Miriam Forster, of the charmingly monikered Dancing with Dragons is Hard on Your Shoes blog, has issued a challenge to writers (and readers!). It springs from an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association, called Banned Books Week. From the ALA site:
Held during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.
Intellectual freedom — the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular — provides the foundation for Banned Books Week. BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.
Here’s Miriam’s call to action for the month of September:
Since 1990, according to the ALA Challenge Database, over ten thousand books have been challenged in our country. These include The Diary of Anne Frank, The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien,1984 by George Orwell, the Bible, and the dictionary. [JES: ?!?]
The last week in September is Banned Book Week, a way to celebrate and highlight these and other censored books. In honor of Banned Book Week, a community of writers and readers have decided to be part of the Banned Book Challenge.
The Challenge is simple: Read one or more banned or challenged books during the month of September, and post reviews of them. The reviews will be collected and posted to a central site so that people can find out more about these books.
The above comes from the official invitation at the new Banned Book Challenge site which Miriam has set up.
So how do you participate?
- Sign up at the Challenge site, just by dropping a comment on this page.
- Sometime during the month, write a review of a book which has been banned — or at least challenged, if not outright banned — and post it on your blog, on Goodreads, or a similar site. (I could do one for The Book Book, for example.)
- Back at the Banned Book Challenge site, leave a comment on this page, providing the link to your review.
At that point, Miriam will check to be sure your review fits the Challenge’s guidelines. If so, she’ll include a link to your review at the Challenge site as a resource for future readers.
If you’re not sure what books are eligible for review, Miriam’s also included some lists from the ALA: a list of classics which have been banned; and the 100 most banned or challenged books in each of two decades: 1990-199, and 2000-2009.
(You might also check the map of the US on the ALA/BBW press kit page, which shows locales where books were challenged — attempted to be banned, successfully or not — in 2007-2010. Double-click on the map to zoom in, and to see details of a particular challenge just click on the corresponding marker. If you find the map to be too small for other than a quick glance, visit the full-size version instead.)
One feature of Miriam’s challenge, I think, is especially important — and indeed it’s one of her guidelines:
This is not the forum for discussing the appropriateness of certain books for schools and libraries. These reviews are about the books themselves and your personal opinion of them.
No one — neither the ALA, nor Miriam Forster, nor I — is demanding that elementary-school libraries start shelving copies of Mein Kampf and the complete Hustler Magazine archives. The point is not to debate whether children should or should not be protected, and (if so) how much. It’s to cast a spotlight on the slippery slope of the practice of banning books by reflex: not the value of a particular book in the eyes of one or more persons, but the value of books — especially fiction — to society as a whole.
Anybody else in?
DarcKnyt says
This sounds sort of interesting. I’m going to look into this and see if I can even fit it in with the new SSRLP, but we’ll see. Thanks John. :)
John says
Darc: Gotta say, I just love your willingness to complicate your life even MORE with new and different writing projects. :)
(I don’t suppose in your research for the slurp, you could find a book on HTML5/CSS which someone, somewhere, attempted to ban? like two birds with one stone? Naaaaaah — couldn’t be THAT lucky!)
Miriam Forster says
Wow John, you said that even better than I did!
Thanks for this, and I look forward to seeing which book you review.
John says
Miriam: posted about it on Twitter/FB, too. :)
Not sure what book I’m going to shoot for. My knee-jerk tendency when selecting books to read has always been towards current stuff rather than classics, but I think for this challenge — in order to work up a good head of steam and outrage — I should shoot for a classic. Our filthy forebears.
Ashleigh Burroughs says
I’m in!
a/b
Nance says
Checking it out. Why do I suspect that D.H. Lawrence is there…hmm. Now, if I can find one of his that I missed, that would be well worth the effort.
Nance says
The Banned Classics list looks like my bookshelf! And reminds me of some I’ve wanted to re-read. Still not sure if I can fit it in…what did my step-son do with Slaughterhouse Five the other day?…, but the spirit is certainly willing, even if the flesh is weak.
John says
a/b: Already this is shaping up to be a very interesting array of reviewers. :)
Nance: For someone who was (is? who knows?) certified by the state of New Jersey to teach English, I am woefully poorly read in even non-banned classics. I think I’ve read exactly one D.H. Lawrence story, and he indeed is among the options I’m considering for the project.
Have you noticed about the books on the list that no matter WHAT the stated reason for each challenge, they all have one general feature in common? They all subvert: they all undo something which someone, somewhere and at some time, believed (needed to believe) to be true.
Hmm… now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder if that’s maybe one thing that makes a classic in the first place?
marta says
I want to do this. Whether or not I’ll manage it, I don’t know, but I’m going to pick a book and read it anyway. And I’ll spread the word about banned book week (I always liked working on that display when I worked at B&N).
Thanks for the link. (I’m behind on reading over here and hope to catch up this weekend. Whew.)
Nance says
Got my book–a re-read, but it’s been thirty years, so I claim legitimacy. Time for some serious subversion! ‘Tis the season.
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
my efforts at reading ANYTHING beyond a good Wired or Rolling Stone article has gone completely AWOL these days, so the idea of doing that & writing a review of it feels an awful lot like being 30 years younger and doing a paper for an elective at Pratt. Having said that, I was compelled to read the lists – IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN – by Maurice Sendak?!!!! Get the controversy of some of these things if we were talking about two-thirds of the way into the 19th Century, but NOW? Holy Smokes, Batman! How did 90% of this stuff get on these lists. The shame of it is, some of them might not have half the readership they HAD, if someone hadn’t deemed them “unworthy” of shelving. Madonna: Sex? Really? I am way too naive, I suppose.
John says
marta: I don’t think I’ve ever read a book review from you. (Have you ever posted one??) Hope you do one for BBW!
Nance: Speaking for myself, I make it a point never to come between anyone and his/her subversive instincts. Will be real interested to see which one you finally settled on!
brudder: Yeah, some of the “bannable” targets are real head-scratchers. I doubt that you’re too naive, but it’s nice to know that even someone with a native cynical bent can still be surprised. :)
Another good resource is the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) “Banned and Challenged Books List.” Lots of links there to the backgrounds of individual challenges, although there are also lots which I wish included links but don’t. (Dante’s Inferno! Tarzan! Captain Underpants!)
cynth says
I want to do this too. Just don’t know when I’ll have time–can I postpone until after this week? Would it still “count?”
I knew about the BBW before. I used to do bulletin boards for the BOE office as a whimsical thing of mine. I would find pictures of the covers of the books and put them all over the bulletin board seeing if anyone would notice the titles. More times than not, no one even acknowledged the board. But when someone did, well, it was an energetic discussion for all of 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I remember these discussions as being a highlight of my day.