Here is a list of regularly banned or challenged (attempted ban) books from 1990 to 1999. Some of them are so WTF.

the list, too hard to copy here, so

Figures
4 of the most influential authors
in my life figure prominently on "THE LIST"

Heller, Vonnegut, Twain, & King

yeah. I was surprised about the Judy Blume books. Those books helped me realize I was just a normal kid when I read them. real things that happen to real kids. It can't all be sanitized.

Wow.

One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. WTF. An 85 Y.O. former school teacher, my next door neighbor, recommended that to me back in '72. After reading it I had a new found respect for the woman. It really made an impression on my 17 Y.O. psyche.

Just running my eyes over the list
a common theme seems to be books
that encourage free thinking...
or about free thinking individuals

Randal P. McMurphy is the very
personification of someone "bucking
the system" but then so was Billy
Pilgrim, Huck Finn, & Yosarian
(who, BTW, was NOT crazy)

imho the very idea of snuffing out
free (LIBERAL) thinking is as
appalling to some as having people
bucking the system is to those
(CONSERVATIVE) thinkers wishing to
ban it out of existence.

No books should be banned. No speech banned. No writing banned. Furthermore, no ones should have to apologize for writing or saying anything the write or say.

Including what I just wrote

Dave

I do have mixed feelings about games like Grand Theft Auto where you can torture people in various ways to your hearts' content.

I think the Twain books are there because some people believe there are elements of racism in them.

Also, I would expect a list like this in a country that has laws about "hate speech" and "hate crimes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huckleberry_Finn#Criticism

Haven't read Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn since
I was a kid, but other than the liberal use of
THE"N"WORD by ignorant white people, and in the
case of Huck's "pappy", white trash, the only
facet of slavery ever mentioned is the fact that
Huck's co-adventurer was a run-away-slave, and
that only as a descriptive, just as Aunt Polly
was "a Widow Woman".

Banning a charming piece of literature written
and set in rural America prior to...but written
soon after the Civil War, in a vain attempt to
pretend that slavery never existed is ridiculous.


btw
what I took away from "Mark Twain" was his
literary device of narrating in the vernacular.

I bothers me terribly that folks think they need to censor books or documents written at a time when our customs and mores were different. By doing this we are losing a sense of history. It's a shame.

Like those who want to censor
Stephen fosters songs. A shame.

About slavery and trying to forget it happened. It didn't. We need to remember it so it won't happen again. But we don't need to censor it. We don't need to change the accounts written during that time. We need to read exactly how those involved discussed it. I've been reading some diaries of those during the civil war from the south and from the north. Reading how southern monied folk talked about their "servants" .
As for those folks who are descendants of slaves, they should not be embarrassed or forgetful of that experience. They should, instead, embrace it. To endure that part of history is a great achievement. I applaud them. That's how I personally look upon a person of descent from slavery. I don't look with disdain but with reverence.

I was reading about Kareem Abdul Jabar recently. I remember when he changed it from Lewis Alcinder after he became a pro in the NBA. He had researched his family true to find that they were slaves under a man named Alcinder. Thus his name. So , of course, he might want to change it.

Dave