Here’s a list of frequently challenged books in 1990-2000 by authors of color. Names of the writers whose books have been banned in the past decade: Isabel Allende, Rudolfo Anaya, Maya Angelou, Mark Mathabane, Toni Morrison, Walter D. Myers, Luis Rodriquez, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright. Here’s the Top 100 list of books banned or challenged in general. This provides a nutshell summary of book banning in the West. In 2007, Walker’s The Color Purple, Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and even my personal favorite, Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower were all challenged as inappropriate reading material for high school students.
The Asian Diaspora has been firmly rooted in the West for centuries. And yet not a single APA writer appears on any of the aformentioned listings of banned books. No one is going to ban Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, David Henry Hwang, Gish Jen, Chang-rae Lee, or the new arrival Min Jin Lee. If put to the task, I’d figure Alexander Chee
If political change is what you’re after, the first thing you need to get done is have a book written by an APA writer be banned in schools. Until we’ve been banned by high schoools across middle America, we haven’t really made our mark yet in American letters.
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8 Comments to “When Will They Ban a Book by an APA Writer?”
Nasheed wrote:
Thank you very much, Akrypti, for your VERY INFORMATIVE article on books challenged or banned by the American Library Association. When I viewed the list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000 I was APPALLED to find the list full of contemporary literary classics. Many schools and/or school libraries thought that the following books were inappropriate for their readers (for one reason or another):
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
- Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
…and on and on.
I don’t even know how to best express how much I was taken aback by many of the books on that list. “James and the Giant Peach” is a book I used to read to my after-school school-age day care class of third and forth graders years ago. I don’t recall one thing about that book that anyone would consider “objectionable” material.
During the fall and winter of 2005-2006, I spent a great deal of time in the public libraries in NYC. I read all six books of Maya Angelou’s autobiography (starting with “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”).
Mark Twain! Toni Morrison! Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”! “To Kill a Mockingbird”!
“Kaffir Boy” is a book by a South African writer that was widely credited with exposing the growing pains the author had to deal with growing up under apartheid as a human rights issue.
…I’m not usually at a loss for words (ask anyone who knows me – even limited to my e-friends), but the content of your article provided me with a real eye-opener.
Are Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston actually considered largely unknown writers? I’ve been familiar with their names (and books) for about twenty years now. Maxine Hong Kingston has had a book on the New York Times bestseller list, for God’s sake.
I feel like I’m starting to ramble. Thanks again for your article.
A big thanks to Efren for turning me on to 8asians!
Posted on 28-May-08 at 10:43 pm | Permalink
Grace Chu wrote:
Um, the “Harry Potter” series got more complaints than “The New Joy of Gay Sex.”
Awesome. Awesome.
Posted on 29-May-08 at 1:32 pm | Permalink
Akrypti wrote:
A few of my extreme-Christian relatives banned their children from reading Harry Potter.
And to think in high school, my parents let me read Kafka, Nabokov and Camus.
Posted on 29-May-08 at 1:52 pm | Permalink
Akrypti wrote:
Nasheed:
An explanation for why James and the Giant Peach triggered controversy in some small towns: http://www.bookslut.com/banned_bookslut/2003_12_001147.php
Quoting from Bookslut:
“Dahl’s morbidly off-kilter tone made him a unique voice in kidlit from the day James and the Giant Peach was first published in 1961. He also paved the way for such authors as Lemony Snicket and J.K. Rowling, whose respective works are clearly informed by his macabre children’s novels.
“Like Rowling, a few of Dahl’s books have been targeted for using magic and witchcraft as its theme. In the case of James and the Giant Peach, a challenge was brought to the school advisory council in Indian River County, Florida, because of the story’s mystical element: magic crocodile tongues given to James by a mysterious old man serve as fertilizer to his aunts’ decrepit peach tree.
“Some of the challenges are peculiar, to say the least. The Times of London reported that James and the Giant Peach was once banned in a Wisconsin town because a reference to Spider licking her lips could be “taken in two ways, including sexual.”
“Meanwhile, during a discussion of free speech, Chris Champion, the marketing director of Thackery’s Bookstore in Toledo, Ohio, attested that the book had also been banned for advocating communism.
“Other challenges to James and the Giant Peach are a bit more conventional. The use of the word “ass” led to a 1991 challenge in Altoona, Wisconsin. One year later, a woman in Hernando County, Florida, took issue with Grasshopper’s statement, “I’d rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican!”, as well as references to snuff, tobacco and whiskey. Her complaints to her 10-year-old daughter’s school principal led to review by the regional school board.
“The details of James’s nasty living conditions, as well as the aforementioned deaths of Sponge and Spiker, have been criticized for too scary. In fact, it was pulled from an elementary school in Charlotte Harbor, Florida, for being inappropriate reading for children.
“It also was removed from Stafford County, Virgina, schools for encouraging children to disobey adults. That the adults in question are abusive seems to have been a bit besides the point.”
Either I read that book when I was way too young to understand the concept of nuance, but everything mentioned here went right over my 9-year-old head. I don’t recall ANY of this stuff being in the book!!
Posted on 29-May-08 at 1:59 pm | Permalink
jozjozjoz wrote:
Whenever Akrypti publishes her first book, I’m going to read it, promote it, and simultaneously try to get it banned.
Posted on 29-May-08 at 2:01 pm | Permalink
Ernie wrote:
Joz: Ooooh, good call. Akyrpti, I say you write a short story – any short story about anything at all – and just name it “The Joy of Gay Sex” anyway. That would rule.
Posted on 29-May-08 at 2:14 pm | Permalink
Akrypti wrote:
Ernie,
You know what I should do? I should write a 20,000-word novella about two inanimate objects that get shuffled around, first put on top of each other, then side by side, then separated to two different rooms, then brought back together side by side at the end. I will title the novella “The Joy of Gay Sex.”
The evangelical Christian community will ban it for references to homosexuality. The LGBT community will ban it for implications that gays are like inanimate objects. Everybody will hate the novella.
And one object will be white and the other object will be yellow. And that will get even more people to hate on it. Oh. There might also be a philosophical debate over free choice and fatalism.
Then I will look up at everybody with innocent liquidy eyes and say meekly, “But I was just writing about two inanimate objects caught in the spacetime continuum.”
Posted on 29-May-08 at 2:30 pm | Permalink
KG Lew wrote:
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
^^ this book I loved… what a classic
Posted on 06-Aug-08 at 4:17 pm | Permalink
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