Burn and Turn: Censored and Challenged Books/BB Week #1

22 Sep 2012

Burn and Turn: Censored and Challenged Books/BB Week #1

What have To Kill A Mockingbird, The Awakening, Huckleberry Finn, and The Hunger Games all have in common? Easy. Besides making the bestsellers list, they have also made the banned books list. And let’s pause this opening for a bit of clarification. Banned Book Week is actually misleading, since books aren’t technically banned anymore–they are challenged, since we all have, at least in the US of A, the ability to procure what we want to read.

Banned Book Week is the annual emphasis that occurs during the last week of September, and serves as a reminder how society, during given points and times in history, get tweaked about what is available to read. However, it is not only in the United States that books have created ire in the powers of say so. Read Tweak happens around the world. For instance:

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: Used to be banned in the province of Hunan, China, beginning in 1931 for its portrayal of anthropomorphized animals acting on the same level of complexity as human beings. The censor General Ho Chien believed that attributing human language to animals was an insult to humans. He feared that the book would teach children to regard humans and animals on the same level, which would be “disastrous.”

Then again sometimes banning is not good enough–let’s just burn the bugger and totally purge society’s ability for intellectual discernment. Burned books would include:

Ulysses, by James Joyce–Burned in the U.S. (1918)
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck—Burned by the East St. Louis, IL Public Library (1939)
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway–Burned in Nazi bonfires in Germany (1933)
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut–Burned in Drake, ND (1973)

Although there haven’t been any recent burnings, Ray Bradbury (rest in peace, Ray, you are missed) foresaw a day when all books would be burned. Not because of poisoned opinion, offended sensibilities, or societal outrage–no, Ray thought books would be burned due to lack of interest. Intellectual thought via the printed page would be overridden by the quest of Jello entertainment(that ubiquitous substance which has form but no true nutrition and is quite similar to most television programming). In the near future Bradbury believed it would be illegal to own or read books so the government created a mockery out the fireman and had him burn books instead of saving that which would burn. The paradox is stunningly brilliant, which is why Bradbury and his insights will be missed.

The book I refer to is, of course, Fahrenheit 451. The delicious and sad irony is that F451 was censored for its language in order for school districts to allow it on reading lists.

This week I will be posting views, trivia, and insights about banning, censoring, and challenging intellectual matter, because it does matter.

Banned Book Week. Read a book and challenge your brain.

Ray Bradbury (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Banned Books (presurfer.blogspot.com)
Banned Books Week: Celebrate your freedom to read (robbinslibrary.wordpress.com)
Banned Book Week Needs You! Looking for Host Blogs to Celebrate With Me! (bookjourney.wordpress.com)
Banned books week 2012 (moosenoose.com)
Banned (wordsmithsix.wordpress.com)

Posted in Books, creativity, education, Reading, reviews, Uncategorized and tagged American Library Association, Banned Book Week, Hunger Games, John Steinbeck, Literature, Ray Bradbury, To Kill A Mockingbird

10 thoughts on “Burn and Turn: Censored and Challenged Books/BB Week #1”

yawriterinthemaking on September 23, 2012 at 1:27 am said:

Banned Book Week is next week right?

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- cricketmuse on September 23, 2012 at 5:37 am said:
  
  I believe it starts the 30th and runs through the 6th, but many libraries have begun their activities and events already.
  
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Elise on September 23, 2012 at 1:34 am said:

I read a banned book this week! Its title? The
Holy Bible. No book should ever be banned.

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- cricketmuse on September 23, 2012 at 5:42 am said:
  
  The will always challenge readers-a good thing, I’d say.
  
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- . on September 23, 2012 at 6:33 am said:
  
  Ha, so true — and still banned in North-Korea and Myanmar. You go to jail when they discover the book in your home… Thanks for mentioning!
  
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belljargirl on September 24, 2012 at 1:07 am said:

Great post! I think it was The Times newspaper (in the UK) that did a banned books series a few years ago. You could collect special Times ‘banned books series’ copies of 20 banned books. I wasn’t aware of it at the time – I just bought one of these copies of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ from eBay – but I thought it was a great idea! Anyway what I was going to say was that I read the first couple of paragraphs of this post and started thinking about Bradbury and then was like “oh, she’s mentioning Bradbury, yayy”. 😛 Great book and fantastic vision from Bradbury. It’s definitely one of the books that has stayed with me most.

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- cricketmusecricketmuse on September 24, 2012 at 2:51 am said:
  
  Thanks for the reply. I think banned books really hit a nerve due to the idea of being told “no.” I’m always surprised which books end up on the list.
  
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Samir on September 24, 2012 at 9:11 am said:

Cool post 🙂

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- cricketmuse on September 24, 2012 at 12:38 pm said:
  
  Thanks! I hope to add a post every other day during BB week
  
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Sheila BookJourney on September 25, 2012 at 9:21 pm said:

Awesome! Thanks for linking my banned book post and fun week coming up – I cant wait, I get to read some really good books 😉

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