Monday, September 22, 2014

In America, we must remain free to decide what to read


Banned Books Week is upon us once again. The forces of censorship never give up the fight, which is why the rest of us must remain vigilant as well.

Each year, the American Library Association records hundreds of attempts to have books removed from libraries' shelves and from classrooms, sometimes including classics and masterpieces. Over the years, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts in the United States. Here they are:

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald


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

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
 

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
 

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
 

Ulysses, by James Joyce
 

Beloved, by Toni Morrison
 

The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
 

1984, by George Orwell
 

Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov
 

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
 

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
 

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
 

Animal Farm, by George Orwell
 

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
 

As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
 

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
 

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
 

Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
 

Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
 

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
 

Native Son, by Richard Wright
 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
 

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
 

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
 

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
 

Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
 

All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
 

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
 

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
 

Lady Chatterley's Lover, by D.H. Lawrence
 

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
 

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
 

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
 

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
 

Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
 

Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence
 

Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
 

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
 

Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
 

Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
 

Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
 

The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
 

Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
 

An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
 

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike

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