Do you have a favorite or two on the list? What was the last challenged book you read? Please speak up about the challenged books that speak to you. Doing so is easy:

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Cuppa Joad has been celebrating all month long. We hope you’ll participate in Banned Books Week by sharing your comments—and by reading one of the referenced books too, of course!

We also hope you’ve enjoyed Cuppa Joad so far this September. Read our past challenged-books posts, and discover three books below by American literary legends that share surprising histories in censorship:

• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck: Generally cited for “vulgar language,” this American classic (which inspired the name of our blog) has been burned, banned, and challenged since its publication. The first incident was a burning by the St. Louis public library, and more recently it was challenged as questionable material in California as a reading resource for an eleventh-grade literature class.
• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner: This classic Southern novel was banned by a school district in Kentucky in 1986 for “offensive and obscene passages referring to abortion” and on the grounds that it “uses God’s name in vain.” No members of the school board had read the novel.
• Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman: It wasn’t exactly last week, but did you know that in 1881 the Boston District Attorney demanded expurgation of this American classic and threatened criminal prosecution unless this demand was met? According to the prosecutor, the volume of poetry was in need of a few “fig leaves.”

Pilgrim, the anti-hero, intermittently suffers and survives the atrocities of World War II (specifically the Allied fire bombings of Dresden, which killed more people than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima), gets abducted by telepathic aliens, and meanders his way through his physical, grounded life in a state of nonchalance and malaise. This novel hits the mark for fans of satire and proponents of peace.

Listed by the American Library Association as one of the most-challenged books of the 1990s, Slaughterhouse-Five has been cited for “containing foul language [and] promoting deviant sexual behavior,” called “vulgar and offensive,” and considered “dangerous” because of violent, irreverent, profane, and sexually explicit content. It is absurd, of course, to imagine a war in which soldiers don’t curse or a world devoid of sexuality. What censors don’t realize, sadly, is that this book centers on the human condition, hope, and the possibility for change.

“I tried to give a sense of proportion to life in the South,” said Lee in one of the few interviews she has given since the novel’s publication. “I think that Southerners react with the same kind of horror as other people do about the injustice in their land.” (You can find this interview and much more on To Kill a Mockingbird & Harper Lee, the comprehensive Web site of an admirer.)

It’s a testament to the power of Lee’s work and to the accuracy of the social mirror that she provides that To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most frequently challenged and sometimes banned books of the twentieth century. In school districts across the United States, parents and administrators have challenged the propriety of requiring students to read a work that includes profanity, racial slurs, rape, and racism. At times, the challenges have been successful. But, most often, the novel remains on library shelves and on class curricula as an important reflection of American life and history.

The first full-length biography of Harper Lee, by the way, was published in May, 2006. Biographer Charles J. Shields “has done an admirable job of getting to know Nelle Harper Lee from a distance,” writes Anita Beaman for The Hub. “Due to Lee’s desire for privacy, it’s as close as readers are likely to come to getting inside the mind of the author of one of the greatest books of the twentieth century.” Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee has already been nominated for a Quill Book Award.

The irony is that these three books are thought-provoking, well-written, and forceful. The reading of such books should be encouraged, precisely because realistic and alternative viewpoints and slices of life are presented. However, these books—the best in young adult literature—are confined, restricted, and removed while badly written and unimaginative books are left on the shelves.

The Giver, pseudo–science fiction in which a young man, Jonas, is selected by his community to be a Receiver of Memory, is thoughtfully penned by Lois Lowry. In a society that neither feels nor sees deeply beyond the surface, Jonas stands alone to learn, realize, and judge as taught by The Giver. He, and the reader in tandem with him, are appalled by what he learns of his perfect life. The author presents euthanasia, infanticide, and sexual awakening with calm, clear, and bold strokes. The discussion of such topics in this book came under scrutiny and, as such, the book was challenged. In a cross between Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Match Girl, the issue of morality, as weighed against acceptability in society, is presented. It is a powerful story and one for the thinking reader to discover.

In contrast, A Day No Pigs Would Die presents the life of a Shaker farm boy on the edge of adulthood. Robert Newton Peck opens the book with the graphic, no-holds-barred description of the birth of a calf. For this and other like descriptions, including that of a boar mounting a sow, the book earned challenges and its suitability to curricula was questioned. In truth, farm life is difficult and, as the author makes clear, poverty in farm life is very difficult. This book is a brutal, honest look at life, death, and the breeding and birthing of animals—with familiar and distinct discussion and abrupt clarity. It is indeed what happens on a farm. The author describes this kind of existence, and the emotions of a young boy coming to grips with that life, very well. There are no euphemisms here—just plain talk, and a rather bleak outlook.

The Chocolate War, an ugly and violent slice of high-school life finely and realistically presented by Robert Cormier, has been both challenged and banned on numerous occasions. Included in this book are episodes of masturbation, rough language, and an ending that culminates in a vividly described beating—all of which are integral and in keeping with the book’s theme of integrity as a stance against evil. The Chocolate War centers around a school’s endorsement and sponsorship of chocolates and the policies enforced by a secretive, power-hungry society of students. The protagonist, Jerry Renault, refuses to sell chocolates and, consequently, stands alone and defenseless—trapped between a sadistic instructor and the equally twisted leader of the secret society. Objections to the book were voiced regarding its negative outlook and even bleaker finish. The book may be pessimistic but, again, there are no punches pulled. Robert Cormier calls it straight and plain, and illustrates, much as we would like to believe otherwise, that sometimes integrity doesn’t prevail.

All three books show merit. All three are finely written. Far from being banned or challenged for removal, they should be read for their content and views by those in junior high school, high school, and beyond. They are provocative classics in the best sense of the word.

Throughout September, we will periodically feature posts relating to banned and challenged books—from reviews to news stories to lists of censored books. We hope you will join us in our month-long celebration of free speech.

According to the ALA, It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health topped the list of 2005’s most challenged books. The ALA explains that Robie H. Harris’s book about the changes teens experience during puberty was challenged due to “homosexuality, nudity, sex education, religious viewpoint, abortion, and being unsuited to age group.”

The ALA’s list of The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000 contains contemporary titles similar to It’s Perfectly Normal, but it’s also packed with many classics. The following are just a few of our favorites, including the reasons they have been banned in the past:

• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley: This classic has been accused of being anti-family and anti-Christian, and has been challenged due to “language and moral content.” It faced a challenge in California in 1993 on the grounds that it is “centered around negative activity.”
• The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger: This legendary novel depicting a teenager’s nervous breakdown has been repeatedly banned and challenged for reasons such as “profanity,” “sexual references,” and the charge that it “undermines morality.” The novel has also been cited as blasphemous and, as recently as 1983, “the book’s contents” were cited as justification to ban the book.
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou: This autobiographical novel dealing with incest has been consistently challenged for containing profanity and pornographic language. The novel was accused by a Texas school of containing “gross evils.”

Return to Cuppa Joad throughout September as we highlight other books like these.

For more information, we recommend reading the ALA’s detailed and enlightening Challenged and Banned Books page.