[etni] Why I love banned books

Why I love banned books
Morning Sentinel - September 24, 2006

All my life I have read banned books and books that have been challenged, but which didn't measure up to full banning potential. The FBI please note: this has all been quite unintentional, and if you check my records at libraries and bookstores you will find plenty of respectable books (Blueberries for Sal comes to mind) interspersed with the subversive ones. And readers, please note: Virtually all the books I mention in this essay have either been banned or at least challenged.

My parents started me on subversive lit. You can't grow up in a Catholic household without someone shoving the Bible in your face. Repeatedly. My mother displayed our large Bible, open to the Book of Matthew, during Christmas season. That Matthew was a good writer. Lots of plot, great character development. The Bible has been banned and burned in places too numerous to list. Ditto the Koran. And pretty much any other holy book you could name.

Those high school English teachers are a bad lot. Sister Bernadette assigned us Shakespeare. We even listened to performances on records. This was heady stuff. Who knew Macbeth was so controversial?

Sister Jean had us translating Kafka. It was abridged versions of his work, but still. I believed rumors that she had been in the military. A mousy 9th grader was not about to challenge her formidable foreign language teacher over a challenged author, surely you can see.

(To read the whole article, go to -
http://www.etni.org/news/banned_books.htm  )


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