We read Anne Frank around 8th grade. We also read Elie Wiesel's Night around 9th grade and that was incredibly unflinching. And this was in the deep south! I didn't read Maus until college, but it was only a year or two old at that point. I don't recall it being much more controversial than the other prose on the holocaust we read.
We read Anne Frank around 8th grade. We also read Elie Wiesel's Night around 9th grade and that was incredibly unflinching. And this was in the deep south! I didn't read Maus until college, but it was only a year or two old at that point. I don't recall it being much more controversial than the other prose on the holocaust we read.
There have always been parents in red states trying to have books removed from the curriculum based on assumed "adult content," but it's supercharged because of the culture wars.
Removing books like Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird from the curriculum in blue states based on their "racism" is just as bad. (I read that one school took Lord of the Flies off the junior high reading list based on "centering white supremacy" or some such buzzword-salad, and at least a couple removing Catcher in the Rye, for "glorifying incels" or something. Who decides what is unacceptable, or what is literature, or what is art?)
The idea that certain books are too much for kids to handle has been going on for generations. 14-year-olds absolutely have the facilities to read and understand the complexities of both Maus and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Both groups of would-be censors, trying to save culture from itself, are two sides of the same shitty coin. One fancy themselves "progressives," but are just a secular version of the old moral majority, and the others are just the next generation of it.
The only potentially good thing to come from this is that by making certain books dangerous contraband, it will make young people want to read them on their own. (When evangelicals screamed bloody murder about heavy metal, horror movies, punk rock and Dungeons and Dragons, it made the interesting kids of my generation lifelong devotees of those things.)
That unfortunate affair a year or so ago where the Dr. Seuss estate decided to stop publishing some books for retrograde ideas (including one that included the word, shudder, "Eskimo") is what really gives me pause. Taking them out of publication isn't great, but Amazon and eBay deciding to not allow used copies of the books to be sold on their sites was terrifying. What if "progressives" really jumped on board with the idea that To Kill a Mockingbird is horribly racist due to language well beyond Dr. Seuss's old good-natured, but old-fashioned, liberalism and Amazon and eBay — maybe even the Library of Congress — jumped onboard with a removal campaign?
Right wing book removal is scary, but "left" wing (or maybe we should say "#resistance" wing) book removal is way worse since all of the corporate and institutional energy is totally with them, and they're trying to walk in a forced lock-step.
Home libraries of physical media are more important now than ever. File Harper Lee's books and Woody Allen's films under the "dangerous contraband" section of your home library next to G.G. Allin's records and Mike Diana's comic books.
We read Anne Frank around 8th grade. We also read Elie Wiesel's Night around 9th grade and that was incredibly unflinching. And this was in the deep south! I didn't read Maus until college, but it was only a year or two old at that point. I don't recall it being much more controversial than the other prose on the holocaust we read.
There have always been parents in red states trying to have books removed from the curriculum based on assumed "adult content," but it's supercharged because of the culture wars.
Removing books like Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird from the curriculum in blue states based on their "racism" is just as bad. (I read that one school took Lord of the Flies off the junior high reading list based on "centering white supremacy" or some such buzzword-salad, and at least a couple removing Catcher in the Rye, for "glorifying incels" or something. Who decides what is unacceptable, or what is literature, or what is art?)
My father’s generation would’ve handled this with fists.
The idea that certain books are too much for kids to handle has been going on for generations. 14-year-olds absolutely have the facilities to read and understand the complexities of both Maus and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Both groups of would-be censors, trying to save culture from itself, are two sides of the same shitty coin. One fancy themselves "progressives," but are just a secular version of the old moral majority, and the others are just the next generation of it.
The only potentially good thing to come from this is that by making certain books dangerous contraband, it will make young people want to read them on their own. (When evangelicals screamed bloody murder about heavy metal, horror movies, punk rock and Dungeons and Dragons, it made the interesting kids of my generation lifelong devotees of those things.)
That unfortunate affair a year or so ago where the Dr. Seuss estate decided to stop publishing some books for retrograde ideas (including one that included the word, shudder, "Eskimo") is what really gives me pause. Taking them out of publication isn't great, but Amazon and eBay deciding to not allow used copies of the books to be sold on their sites was terrifying. What if "progressives" really jumped on board with the idea that To Kill a Mockingbird is horribly racist due to language well beyond Dr. Seuss's old good-natured, but old-fashioned, liberalism and Amazon and eBay — maybe even the Library of Congress — jumped onboard with a removal campaign?
Right wing book removal is scary, but "left" wing (or maybe we should say "#resistance" wing) book removal is way worse since all of the corporate and institutional energy is totally with them, and they're trying to walk in a forced lock-step.
Home libraries of physical media are more important now than ever. File Harper Lee's books and Woody Allen's films under the "dangerous contraband" section of your home library next to G.G. Allin's records and Mike Diana's comic books.