Bookworm Adventures: Banned Books Week

September 24 to October 1 is Banned Books Week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment. Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.

Intellectual freedom—the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular—provides the foundation for Banned Books Week.  BBW stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints for all who wish to read and access them.

As a devout reader, Banned Books Week caught my attention. The 2011 BBW is already on its 30th year, and there are a lot of familiar titles on their list, primarily there due to issues on sex, profanity, and racism. However, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan said, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” I sure do hope that Philippine legislators/public officials and religious leaders think the same way. Just sayin’.

Here are some of the titles included in the 2010 to 2011 list:

Burroughs, Augusten. Running with Scissors. (St. Martin) – Challenged as a suggested reading in a class where juniors and seniors earn college credit in Hillsborough County, Fla. (2010). Four high schools — Plant, Middleton, Hillsborough, and Bloomingdale — voted to keep the book and place a “Mature Reader” label on the front cover. Three high schools — Sickles, Robinson, and Lennard — will require parental consent. Gaither High School and Riverview High School voted to ban the book. Riverview’s report stated: “This book has extremely inappropriate content for a high school media center collection. The book contained explicit homosexual and heterosexual situations, profanity, underage drinking and smoking, extreme moral shortcomings, child molesters, graphic pedophile situations and total lack of negative consequences throughout the book.”

Frank, Anne. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. (Doubleday) –
Challenged at the Culpeper County, Va. public schools (2010) by a parent requesting that her daughter not be required to read the book aloud. Initially, it was reported that officials decided to stop assigning a version of Anne Frank’s diary, one of the most enduring symbols of the atrocities of the Nazi regime, due to the complaint that the book includes sexual material and homosexual themes. The director of instruction announced the edition published on the fiftieth anniversary of Frank’s death in a concentration camp will not be used in the future despite the fact the school system did not follow its own policy for handling complaints. The remarks set off a hailstorm of criticism online and brought international attention to the 7,600-student school system in rural Virginia. The superintendent said, however, that the book will remain a part of English classes, although it may be taught at a different grade level.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. (Houghton) -- Challenged in the Richland, Wash. School District (2010). Used in a tenth-grade honors language arts class at Hanford High, the book tells the story of Oskar Schell, a young boy whose father died in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The book contains profanity, sex, and descriptions of violence.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. (Scholastic) -- Challenged and presented to the Goffstown, N.H. school board (2010) by a parent claiming that it gave her eleven-year-old nightmares and could numb other students to the effects of violence.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. (Doubleday) -- Removed from the Lake Feton, Mich. summer reading program (2010) after parents complained about its "foul language." The book is about an autistic child who investigates the death of a neighborhood dog. It was a joint winner of the 2004 Boeke Prize and won the 2003 Whitbread Book of the Year award.

Salinger, J.D.  The Cathcer in the Rye. (Bantam; Little, Brown) -- Challenged, but retained, in the Martin County Fla. School District (2010) despite a parent's concern about inappropriate language.

(source)

I’ve frequented libraries during the entirety of my grade school, high school, and undergraduate education. I can’t say I have encountered issues as to banned books, since most of the time, the unavailability of books itself is the problem. And in a country like the Philippines, most people do not consider book reading as a hobby, especially if there’s not enough money to put food on the table.

We can’t challenge ideas, since we are unaware as a nation most of the time. Yes, the literacy rate in the Philippines is beyond 90 per cent. Still, there is a shortage of stimulating ideas in the society such that when presented with ideas out of the norm, the reaction of people is mainly influenced by the conservative harness of the Catholic church or the capitalist hitches of local media. Take Mideo Cruz and James Soriano as examples. And yes, I say we can’t challenge ideas as opposed to we don’t, since the capacity is seemingly lost due to a mixture of an education system crisis, and the poverty of our nation. It seems like no one could afford to feed the mind nowadays, with all those grumbling stomachs malnourished and empty.

With all the rage as to “freedom of expression” (thanks to technological advancement), I sure do hope that reading and the influx of ideas continue as a revolution.

Oh, and by the way:

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Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of American Publishers; and the National Association of College Stores. It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. In 2011, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; National Coalition Against Censorship; National Council of Teachers of English; and PEN American Center also signed on as sponsors.

For more information on getting involved with Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, please see Calendar of Events, Ideas and Resources, and the newBanned Books Week site. You can also contact the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedomat 1-800-545-2433, ext. 4220, or bbw@ala.org. (source)