The Bible and the Quran. J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye." James Joyce's "Ulysses." Various works by Shakespeare, including "Twelfth Night," "Hamlet" and "King Lear." "Gone with the Wind," "Tom Sawyer" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Most probably know where we're going with this. They are just some of thousands of books over the years that have run afoul of self-proclaimed moralists and have ended up on banned lists.
Last week was Banned Books Week, an annual observation for the past 27 years at the end of September to raise awareness about censorship and restricted speech.
But it is not something that should be marked just one week through the year; it is an issue we should be vigilant about 365 days a year. And in this presidential election year it is an issue that has become part of the national debate.
We hear, far too often, it could never happen here. We would never be like Cuba, which arrested 75 dissidents for dispensing materials outside the state-run library system. Among those materials were the U.S. Constitution and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Or like the governments of Kenya or the United Arab Emigrates, which banned George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in 1991 and 2002 respectively.
Yet in recent years, schools in Georgia and New Hampshire have banned many of Shakespeare's writings because of sexually explicit themes and dialogues; public libraries have removed books from shelves in children's areas that some parents find offensive, such as "The Perks of Being A Wallflower," by Stephen Chbosky and "The Golden Compass," by Philip Pullman, because of their sexual or religious themes.
We have no problem with that. Librarians are paid to classify and shelve books. Older children should be free to roam the adult section as well as the children's area, and parents should be able to take out any book for their children.
Much has been made in recent weeks about Republican vice president nominee Sarah Palin's actions when she was mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska. While Palin never asked for nor banned any books in the city's library, she did ask the head librarian three times what would happen if such a suggestion was made.
Too often "Banned Books Week" overstates its point, painting every citizen's complaint about a book as if it was a governmental threat of censorship. People are free to complain all they want about whatever books displease them. What's important is that librarians respond as the Wasilla librarian did, whether the person asking the question is the mayor or a citizen activist. No, they should say, Americans may debate books all day long, but we don't ban them.
