporated multimedia in The Law of Love by combining her science fiction, new age, and spiritual story with a CD of arias by Puccini and Mexican danzones, and forty-eight pages of illustrations by a Spanish artist.

The Color Purple

By Alice Walker

The Color Purple is on the ALA Top Ten Frequently Challenged Books http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10)

On the Most Frequently Challenged Books Written by Authors of Color 1990-1999 (http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/challengedauthors/authorsofcolor)

On the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books: 2000-2009 (#17), and one of at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century that have been the target of ban attempts.(http://www.ala.org/bbooks/top-100-bannedchallenged-books-2000-2009)

(http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/radcliffes-rival-100-best-novels-list/)

Specific Instances:--Challenged as appropriate reading for Oakland, CA High School honors class (1984) due to the work's "sexual and social explicitness" and its "troubling ideas about race relations, man's relationship to God, African history, and human sexuality." After nine months of

haggling and delays, a divided Oakland Board of Education gave formal approval for the book's use. 

--Rejected for purchase by the Hayward, CA school's trustee (1985) because of "rough language" and "explicit sex scenes." --Removed from the open shelves of the Newport News, VA school library (1986) because of its "profanity and sexual references" and placed in a special section accessible only to students over the age of 18 or who have written permission from a parent. --Challenged at the public libraries of Saginaw, MI (1989) because it was “too sexually graphic for a 12-year-old.” --Challenged as a summer youth program reading assignment in Chattanooga, TN (1989) because of its language and "explicitness." --Challenged as an optional reading assigned in Ten Sleep, WY schools (1990). --Challenged as a reading assignment at the New Burn, NC High School (1992) because the main character is raped by her stepfather. --Banned in the Souderton, PA Area School District (1992) as appropriate reading for 10th graders because it is "smut." --Challenged on the curricular reading list at Pomperaug High School in Southbury, CT (1995) because sexually explicit passages aren’t appropriate high school reading. --Retained as an English course reading assignment in the Junction City, OR high school (1995) after a challenge to Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel caused months of controversy. Although an alternative assignment was available, the book was challenged due to "inappropriate language, graphic sexual scenes, and book's negative image of black men." --Challenged at the St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine, FL (1995). --Retained on the Round Rock, TX Independent High School reading list (1996) after a challenge that the book was too violent. --Challenged, but retained, as part of the reading list for Advanced Placement English classes at Northwest High Schools in High Point, NC (1996). The book was challenged because it is "sexually graphic and violent." --Removed from the Jackson County, WV school libraries (1997) along with sixteen other titles.--Challenged, but retained as part of a supplemental reading list at the Shawnee School in Lima, OH (1999). Several parents described its content as vulgar and "X-rated." 

--Removed from the Ferguson High School library in Newport News, VA (1999). Students may request and borrow the book with parental approval. --Challenged, along with seventeen other titles in the Fairfax County, VA elementary and secondary libraries (2002), by a group called Parents Against Bad Books in Schools. The group contends the books "contain profanity and descriptions of drug abuse, sexually explicit conduct, and torture.” --Challenged in Burke County (2008) schools in Morgantown, NC by parents concerned about the homosexuality, rape, and incest portrayed in the book. --Challenged and or banned for offensive language, being sexually explicit and unsuited to age group. (2010)--Challenged, but retained as a Brunswick County (NC) Advanced Placement English eleventh-grade assignment. Language and sexuality or "obscenity" were most often cited as the reason for the majority of the unofficial complaints and criticisms, as was whether or not the book, a Pulitzer Prize winner that deals with issues of racism, violence against women, and rape, has literary value that was age appropriate for the students. (2014)(Source: http://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/classics/reasons)

About the book (from Goodreads):Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.

About the author (from Goodreads):Alice Walker (b. 1944), one of the United States’ preeminent writers, is an award-winning author of novels, stories, essays, and poetry. In 1983, Walker became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with her novel The Color Purple, which also

won the National Book Award. Her other books include The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Meridian, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy. In her public life, Walker has worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual.

Walker was asked this question in an interview in 2012:What’s most at stake when a book like The Color Purple is banned?  What’s at stake for women, and women of color, when a story like this is silenced?

Her answer:Great Literature is help for humans.  It is medicine of the highest order.  In a more aware culture, writers would be considered priests.  And, in fact, I have approached writing in a distinctly priestess frame of mind.  I know what The Color Purplecan mean to people, women and men, who have no voice. Who believe they have few choices in life.  It can open to them, to their view, the full abundance of this amazing journey we are all on.  It can lift them into a new realization of their own power, beauty, love, courage.  It is a book that unites the present with the past, therefore giving people a sense of history and of timelessness they might never achieve otherwise. And even were it not “great” literature, it has the best interests of all of us humans at heart.  That we grow, change, challenge, encourage, love fiercely in the awareness that real love can never be incorrect.(Source: http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/alice-walker-writing-whats-right/)

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