Banned Books
By: Camie Tyler
Every Year since 1982 on the last week of September is Banned Books Week (BBW). This celebrates the freedom to express one’s opinion or viewpoint even if it may be unpopular or unorthodox. It also expresses the importance to ensure the availability of those unpopular or unorthodox ideas or viewpoints for all who want to read them. For more information on BBW please visit www.ala.org
Every year all over the country books are banned for various reasons, for example sexual content, religious content, racism, offensive language, homosexuality and violence just to name a few. Here is a list of the top 15 books banned in 2005.
American Psycho by: Bret Easton Ellis
Arming
America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture
by: Michael A. Bellesiles
The Bluest Eye
by: Toni Morrison
Carrie
by: Stephen King
The Catcher
in the Rye
by: J.D. Salinger
The Color Purple
by: Alice Walker
The Handmaid's Tale
by: Margaret Atwood
The House of the
Spirits by: Isabel Allende
I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings by: Maya Angelou
Of Mice and Men
by: John Steinbeck
Ordinary People
by: Judith Guest
Private Parts
by: Howard Stern
Slaughterhouse-Five
by: Kurt Vonnegut
To Kill a Mockingbird
by: Harper Lee
Women on top: how real
life has changed women's sexual fantasies by:
Nancy Friday
resource: www.nypl.org
Between 1990 and 2000, of the 6,364 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom (Taken from directly from www.ala.org)
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1,607 were challenges to “sexually explicit” material (up 161 since 1999);
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1,427 to material considered to use “offensive language”; (up 165 since 1999)
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1,256 to material considered “unsuited to age group”; (up 89 since 1999)
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842 to material with an “occult theme or promoting the occult or Satanism,”; (up 69 since 1999)
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737 to material considered to be “violent”; (up 107 since 1999)
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515 to material with a homosexual theme or “promoting homosexuality,” (up 18 since 1999)and
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419 to material “promoting a religious viewpoint.” (up 22 since 1999)
Other reasons for challenges included “nudity” (317 challenges, up 20 since 1999), “racism” (267 challenges, up 22 since 1999), “sex education” (224 challenges, up 7 since 1999), and “anti-family” (202 challenges, up 9 since 1999).
“Books and ideas are the most effective weapons
against intolerance and ignorance.”—Lyndon Baines Johnson