I read Banned Books and they are good!

September 14, 2009

A few weeks ago one of my fellow Food Pantry volunteer ‘buds’ started playfully badgering me to get back to writing about controversial subjects. And I finally did with last week’s column. Thanks to all that decided to respond. I appreciate any and all feed back and last week was no exception. E-mail started pouring in at 6 AM Thursday morning. Some of them I answered. Some I just read and laughed and hit the delete key.

As I said last week, it’s no secret that I am a conservative. Yes, that may be a bit hard for some people to believe but I am about a lot of things and I an entitled to my opinions and beliefs just like the people that are liberal are entitled to theirs. I don’t get all bent out of shape and start yelling at my friends just because they vote a different way than I do. It’s a free country folks. We can vote for whom ever we please. We still have freedom of speech in this country of ours and if you want to be informed there are many ways now days to get all the information that you need so you can make up your own mind about things.

It distresses me to hear about things and one source reports it one way and another reports it a different way and yet another will give a totally different spin. But folks, that is why I read every thing I can get my hands on and hear every report I can so I can figure things out. I learned a long time ago that I did not want to be a ‘sheeple’ and silently follow someone down the path of no return.

Take books for instance. Banned books have always been a bugaboo for me. I discovered that there is an actually week called Banned Book Week. People will ban books for various reasons, mainly out of fear of something. In the US of A we have a much freer press than most country’s do although there are times I wonder if the people doing the reporting were at the same event I was attending! Our legal system does sometimes suppress legitimate expression, for a time at least, in the name of security, copyright, or “the children”. (And sometimes the threat of criminal violence can suppress books when the law does not.) It is worth remembering that books can be published thanks to free and independent publishers. Anyone can get a book published now. It’s just not always going to be on the NYT best sellers list right away.

As far as I know, I don’t think there have ever been any banned books our library at Bruce or in the schools. Or if a book did appear on a banned list, the librarian and school officials had enough common sense to chuck the list in the round file 13 and leave the book where it belonged. Some books I have heard that are banned in some states is laughable. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee; The Living Bible by William C. Bower; The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain; Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman;
Little Red Riding Hood by The Brothers Grimm; As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner; The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Even history is ‘sanitized’ in some textbooks.

There have been some popular books in recent years and talk of banning the books and not letting the children read them. After I had heard this for a while I starting asking people what was so bad about the books. No one I asked had actually read them. They were simply repeating what someone else had said. Always being the defiant one, I decided to read the books. After all, my children might one day want to read them and it has always been my policy to read whatever my children did. That is what my mother did to me when I was a kid. I found nothing wrong with the books and they are now a part of my extensive library. They are right up there along with all my Shakespeare, Faulkner and the other books that have been banned and unbanned through time!

Banning books isn't something that was done centuries or decades ago. It happens nearly every week somewhere in the United States. Often people take notice of banned books, protest, and the proscription is lifted. Sometimes nobody notices and the banned book stays lost to a school or country. I may be a conservative person but I do NOT believe in banning books. There are times for censorship and we all know exactly when and what should be censored and not placed where young impressionable minds can be exposed.
Thankfully we still have the freedom to write about what matters to us, and the freedom to read about what matters to us. And if you get anything out of this column, I hope it is that you grow to better appreciate these freedoms and the power of books and ideas. Go to you local library and check out the great books they have. Start with some Faulkner. He is not my favorite but As I Lay Dying is quite thought provoking! And ask the Librarian what she recommends. They always know a good read!