Banned Books Week and Some of My Favorite Banned Books

This week is Banned Books Week; a week that celebrates our freedom to read and began in 1982 in response to an increase in challenges to books across America's libraries, schools and bookstores. Everything from contemporary literature to the classics have been challenged, namely for exploring controversial topics.

In honor of banned books week, I have created a list of my favorite books that were banned or challenged in 2010/2011. Click here to see the full list of books banned in 2010/2011.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close/ Jonathan Safran Foer: This was my favorite read of 2010. It's a book about making sense of the world around you, coping with loss, and learning how to live. Banned because of it's "profanity, sex and descriptions of violence."

The Diary of a Young Girl/Anne Frank: I've read this one twice, once when I was a young girl and again in college. This is probably the most important diary to ever be published and was challenged because of "sexual material and homosexual themes."

Water for Elephants/Sarah Gruen: Gruen's story emphasizes the importance of empathy and understanding, toward both people and animals. It was banned because of "the novel's sexual content."

The Awakening/Kate Chopin: It's actually really sad to see this one banned this year. Published in 1899, this book emphasizes a departure from the typical 1890's family structure and celebrates a woman's desire for independence. Banned because the cover shows a picture of "a woman's bare chest."

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time/Mark Haddon: This is another one of my very favorite books, told from the pov of an autistic child, I think the novel promotes tolerance and understand of those with disabilities. Banned because of "foul language."

The best way to celebrate Banned Books Week is to read a banned book!

Other banned books I have reviewed:

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings/Maya Angelou

Slaughterhouse-Five/Kurt Vonnegut

Lady Chatterley's Lover/D.H. Lawrence

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was a well-known activist throughout the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's. She wrote I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a way of dealing with his death and to highlight her own personal struggles as an African-American woman. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is the first book in a five part autobiography and is considered a milestone for African-American writing. It details Maya Angelou's troublesome childhood in the segregated south during the 1930's.

One of the things that makes Maya Angelou's childhood particularly interesting is that she experienced two different worlds growing up. One living with her grandmother in a segregated community in Stamps, Arkansas, where she remembered "never believing that whites were really real" and a second after she turned 13, when Maya's lived with her mother in San Francisco, a place that quickly became "California's Harlem" when WWI began and the majority of the Asian community left the area and African Americans began to dominate. While the people who surrounded Maya had a great impact on her life, these two places also proved to be influential and ultimately had a great effect on her - changing the way she viewed the world and viewed herself.

In San Francisco, for the first time, I perceived myself as part of something. Not that I identified with the newcomers, nor with the rare Black descendants of native San Franciscans, nor with the whites or even the Asians, but rather with the times and the city.

What I related to the most in Angelou's story was her passion for literature and it's capacity to heal and inspire. Throughout her childhood, Maya Angelou experienced traumatic events that no child should have to endure. However, she coped with her feelings of displacement and uncertainty through literature. Ultimately her reading helped to shape the strong, secure woman she grew to be.

Even though this novel was published in 1969, Angelou's prose feels fresh, employing anecdotes that made me frown in sadness and laugh out loud.

Ever since [my brother and I] read The Fall of the House of Usher we had made a pact that neither of us would allow the other to be buried unless 'absolutely, positively sure' (his favorite phrase) that the person was dead. I also had to swear that when his soul was sleeping I would never try to wake it, for the shock might make it go to sleep forever.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is a story of a young girls evolution of her own identity as an African-American woman

The fact than an adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even billigerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

It's a book about persistence, perseverance and tolerance. While some instances were hard to stomach, overall I enjoyed the book very much.

Publisher: Virago, 1969

Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

Prior to reading this novel I had never read any Zora Neale Hurston, but heard great things. I chose Their Eyes Were Watching God because I felt like this is one of those books I should read before I die, an American classic. Also, it's a banned book and since this week is Banned Books Week, it's my way of celebrating. This novel tells the story of Janie, a light-skinned African American woman living in the south during the early 1900's. Hurston details Janie's struggles against patriarchy and her continuous search for happiness over 30 years and uses two distinct voices to relate the story; that of the lyric narrator and the voices of the characters, who all speak in a thick southern dialect combined with the black vernacular.

Throughout the novel these opposing voices create a distinct divide, which is probably meant to mirror Janie's divide as a woman in a mans world and, as a result of her fair skin, her difficulty to fit in with either race that surrounds her. It also speaks to the importance of language and represents Janie's struggle to find her own voice. While I understand why Hurston employed two distinct voices throughout the novel, I didn't like it. I feel in love with the poetic narration and then was thrown into dialect that required my full attention:

"Daisy, you know mah heart and all de ranges uh mah mind. And you know if Ah wuz ridin' up in uh earoplane way up in de sky and Ah looked down and seen you walkin' and knowed you'd have tuh walk ten miles tuh git home, Ah'd step backward offa dat earoplane just tuh walk home wid you."

Maybe I'm just being a baby but I would rather read Standard Written English. With that in mind, the voice of the narrator was simply beautiful, gracefully thick with metaphors and figurative language:

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Structure and language aside, the overall story Hurston tells is insightful and still relevant today. She explores gender roles and examines race in terms of its cultural construction and how ideas of race are spread. Or course it's a coming of age story, but its more than that. Hurston stresses the power of believing in yourself and discovering your own truths. Janie triumphs over the limitations of patriarchy, race and poverty by never losing sight of who she was and what she wanted. This isn't in my top ten of American classics, but it is a satisfying read.

In a related note, the movie might be worth a watch:

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1937

Banned Books Week and My Favorite Banned Books

Banned Books Week is September 25 - October 2 and the best way to celebrate is to read a banned book! (Or, if you're feeling really ambitious, check out what else you can do.) Banned book week celebrates our freedom to read and began in 1982 in response to an increase in challenges to books across America's libraries, schools and bookstores. Everything from contemporary literature to the classics have been challenged, namely for exploring controversial topics.

I haven't decided what book I'll read yet, but I do want to share with you my favorite banned books I have read in the past:

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
Silas Marner, George Eliot
A Light in the Attic, Shel Silverstein
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Animal Farm, George Orwell
The Witches, Roald Dahl