{"id":7,"date":"2018-01-29T17:03:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-29T17:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/?p=7"},"modified":"2018-01-29T17:03:23","modified_gmt":"2018-01-29T17:03:23","slug":"banned-books-ive-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/2018\/01\/29\/banned-books-ive-read\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned Books I’ve Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting a course about book censorship really made me think about how many banned books I\u2019ve read in my lifetime. Or rather how many books I\u2019ve read that have been banned. It\u2019s not like I seek out banned books\u2014that\u2019s actually the point; so many books that are considered to be part of a \u201cnormal\u201d education are being challenged, and that really surprised me.<\/p>\n

As we previously discussed in class, it\u2019s a bit shocking that To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> has recently come under fire from censorship groups. In my mind, it\u2019s ingrained as a quintessential part of an education. I remember reading it when I was fourteen and never once thought it was inappropriate for me or my class. Many of the challenges are made because the book contains usage of the \u201cn-word,\u201d but I don\u2019t believe that is a reason to ban it. Numerous movies that depict that time period and earlier time periods similarly feature the \u201cn-word,\u201d but they are not banned. Furthermore, the reason it is used is to realistically represent that time period. The book itself also highlights the long-term implications of slavery that still persist in society in the form of de facto and de jure racism. It\u2019s such a good book for the English curriculum, full of smart commentary on society, that trying to get it banned seems like a loss.<\/p>\n

Looking through the list<\/a> of banned books from 2005, I noticed another well-known \u201cschool\u201d book was challenged: Catcher in the Rye<\/em>. The book was only challenged and it ended up being retained\u2014thankfully\u2014but I was still annoyed to see it challenged. To me, it\u2019s a book that makes students actually want to do the assigned reading. It was one of my favorite books from tenth grade and I think everyone should be exposed to it. I know there are a few \u201ctaboo\u201d themes but they\u2019re definitely not overt and not inappropriate for adolescents to read. I believe it\u2019s important for this book to be kept in the curriculum because it\u2019s one of the few books that can really resonate with teens. I\u2019ll admit I\u2019m being a little biased when it comes to these books because I enjoyed them so much, but they\u2019re just so ingrained in the high school English class experience that it shocks me that people would try to remove them.<\/p>\n

I was similarly surprised to see traditionally nonacademic books being challenged alongside the classics. Particularly one book from the Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison, something I loved reading when I was in middle school. The challenge was against the second book in the series, On the Bright Side, I\u2019m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God: Further Confessions of Georgia Nicolson<\/em>. I thought it was hilarious to see this book being challenged because there\u2019s no sex in the book\u2014only some kissing, and the title is just a representation of the main character\u2019s hilarious personality. I was even more amused when I read that the complaint was that, \u201can unstable person seeing a girl reading the book might think from the title that the girl is promiscuous and stalk her.\u201d This is a ridiculous reason to ban a book. If this hypothetical person is truly \u201cunstable\u201d what\u2019s stopping them from misinterpreting other book titles and reacting unstably? What I think is most irksome about book challenges, these in particular, is there\u2019s no realistic reason they should be challenged, just overprotective parents who are too trigger happy when it comes to banning anything they feel doesn\u2019t align with their very restrictive values.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starting a course about book censorship really made me think about how many banned books I\u2019ve read in my lifetime. Or rather how many books I\u2019ve read that have been banned. It\u2019s not like I seek out banned books\u2014that\u2019s actually the point; so many books that are considered to be part of a \u201cnormal\u201d education […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8,"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burn.coplacdigital.org\/verrastro\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}