Banned Book Week celebrates 30 years of saying "no" to censorship and honoring the freedom to read. The books featured on the banned book lists have been been the target of removal or restrictions in schools and libraries across the country. Here is a list of banned and challenged classic books, including many of SBW's favorites.
Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning, The Color Purple, was banned for "troubling ideas about race relations, man's relationship to God, African history, and human sexuality." The Color Purple tells the story of young black women in the south who struggle for empowerment after facing lives of physical and sexual abuse.
In 1994, parents in Yakima, WA led an unsuccessful challenge to Ralph Ellison's, The Invisible Man. They were concerned about the use of profanity and images of violence and sexuality used in the novel about an unnamed black man who considers himself socially invisible.
Kate Chopin's, The Awakening, was published in 1899 and caused so much disturbance to critics and the public that it was banned for many decades afterwards. The Awakening features a protagonist who struggled with established gender roles and female sexual identity.
To Kill a Mocking Bird is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Harper Lee about racial injustice and the loss of innocence. It was banned for using the words "damn" and "whore lady." In 1981, three black parents in Warren, IN resigned from the township human relations advisory counsel after unsuccessfully trying to ban To Kill a Mockingbird. They believe the book causes "psychological damage to the positive integration process" and that it "represents institutionalized racism under the guise of good literature."
Do any of your favorites make the list?
