InsaneJournal

Celebrate your freedom to read!
This week is Banned Books Week. I like to celebrate by reading banned book. This year's choice is The Great Gatsby. Yeah, it's a little embarrassing that I haven't read it before, but it's shocking and shameful what I have yet to read.

If you want to read a banned book to celebrate, it won't take much effort. One of the top ten challenged books for 2008 was And Tango Makes Three, a children's picture book about two male penguins at the New York City's Central Park Zoo who who hatched an egg together. I'm reluctant to use human words for non-human animals, but let's face it, they're gay penguins. You can imagine how well the book goes over with the religious right. So make a statement: read a picture book.

Go here for the ten top challenged titles, which includes His Dark Materials and Scary Stories. You can also go here for more information. It's absolutely ridiculous, some of the books that have been banned and challenged. Also, people who want to ban To Kill a Mockingbird based on racist language are really missing the point. One of the main points of the book is the evils of racism. How is supposed to do that without showing that racism? And people who want to ban Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry for the same reasons are missing the point even more. It's about a Black family in the 1930's who interact with white people. Should we sanitize history by removing hateful language and actions? What a good way to hide the fact that white people have been racist fuckheads throughout American history. Or should books about Black people that take place prior to 1980 or so just never be written? I really don't think that's the solution. (I suppose you could try and write a novel where the Black people never interact with white people, but I'm not sure how possible it would be. Plus, wow, there's a limitation.

Also, people who want to ban any book even mentioning LGBTQ people (or penguins) as "not age appropriate" make me want to kill things. But you could guess that.