Pink Flamingos (1972)
Vying to be the "filthiest people in the world," a couple dealing in child trafficking attacks a violent cannibalistic family. Fun for the whole family.
Read MoreThe Color Purple by Alice Walker
We talk about the origin of the library's ebooks and an important book everyone should read.
Banned
1984 - California - Challenged and retained in Oakland High School honors class for "sexual and social explicitness" and its "troubling ideas about race relations, man's relationship to God, African history, and human sexuality"
1985 - California - Rejected for purchase from Hayward school trustees due to language and sexual content
1986 - Virginia - Removed from Newport News school library for language and sexual content and placed in special section available only to those over eighteen or with parental permission
1989
Michigan - Challenged at the Saginaw public libraries for sexual content
Tennessee - Challenged as a summer youth program reading assignment in Chattanooga for language and "explicitness"
1990 - Wyoming - Challenged in Ten Sleep schools for optional reading
1992 - North Carolina - Challenged at New Bern High School as a reading assignment because of rape
1995
Connecticut - Challenged at Pomperaug High School in Southbury for sexual content
Florida - Challenged at St. Johns County Schools in St. Augustine
Oregon - Challenged and retained in the Junction City high school due to language, sexual content, and "negative image of black men."
1996
North Carolina - Challenged and retained at Northwest High School in High Point for sexual content and violence
Texas - Challenged and retained at Round Rock Independent High School for violence
1997 - West Virginia - Removed from Jackson County School libraries
1999
Ohio - Challenged and retained at Shawnee School in Lima after parents called it vulgar and "X-rated"
Virginia - Removed from Ferguson High School library in Newport News, yet may be requested and borrowed with parental approval
2002 - Virginia - Challenged at Fairfax County elementary and secondary libraries along with seventeen other books by a group called Parents Against Bad Books in Schools for language, drug abuse, sexual content, and torture
2008 - North Carolina - Challenged in Burke County schools in Morgantown for homosexuality, rape, and incest
2013 - North Carolina - Challenged but retained at Brunswick County Advanced Placement English eleventh grade assignment for language, sexual content, or has literary value as age appropriate
Sources
Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. 2014
Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, or RSS Feed
"Dances and Dames"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A novel told from the point of a young girl that deals with racism, sexism, classicism, and violence in the deep south. Join our narrator as he gets into the issues of his homeland and also shares stories about rolling in tires and old pianos in gymnasiums.
Banned
deals with racial injustice, class systems, gender roles, loss of innocence, language, violence, rape, incest and authority
1966 - Virginia - Hanover for immoral use of rape as a plot device
1968 - #2 National Education Association list receiving the most complaints from private organizations
1977 - Minnesota - Eden Valley School Committee for being too laden with profanity, temporary ban
1980 - New York - Vernon-Verona-Sherill School District where "Reverend Carl Hadley threatened to establish a private Christian school because public school libraries contained such "filthy, trashy sex novels" as A Separate Peace and To Kill a Mockingbird"
1981 - Indiana - Warren where "three black parents resigned from the township Human Relations Advisory Council when the Warren County school administration refused to remove the book from Warren junior high school classes. They contended that the book "does psychological damage to the positive integration process and represents institutionalized racism""
1984 - Illinois - Waukegan School District over racial slurs.
1985
Missouri - Kansas City and Park Hill Junior High School for profanity and racial slurs
Arizona - Casa Grande School District "by black parents and the NAACP who charged the book was unfit for junior high use."
1990s - New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Canada for racial language, “The terminology in this novel subjects students to humiliating experiences that rob them of their self-respect and the respect of their peers. The word ‘nigger’ is used 48 times [in] the novel… We believe that the English Language Arts curriculum in Nova Scotia must enable all students to feel comfortable with ideas, feelings and experiences presented without fear of humiliation… To Kill a Mockingbird is clearly a book that no longer meets these goals and therefore must no longer be used for classroom instruction.”
1995
California - Santa Cruz Schools for racial themes
Louisiana - Caddo Parish's Southwood High School Library for language and objectionable content
1996
Mississippi - Moss Point School District over racial epithet.
Texas - Lindale advanced placement English reading list for “conflicted with the values of the community.”
2000-2009 - #21 on ALA's most frequently challenged books
2001
Georgia - Glynn County School Board for profanity
Oklahoma - removed from Muskogee High School for racial slurs after years of complaints from black students and parents, but returned
2004
Illinois - Normal Community High School as "being degrading to African Americans."
North Carolina - Durham for racial slurs.
2006 - Tennessee - Brentwood Middle School for profanity, sex, rape and incest as well as racial slurs promoting "racial hatred, racial division, racial separation, and promotes white supremacy"
2007 - New Jersey - Cherry Hill Board of Education for objections "to the novel’s depiction of how blacks are treated by members of a racist white community in an Alabama town during the Depression and feared the book would upset black children reading it."
2009 - Canada, Ontario - St. Edmund Campion Secondary School in Brampton due to language and racial slurs
2016 - Virginia - The superintendent of Accomack County Public Schools confirmed the district had removed Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” after a parent voiced her concerns during a Nov. 15 school board meeting, reported WAVY-TV.
2017 - Mississippi - Removed from the 8th grade course work in Biloxi schools due to "some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable
2018 - Minnesota - Duluth Public Schools removed the book from the curriculum for use of the "n" word.
Sources
Doyle, Robert P. Banned Books: Challenging Our Freedom to Read. 2014.
Caron, Christina. "‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Removed From School in Mississippi." New York Times. Retrieved Oct 16, 2017 from
Philips, Kristine. "A school district drops ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’ over use of the n-word." Washington Post. Retrieved on 2018 February 9 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2018/02/07/a-school-district-drops-to-kill-a-mockingbird-and-huckleberry-finn-over-use-of-the-n-word/?utm_term=.f2df4a0b9d2d
Subscribe on iTunes and get new and old episodes or donate to the Patreon for even more!
"Dances and Dames"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
