Why I love banned books
Morning Sentinel
September 24, 2006
By Mary Anne Libby

All my life I have read banned books and books that have been challenged, but which didn't measure up to full banning potential. The FBI please note: this has all been quite unintentional, and if you check my records at libraries and bookstores you will find plenty of respectable books (Blueberries for Sal comes to mind) interspersed with the subversive ones. And readers, please note: Virtually all the books I mention in this essay have either been banned or at least challenged.

My parents started me on subversive lit. You can't grow up in a Catholic household without someone shoving the Bible in your face. Repeatedly. My mother displayed our large Bible, open to the Book of Matthew, during Christmas season. That Matthew was a good writer. Lots of plot, great character development. The Bible has been banned and burned in places too numerous to list. Ditto the Koran. And pretty much any other holy book you could name.

Those high school English teachers are a bad lot. Sister Bernadette assigned us Shakespeare. We even listened to performances on records. This was heady stuff. Who knew Macbeth was so controversial?

Sister Jean had us translating Kafka. It was abridged versions of his work, but still. I believed rumors that she had been in the military. A mousy 9th grader was not about to challenge her formidable foreign language teacher over a challenged author, surely you can see.

Let's not talk about Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," one of our most challenged books. Even my generally tolerant mother wondered if perhaps the good sisters had gone too far. In senior year, it was Ellison's Invisible Man. "Really," it wasn't my fault. You've got to watch those nuns.

I took an entire course on Twain and Faulkner in college. What can I say? I was young, maybe a little reckless. Really I've only read Huck Finn so often because it has been assigned reading. Well okay, the first time was for my own enjoyment. But beyond that, I'm blameless.

Quite innocently, I read aloud Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen" to my children. And then I pressed a copy of L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" into their hands, and O'Hara's "My Friend Flicka!" What was I thinking?

Lately I have re-read a few books from my youth, to test their power or relevance. It turns out that Orwell's 1984 and Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" are eerily current and still make me distinctly uncomfortable. Maybe that's why they made the list of most frequently banned books -- they can so easily disturb our sense of security. Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" (also listed) still manages to buoy me up, though. Teachers use this book to illustrate moral courage, an idea which may indeed incite some folks to book burning and banning. Given my history of trust in English teachers, I guess I'll keep "Mockingbird" on my shelf.

Morrison's "Beloved" is being made into an opera, so it can't be all bad, right? It reflects a pretty grisly piece of our history, so maybe that's why it was banned in the 90s. I can't help myself.

I'm not alone. I met a fellow at a potluck who said one of his current favorite books is "Moby Dick." Maybe he just doesn't know any better.

Many authors, all sorts of books, have been influential -- even essential -- in my family's life. I lose track of what titles and authors have been banned or challenged.

Some of our most treasured titles are also those what have been taken out of someone's hands, removed from shelves of someone's library, burned -- heaven help us -- at a public event.

It behooves us to remember that, to some within our communities, bookshelves appear to be chock-full of danger. A simple light read like Harry Potter titles (book burning, Pennsylvania, 2001; book "cutting," Maine, 2001), or Da Vinci Code (condemned by many churches), can become the center of much strife within a community. Something as lasting and treasured as old Bill's "Twelfth Night" can make us uncomfortable enough to proclaim it bad for us and for everyone around us. Book banning happens because of fear, but banning books lets us hide from the tough ideas and thorny questions which might ultimately push us past that fear.

To honor my mom, the Book of Matthew still figures in our Advent preparations, and I keep a small Bible in her memory. The most recent Bible burning in the U.S. In 2003. As far as I know.

Read books, banned or otherwise. Read for pleasure and for information and the beauty of language and read for the ideas -- unsettling as they might be -- because therein you may find truth and knowledge. Don't be afraid.

Mary Anne Libby is a mother and librarian who lives in Mt. Vernon. Banned Books Week runs from Sept. 23-30. For more information, see http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm