Banning
books and burning books have been a hallmark of religious leaders as long as
books have been published.
Book banning
is not uncommon in Canada or the United States, but in the U.S. book banning
has been normalized in Republican-led school districts.
By the mid-1950s
the Catholic Church had banned over 4000 books. Today fundamentalist Christians have taken up
the torch.
Even here in
liberal Maine, a Republican State Representative (Amy Arata) introduced a bill ‘to
criminalize educators who would teach Kafka on the Shore by Marakimi.’
Some of the
more notable books being banned today are:
The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The
Outlander by Joana Galbaldon
The Harry
Potter series by J. K. Roling
To Kill a
mockingbird by Harper Lee
Maus by by
Art Speigelman
And of
course, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
As a protest
against Book banning Penguin Random House has produced a fire-proof version of The
Handmaid’s Tale.
Join me in
reading a banned book this month
the Ol’Buzzard
