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June 4, 2010
The Freedom to Read. The Freedom to Write.
My daughter recently went on a trip to the Midwest with my mother and encountered some pretty narrow thinking. She came home and said, “Mommy, I’m glad you’re raising us in a place where I know all kinds of people and how good they are.” She has friends who are of every racial group. She has friends who have two mommies and friends who have two daddies. One of her best buddies is Jewish, another is Presbyterian. We attend a Methodist church and I sometimes read her tarot cards for her. She reads voraciously, yet I do manage a little what she reads by allowing her to read controversial stuff and then talking with her about what she’s read. If a book is questionable, we read it together and then discuss it. I’m against censorship. I don’t understand how someone’s moral core can cause them to think that they have the right to say what can or can’t be put into the world. Censorship hurts artists and it kills the artistic process. Is everything ever composed, written, painted, or photographed appropriate for every audience? No, of course not. But no one has the right to say that something should not exist or not be allowed to come to fruition because it rubs the wrong way against a morality belonging to a select group.
Neil Gaiman has a great letter from a librarian on his blog and it’s worth reading.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/02/last-last-word.html
Some books you may not have realized were censored:
Aesop. Fables.
Anonymous. Go Ask Alice.
Boccacio. The Decameron
Boston Women’s Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Brothers Grimm. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Canterbury Tales
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness
Cervantes. Don Quixote.
Cinderella
Dante. The Divine Comedy.
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Eliot, George. Adam Bede.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner.
Fielding, Henry. Tom Jones.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby.
Frank, Anne. Diary of Anne Frank.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Sorrows of Young Werther.
Hanford, Martin. Where’s Waldo?
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Homer. The Odyssey.
Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables.
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World.
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon.
King, Stephen. Carrie.
L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time.
Lawrence, Margaret. A Jest of God.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Diviners.
Lawrence, Margaret. The Stone Angel.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Lewis, C.S. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
Little Red Riding Hood.
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D’Arthur.
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.
Miller, Jim, ed. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll.
Molière. Tartuffe.
Munro, Alice. Lives of Girls and Women.
Orwell, George. 1984.
Orwell, George. Animal Farm.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Rumpelstiltskin.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Sanders, Lawrence. The Seduction of Peter S.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear.
Shakespeare, William. Othello.
Shakespeare, William. Richard II.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night.
Speare, Elizabeth George. The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men.
Suzuki, D. T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels.
Thoreau, Henry James. Civil Disobedience.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit.
Tolkien, J. R. R. Lord of the Rings.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Voltaire. Candide.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House In the Big Woods.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House On The Prairie.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. On The Banks of Plum Creek.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie.
As an English major I’ve actually read every single book on this list. And I’m proud of that.
If you care about censorship and want to take a stand, please visit:
http://www.internationalpen.org.uk/
Why am I writing about censorship today? Because until today I was part of a blog group of romance writers. I’ve just tendered my resignation because a post I wrote was read in draft form and found to conflict with the moral sensibilities of some of the other writers. The blog group had everyone from writers of erotica to inspirational writers. For those unfamiliar with what “inspirational” means – that refers to books that are in the romance genre, but that are sweeter, more innocent, and of a bent to be more acceptable to those of a religious nature. I support the rights of those writers to speak about religious topics, but apparently the support of divergent view points is not a two-way street.
My post – the one that was questioned by the group and suggested had the possibility to do one or all of the following:
A) Ruin careers
B) Keep people from being published
C) Be used as ammunition should one of the other blog members ever be sued for sexual harassment
D) Cause us to be labeled as man-haters
E) Lose the religious audience
F) Shame other members in front of their families
Well, it will appear in this space next Monday. I would welcome you to see for yourself if my post had the power to do any of the above.
Welcome to the club! Can’t wait to see your story and what all brouhaha got brewed.
I think it will be surprising. I could be wrong, really.
It was a wonderful piece, really witty. I’m sorry it went down like it did. I really enjoyed reading your posts. I’ll just have to come here…which means you’re going to have to blog at least once a month!
“Boston Women’s Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Best book ever. I have original and revised versions. I will let my daughters read it.
We should know what is forbidden. Then the forbidden isn’t desired, but understood. I think I just made that up, but you can quote me.
I love the Boston Women’s Health Collective. I have the same versions you do! Best operating instructions ever. Saved me much misery as a woman.