Read A Banned Book This Week

(The image above was found at the web page of the Sonoma State University Library.)

Last week, a friend from North Carolina told us about a school board in that state that had voted to ban the excellent book by Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man". Now this week, we hear of an Ohio school board wanting to ban Toni Morrison's book, "The Bluest Eye".

I am a reader. In fact, I love books. I think the best thing a person can do to improve their mind is to read books -- any kind of books. And I believe one of the stupidest things people can do is to ban (or burn) books. Book-banners are just showing a lack of faith in their own beliefs (which they think will be threatened by some book) or in the intelligence of their fellow human beings (who they evidently believe are too dumb to know a good book from a bad one, or to be able to recognize truth or lies when encountered in a book).

I have raised two children on my own, and I can honestly say that I never censored any reading material they were interested in reading. I was just thankful they wanted to read, and always encouraged them to read. In fact, on every Christmas of their lives they received some books as a present (in addition to toys and other gifts). And thankfully, they developed a love of reading, which they have taken into their adulthood.

It just so happens that the two new efforts at book-banning that I mentioned above, happen as we celebrate a special week -- Banned Books Week (September 22nd - 28th). I hope you will all join me this week in reading a good banned book. That's the best way I can think of to celebrate the week. And to give you some suggestions, I present the following list of books (from the website of msnbc.com) that are, or have been banned:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965

Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1987

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown, 1970

The Call of the Wild, Jack London, 1903

Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953

For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, 1940

Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925

Howl, Allen Ginsberg, 1956

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1966

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952

The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1855

Moby-Dick; or The Whale, Herman Melville,1851

Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940

Our Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1971

The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, 1895

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred C. Kinsey, 1948

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, 1961

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, 1947

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852

Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963

The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez, 2002