I sincerely hope that this version of this blog post turns out more successfully than the first attempt I made a couple of years ago. After nearly finishing this important and rather lengthy post, somehow or other I managed to lose the entire thing and I still don't know why or how. I have left it untouched for quite some time because I just didn't have the heart to see it disappear once more literally before my eyes and because I also had a constant stream of ideas which needed to be completed also. But I have been reading the book "Reading Lolita In Tehran: A Memoir In Books" by Azar Nafisi and both that book and its author have been banned in Iran for quite some time. From my personal point of view, I firmly believe in reading every book I can get my hands on which has ever been banned in any jurisdiction and I have read many and will continue to do so as long as I have the capacity to do so. So should you! The world needs to know the truths contained in books which are important enough to induce power brokers to attempt to prevent their messages from being seen and heard. I honestly do not know when I read my first previously banned book or what the title was. It might have been "The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain or "Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll or some other relatively innocuous work by an author who is considered mainstream in today's world. The bottom line is that I began reading banned books at a very young age without even consciously doing so and I have never read a banned book from which I did not learn something which has proven to be informative, helpful, and worthwhile in my later life.
I recently had a conversation, quite by accident, with a worker at my local post office who has known me for several years and has seen me receive and ship hundreds of books. But until that recent day I did not know that she was a steady reader and often read banned books. In the course of that conversation, one of us, her as I remember, brought up the concept of reading banned books and she informed me quickly that she also reads every book she can get her hands on which have been banned. I had previously seen her at an annual picnic which is sponsored by a local conservative church and I was somewhat surprised to hear her agree with me on this subject. She rose several steps in my estimation after that conversation. So will you if you read a banned book and post a comment on this blog post about the experience and what you learned from it!
One of my favorite websites about banned books is run by a site known as Punchnels and they have an article entitled
"10 Reasons for Banning Books, and 5 Much Better Reasons Not To". I will be using that article as an outline for this blog post and will attempt to expand on their key points while also making several dozen of my own. I will discuss each of their reasons one by one and attempt to further elucidate my reasons for why they are correct while also providing further examples of books which fit into each of these categories they discuss.
1) Racial Themes: Numerous books have been banned in America, or portions of the country, for this very reason. "The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn" was banned in many locations for many years after its publication because it cast two runaways, one a white juvenile running from a drunken and abusive father and the other a runaway black slave. In recent times, it has been banned for an absolutely different reason, the use of the "N" word several times. In my estimation and that of many others, neither of these reasons justified banning a masterpiece such as "The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn". "To Kill A Mockingbird" was also banned for many years because it was written about a white southern attorney who defended a black man in a court of law. John Howard Griffin's "Black Like Me" was also banned because Griffin, a white author, successfully posed as a black man in the Deep South in order to understand racial prejudice. There is a much longer list of wonderful books which have been banned over the last 250 years in America because they addressed racial themes.
2) Alternative Lifestyles: Nearly as many books have been banned for this reason as have been banned for discussing racial themes. Numerous books which have addressed LGBTQ themes have been banned in America. Many of them are still banned in small enclaves such as religious based schools, Third World Countries, tyrannical and despotic countries, conservative communities, and other unique areas. This list of books may also include books about crime, gang activity, drug use, polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, mental illness, and prostitution. Some of these reasons for banning also touch the edges of sexual and/or racial themes which are actually a completely separate reason for banning books. There is actually quite a bit of such crossover in book banning where stated reasons for banning a book may actually reveal that the book banners were publicly stating one reason but also thinking of another which might have been less publicly acceptable. One of the most famous books banned in America for being about alternative lifestyles is "The Outsiders" which was written by S. E. Hinton when she was only about fifteen or sixteen and published when she was eighteen. The book is about gang life in high school and was banned by many school boards and libraries in 1967 when it shot to the top of the best seller lists and deservedly so. "Junkie" and "Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs have also been banned all across the United States because they depict the lifestyle of drug addiction. "Howl", arguably one of the finest books in all of American poetry, was banned in many jurisdictions upon its release in 1956 because the author was both gay and Jewish. Several of the books by his associates in the Beat Generation including William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac were also banned almost en masse because the authors were known to be members of that wonderfully progressive school of writing. Many lesbian, gay, transgendered, and witchcraft books have also been banned along with books about Satanism, communism, socialism, and other lifestyles at the fringes of mainstream society and that banning still occurs today.
3) Profanity: Profanity alone has also caused many books to be banned including the works of Erica Jong, John Steinbeck, and many others. Ms. Jong's books were also frequently banned due to their highly sexual nature so she often found herself and her work caught between a rock and a hard place although she has still managed to publish more than 25 books in at least three genres. More power to her! "The Grapes Of Wrath" and "The Great Gatsby" have also been banned because of their salty language. "The Great Gatsby" plays a large role in the book "
Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi which I have recently read and written about on this blog. Ms. Nafisi's highly acclaimed work has been banned in her native Iran for similar reasons. I cannot recommend any book more highly than hers.
4) Sex: The article "10 Reasons for Banning Books and 5 Much Better Reason Not To" on the Punchnel's website which I am referring to frequently in this blog post states in their discussion of this topic that "not just graphic sexual content, but also dialogue of a sexual nature,
any and all references to reproductive acts, and even the barest,
briefest, Disney-approved sensuality" can result in a book being banned by the small minded and heavy handed book banners anywhere. Books which have been banned because of sexual content include "Fanny Hill" by John Cleland, "Fear Of Flying" by Erica Jong, and "A Farewell To Arms" by Ernest Hemingway. All are excellent literature and have proven themselves to be far more consequential in America and the world than the people who banned them.
5) Violence: Violence can sometimes be the official public cause for banning a book when the real reasons may be nebulous, unnamed, and more questionable in nature. Books which have been banned because of their violence include "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey but the real reason for its banning was often related more to the fact that the protagonists in the book were residents in a mental institution. "Lord Of The Flies" by William Golding was probably banned most often because it involved teen age boys in a setting where they had to wear no clothes. "Fifty Shades of Grey" by E. L. James was often banned ostensibly because of violence when the real reason was that the violence is sexual in nature. But with more openness in America about sexual activity outside the societal norms, book banners sometimes look for other reasons to ban books with sexual content which arouses their ire.
6) Negativity: There can be no more broad and nebulous term in relation to the content of a book than "negativity". That word to a book banner is much like the term "disorderly conduct" to small town judges, police officers, and juries. It will cover nearly anything with which the person in power disagrees. "The Diary of A Young Girl" by Anne Frank was banned in Alabama for being "a downer" which was a wolf whistle word for the fact that it was actually about Jews dying in the Holocaust at the hands of Nazi's when the banning was being done in a state where the Ku Klux Klan still holds power today and that power in growing today as the White House is being illegally occupied by a TRAITOR who is supervising the deaths of children in cages. In
Corona-Norco, California, in 1993, "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley faced banning because of "negativity".
7) Witchcraft: I grew up in Knott County Kentucky and did not know until two years ago in 2017 that
Jessie Wicker Bell, the author of the most famous witchcraft book in America, "The Book Of Shadows", had been a native of Knott County and that her children scattered her ashes in a family cemetery about a mile from another cemetery in which most of my paternal aunts and uncles are buried. Since I wrote about her, her importance to Wiccans worldwide, and her writing on my blog, two of her children have contacted me to thank me for helping to make the world aware of her work and her books which are all available still today on alternative bookseller sites. They also told me that a son of hers and the grandson of a former tenant of my parents whom I had known as a child was actually their sibling. This kind of suppression of information in a small community which arose from the banning of books and making her a pariah is a shining example of the kind of damage book banning can do in such a small populace. It is also relevant to this discussion that Knott County has an unusually rich literary history with
James Still,
Albert Stewart,
William Howard Cohen,
Verna Mae Slone, May Stone, and myself all having either grown up, writing and publishing in, or living and teaching in the county. But Jessie Wicker Bell is not the only writer of such literature to have their works banned. Anton Szandor Lavey, the author of "The Satanic Bible" and four other books saw his work banned in nearly every state in America and in most mainstream book stores. Nearly every other book about witchcraft, Satanism, or similar beliefs has been banned somewhere in America and most of them have been banned in many jurisdictions. Even Roald Dahl, a very mainstream and revered author of children's books, had his book
"The Witches" banned.
8) Unpopular Religious Views: Both C. S. Lewis' "Chronicles Of Narnia" and J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings" have been banned as being anything from "anti-Christian", "satanic", or "atheistic" when both authors were deeply religious and created these works as Christian allegories. In fact, in addition to the banned children's books, Lewis also wrote two highly respected non-fiction works on Christian theology, "Mere Christianity" "The Weight Of Glory", and the fictional "Screwtape Letters" which is also deeply religious but couched in the form of letters home by a junior devil sent to earth to help the efforts of Satan. Other unpopular religious works have included those related to Scientology, atheism, agnosticism, Judaism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Later Day Saints, and most other religions which can viewed as being outside the mainstream in a Christian country. Additionally, several Muslim countries have banned religious books such as the Holy Bible, the Khama Sutra, and works related to Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and most other non-Muslim religions.
9) Unpopular Political Views: Many political books have been banned in many countries of the world depending on the beliefs they expressed and the beliefs of the reigning officials. Oftentimes, these books have been diametrically banned in opposing countries with the opposing beliefs in power. Such books include "Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler, "The Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels, "Poor Richard's Almanac" by Benjamin Franklin, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, "The Rights Of Man" by Thomas Paine, and "Wealth Of Nations" by Adam Smith. The bottom line is that, just like book banners who ban religious books because of opposing beliefs have also often been involved in banning political books which support beliefs other than their own. And you can bet that if the current criminally minded TRAITORS who occupy the White House based on the TREASON of the nameless TRAITOR who ostensibly leads them believed they could do so successfully they would also begin banning most books of a decidedly democratic or liberal bent. When I use the word "democratic" in the previous sentence, I use it in a universal not a party sense. Any book banning based on political belief is an affront to the US Constitution and the Founding Fathers who wrote. Actually, any banning of books is such an affront and in direct conflict with the concept of Freedom Of Speech which is firmly enshrined in our constitution and our democracy as a whole.
10) Any Theme Judged Unsuitable For A Particular Age Group: In many ways, this reason for banning books is a bit nebulous and left largely to the interpretation of the book banners at any given time in any given jurisdiction. It is often used to ban books with even mildly sexually based content even to the point of banning discussion of anatomy and gender. While I do understand that children of what are sometimes called "tender years" should not be allowed to read "Fanny Hill" or "Fear Of Flying", I do not believe they should be denied the knowledge that such books exist which they must wait a few years to read. A single curse word or the use of the "N" word in the classic works of Mark Twain do not constitute legitimate reasons for banning a book. Perhaps they do justify making a young reader wait but no book should ever be completely destroyed, banned, and wiped from the face of the earth. What would the fields of sociology and gender studies do without books such as "The Tea Room Trade" by Laud Humphrey or "The Human Experience Of Sex And Gender" by James Doyle. While I can understand an argument that either or both are not mass market books, I would never agree that they should be denied to the adult reader, especially the specialist in the fields they illuminate. But this last of the ten reasons for banning books is, in many ways, an open door through which many narrow minded people have walked in order to do great damage to the body of literature of many a country.
The Punchnel's article which I have referenced freely to write this post ends with five reasons for reading banned books and they are all wonderful reasons. But they are not as clearly written or created as the ten reasons books are commonly banned. But I will comment on those five reasons for reading such books and, perhaps, add a few of my own.
1) You may not like something, but that’s no reason to take it away from everyone: This is a perfectly good reason for reading banned books. But it is more a reason to allow others to read them than a reason each of us, as an open minded individual, should be reading banned books as often as possible. As citizens in a democracy, we must accept the right of any sound minded person to read whatever the hell they choose or to write it for that matter. You have the right to your opinion that "Tropic of Cancer" or "Fear Of Flying" is smut for instance but I also have the right to say I love that kind of open minded, honest language and literature and I am going to read it as I damn well please. The bottom line is that if you believe in free will for citizens of a democracy then it is none of your business what anyone else reads.
2)“Protecting” children from the difficult realities of the world is an exercise in futility—and privilege: This reason for reading banned books is also a bit shaky if we sincerely believe that parents have the right to raise their children as they wish so long as that method of rearing them is not abusive or seriously neglectful. I tend to believe that depriving children of free will as their age and maturity suits the subject under question. But I also believe that some children due to age, immaturity, or intellectual problems may well never reach a point where they can freely choose their reading material, life circumstances, or other aspects of daily living. In such cases, parents should be able to make choices for their children. But as soon as the children reach emotional maturity, they should have self-determination on all subjects.
3) Books are among our best teachers: This is by far the most valid of the Punchnel's reasons for reading banned books so far. Without books to broaden our views of the world, provide necessary information of thousands of subjects, and to provide simple, basic entertainment, we would be a dull, under educated, and unsuccessful species. Books are our most basic and wonderful source of information other than word of mouth. They are our best teachers and we should always have a book by our favorite chair or bed. We should never allow the negative opinions of others to prevent us from learning about something another human obviously believed the world needed to see and know about. I have met a few books I didn't like. I have met a few books I hate. I don't believe anyone should endanger their brains by reading "Mein Kampf" but I also firmly believe that those who choose to do so have that freedom of choice and it is an "inalienable right" guaranteed by the US Constitution.
4) Many of the most frequently banned books are—or go on to become—celebrated classics. And that’s not a coincidence: Quite often books which are banned were so attacked because the ideas they contained were simply too big, in an intellectual sense, for the minds of the people who chose to ban them. The works of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, and Thomas Locke were very often larger than the people around them who found themselves inordinately fearful of the ideas they contained. The best, most futuristic, most visionary, and most consequential works are far ahead of their times and small minds cannot accept that the world will be better place with those books being freely read, supported, and followed. Read every banned book you can find. Read them and pass them on to others. Always defend the universal right to read banned books. Always defend democracy in all its manifestations and books, by forward thinking authors, will defend you.
5) Books really can change the world: None of us know when we will be reading a book which will lead us to greatness or happiness within our ordinary lives. None of us know when another book will be released to the world which will change the world. As we look back to the days before the Gutenberg press, we can see and remember a long list of books which have been consequential in making the world a better place. Those books have been found in all genres over time. No book is too complicated, too simplistic, or too ordinary to change lives and the world. I am reminded of a little book called "Acres Of Diamonds" by Russel Conwell which on an initial examination appears to be a simple little fable about a man who left home, was unhappy, and returned to find success in the land of his birth. But, on much deeper levels, it is one of the greatest motivational books ever written and should be mandatory reading for every student in every school in the world.
Now I will add my very on best reason for reading banned books. They will relieve you of your ignorance and there is no ignorance worse than self imposed ignorance which is exactly what occurs anytime we allow any one to prevent us from reading a book we wish to read. Now go out and read as many banned books as you can. Feel free to return to this blog post and leave a comment about which banned books you have read and how doing so positively affected your life.
