Think for yourself! Read Banned Books!
These books have been targeted for removal from school curricula or library shelves, condemned in churches, rejected by publishers or chal lenged in court. Many are classics of world literature.
Suppressed on Political Grounds |
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All Quiet on the Western Front |
War story published in Germany, it was regarded as slanderous to ideals of home and fatherland and was banned in 1930 by the National Socialists. A Book of the Month selection in the US , it was relieved of “words and sentences too robust for our American edition,” but it was banned in Boston nevertheless |
| Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (1955) |
Set in a Georgia plantation and a prison for captured Yankees, this Civil War story has been repeatedly challenged by parents of high school students because of obscene language, its political ideas and the author’s citing by the House Un-American Activities Committee. |
Grapes of Wrath |
This account of the Great Depression in Oklahoma and California has been attacked since its publication for indecency, obscenity, vulgarity, and for “falsely implying that many of our fine people are a low, ignorant, profane and blasphemous type...” |
The Rights of Man |
What seems like a basic and accepted part of our political beliefs, this publication stirred charges of seditious libel and Paine was eventually put on trial. Rights of Man was regularly seized and burned and Paine became an outcast in America, England & France and died in obscurity. |
Suppressed on Religious Grounds |
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Children of the Alley |
History of an imaginary Cairo Alley retells in allegorical form the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. Fundamentalist Muslims have objected relentlessly for three decades to the book, even after its banning was officially ended. In 1994, Mahfouz was stabbed by Islamic militants. |
Guide of the Perplexed |
The Guide attempts to reconcile the letter of Jewish law with discoveries of natural science and philosophy. After Maimonides’ death in 1204, Orthodox Jewish scholars objected to his work; Greek philosophy and secular rationality were condemned as heresy. The work still faced bans as late as the 19 th century. |
| Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis (1953) |
Retells the life story of Jesus of Nazareth using the setting and language of peasant life on Crete. Lifting Jesus out of the church to portray him as part of everyday 20th century life led to the author’s excommunication from the Eastern Orthodox Church. On the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden Books, this has also been the target of right wing groups, as was the Scorsese movie version. |
Suppressed on Sexual Grounds |
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Bluest Eye |
Sad and tragic novel about the abuse and destruction of a young African American girl. Challenged in several school districts because rape and other sexual encounters are described. |
The Group |
Eight women, Vassar alumnae, class of 1933 share their lives from graduation to the death of one of them. Sexual situations and graphic descriptions of affairs were criticized here and in Ireland and New Zealand. In 1970 the President’s Committee on Obscenity and Pornography labeled certain passages “disgusting.” |
| Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955) |
Humbert is a middle-aged lover of 12-year-old Lolita: the story is written as a psychiatric case study. From the first, this has been denounced as “filth” and “sheer unrestrained pornography.” It has been banned around the world. |
Suppressed on Social Grounds |
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Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791) |
Honest and lusty account covers his rise from youth in poverty to international diplomat. This is one of the most frequently expurgated books ever published in America – censored from its first publication for frank references to sex and other bodily functions. |
Black Like Me |
Caucasian social scientist darkens his skin, shaves his head and assumes the life of African-American in the Deep South in 1959. Obscene and vulgar language has been the basis for attacks against this book, which has been called “integration-centered and unsuitable.” |
| Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (1971) |
Fictionalized account based on the actual diary of a 15-year-old, middle class drug user. Consistently banned from school curricula because of gross language, and graphic description of drug use and sexual conduct. |
| Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855) |
Twelve poems celebrate the common man in a sensuous manner uniting the physical with the spiritual life. Accustomed to books by and about the intellectual elite, readers regarded the work as immoral. Banned informally in the United States, the work was neither advertised nor suggested by booksellers. English editions were published with half the text omitted. |
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Marta Campbell, Head of Collection Management |  |
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| Tel: 203-291-4842 | E-mail: mcampbell@westportlibrary.org | |||
Last updated 9/30/05
dcelia@westportlibrary.org