lanovami This space for rent
Registered: 05/02/05
Posts: 7405
Loc: 東京都
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.
_________________________ We are what we repeatedly do - Aristotle
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.
MrB
I invented modding!
Registered: 08/28/03
Posts: 9722
Loc: SE Kansas
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
_________________________
If we don't count our blessings We are just wasting our time
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.
MrB
I invented modding!
Registered: 08/28/03
Posts: 9722
Loc: SE Kansas
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
_________________________
If we don't count our blessings We are just wasting our time