Opinion
In the past several years there has been a lot of conflict over the scope and nature of books that can appropriately be provided to adults and young people in Wyoming’s public and school libraries. I thought about this while reading a recent essay by the literary critic and biographer Ruth Franklin on Mark Twain’s novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” For more than a century, Twain’s story of a young white boy and an enslaved Black man traveling on a raft down the Mississippi River has been considered a central document in our literature and history. But now, the book is often under fire, challenged and sometimes banned from libraries, removed from school curricula.
For her essay, Franklin traveled around the country asking teachers and students about the place of “Huckleberry Finn” in our schools and in society generally. Some say it’s central to understanding our history, a tale of moral awakening that is also a compelling satire of the racist values that were once held by most white Americans. Others believe the book encourages the racial stereotyping we’ve struggled to transcend, that it both reflects and is a form of violence against Black Americans.
Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is another book that has been both widely lauded and sharply condemned by different readers. And, as with “Huck Finn,” issues around race and racism are at the root of the different views of the book that readers hold.
With Franklin’s essay in mind, I looked up the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most challenged and banned books in the United States. Here are some of the novels that appear on the list:
“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
“All the King’s Men“ by Robert Penn Warren
“Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl“ by Anne Frank
“As I lay Dying“ by William Faulkner
“Beloved“ by Toni Morrison
“Brave New World“ by Aldous Huxley
“The Call of the Wild“ by Jack London
“The Color Purple“ by Alice Walker
“A Farewell to Arms“ by Ernest Hemingway
“Go Tell it On the Mountain“ by James Baldwin
“The Grapes of Wrath“ by John Steinbeck
“The Great Gatsby“ by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The Handmaid’s Tale“ by Margaret Atwood
“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings“ by Maya Angelou
“The Jungle“ by Upton Sinclair
“Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
“The Lord of the Rings“ by J.R.R. Tolkien
“The Naked and the Dead“ by Norman Mailer
“Native Son“ by Richard Wright
“1984“ by George Orwell
“Of Mice and Men“ by John Steinbeck
“The Satanic Verses“ by Salman Rushdie
“Sophie’s Choice“ by William Styron
“Their Eyes Were Watching God“ by Zora Neale Hurston
“To Kill a Mockingbird“ by Harper Lee
“A Wrinkle in Time“ by Madeleine L’Engle
This group includes Nobel Prize winners Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Golding, and Morrison; Pulitzer Prize winners Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Sinclair, Penn Warren, Lee, Styron, Mailer, Walker, and Morrison; National Book Award winners Faulkner, Styron, and Walker; Booker Prize winners Atwood and Rushdie; and National Medal of Arts recipient Maya Angelou. These are among the most honored novels of the past century. Why are they so often condemned?
Some of the often-stated reasons for challenging books are that they are pro-socialist or pro-communist, anti-family or anti-religion; that they are obscene, include nudity or are sexually explicit; that they use coarse language, scatological humor or racial stereotypes. Books have been banned for dealing with child sexual abuse, bullying, slavery, firearms, the occult, incest, gambling, infidelity, anarchism and drug and alcohol use. Sometimes it’s the content — suicide, death, abortion, atheism. More recently, books addressing LGBTQ issues have been criticized.
Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men“ was challenged for “depicting a depressing view of life” while “The Grapes of Wrath“ was challenged for “portraying Kern County, California in a negative light.” Orwell’s “1984“ was charged in one case with being pro-communist and in another with being anti-communist.
I asked several friends to send me a list of their 10 favorite books. They all responded and, over the course of two years, I read every book named and talked about them with the friends who made the lists. Maybe we could do something like that with these controversial books. Pick one I’ve mentioned from the challenged and banned books list and read it with a friend or family member you trust, someone with whom you can speak freely without fear of being judged. After the two of you have read the book, talk about it together. See what happens.
