As a teacher and a writer, my life-long love affair with words is undeniable. But I don't just love words for their fancy dancing on the page. I love them for their point and purpose as the beautiful wrapping around ideas. Be they brown paper packages tied up in strings or the most ornately decorated hatbox wrappings that Pinterest can inspire - what they hold matters.
And what they hold is, well. Everything.
This week, bibliophiles across America will celebrate Banned Books Week by taking a long look at the books that have been banned or challenged across the United States, scratching their heads, and wondering why. To be on the list, someone must take some sort of citizen action with a library to have the book removed from the shelves. This year, Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian took second place to Captain Underpants. The Banned Books Week website provided a handy list called Banned Books that Shaped the World to show us the most historically challenged books that have had the greatest influence on our nation.
It includes some of my favorites and they all have something in common - these books threaten and challenge some of our most basic assumptions about the world and the people in it. They make us think. They make us hurt. They change us in some lovely, difficult way. Or, you know, like Captain Underpants, they're full of fart jokes. That's cool too. Or, like Fifty Shades of Grey, they're knockoff fanfic disguised as BDSM that took the world by storm long after The Story of O came along. That's less cool, but whatever. We all have our opinions, right?
For me, I guess, if a book inspires such a visceral reaction in someone that they would beat down the doors of their library and complain or start a letter campaign to have those words hidden from the public - there is something worth exploring in that book, some idea important enough to hold in my hands and mind long enough to find some value there.
Me, I'm off to the library to find The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian and And Tango Makes Three.
What banned book will you read this week?
I specifically started to read Kurt Vonnegut in college just because of the hubbub around Slaughterhouse V. Same with Satanic Verses. Neither of those books is my favorite by those authors, but I would have never paid any attention if they hadn't been challenged. I <3 banned books week!
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