Top-Ten Tuesday: Banned Books

Apparently the new thing on Tuesdays is a top-ten list. Well. You know how I love being on trend, and here in Canada it's also Freedom to Read Week, so I've compiled a top-ten list of censored, banned, and challenged books I've read.

(OK, after starting to compile the list, I decided to make two: one of books intended for adult readers and one of books intended for kids and teens. And, so that my method is clear, these are my rankings of these books, NOT how often they have been challenged or banned.)

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Laurence, The Diviners

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

William Styron, Sophie's Choice

Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Hugh MacLennan, Barometer Rising

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter series

Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials trilogy

Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes

Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

Lois Lowry, Anastasia series

Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese (my favourite of the many Cormier novels banned or challenged)

Robert Newton Peck, A Day No Pigs Would Die

Virginia Euwer Wolff, Make Lemonade trilogy

Notice, because top-ten lists are short and restrictive, that I haven't mentioned several key Modernist novels I've read — Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ulysses by James Joyce, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck — nor several hugely important later-twentieth-century works I've read like The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Wars by Timothy Findley, Beloved by Toni Morrison, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, or The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. All of these books have been censored, burned, pulled from libraries, or challenged, as have dozens more that I haven't read or that I have read and haven't listed here.

I've invested a lot of academic energy in learning about censorship, book banning, and freedom of expression. As an editor, I recognize that editors hold tremendous power over which books are published and which are not — but I also know enough history to recognize that at least some editors take chances, take risks, to ensure that books are published. I feel strongly that editors have an obligation to defend freedom of expression — particularly those texts we wouldn't read ourselves and prefer that others would not read.

When I teach print culture, we do a unit on censorship and banned books. Recently I've asked students to write reflective commentaries on their experiences with "challenging" books and their feelings about keeping books from younger readers. The number of students who have experienced some form of restriction on their reading and who intend to apply similar restrictions to upcoming readers is striking.

Our freedom to read — and write — whatever we choose was hard won; we shouldn't take it for granted. I hope my foray into top-ten lists has suggested some "challenging" texts to explore. These books can take us on amazing journeys — if we let them.