What the weather is doing in the Tries: Wowser Dowswer!!! A week of warm-hot weather—81 to106, with most days in the 90s. I think that will be warm enough for Auntie Lenora. What do you think?
Another Banned Book:
Being back on Facebook, I’m privy to all sorts of news and blues and memes and things. A friend posted something the other day about To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee being banned by some school district because it allegedly made some students/parents uncomfortable. Well, no adult male bovine excrement, Sherlock! Isn’t that the purpose of the book? On first read of her post, I was plain old flabbergasted. And then my wee brain went into great and wonderful joy!
What books of your parents did you sneak and read as a child? I’m willing to bet a biscotti or three that you read the very ones you were told NOT to read. I know those were the ones I read. And I’m pretty sure I was told not to read them, precisely for the reason that they wanted me to read them. Oddly there were two books I was asked not to read. My uncle who spent WWII in the US Navy asked that I not read Onionhead: A Novel of the Coast Guard by Weldon Hill because he and mother’s whole family were trying to turn me into a “young lady” and the book had the F-bomb liberally throughout. Like I’d never heard it or read it. Sigh. And Daddy asked me not to read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov until I was older. Because I was asked, not ordered, and because there were so many other books to read (with and without certain “adult” words), I lost any interest in them I might have had.
Yes, To Kill a Mockingbird should make you uncomfortable. And it should be discussed in the classroom and the dining room. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexi should make you uncomfortable, too. And it, too, should be discussed in the classroom and the dining room.
Now, when I was in high school, I had to read a book six freaking times. I hated it. It didn’t make me uncomfortable, it made me angry. I never did read it all the way through, but I got an A on each of the six book reports I wrote, and the book was never discussed in the classroom that I remember. Portions were read, but the meanings, the metaphors, were not discussed. Turned out, it was my mother’s favorite book, but I didn’t know that until the last day of high school when I came home and threw the book in the fireplace. (Being June, there was no fire.) Mother was in the living room and was not just shocked, but horrified that I, her book-loving daughter would commit such a sacrilege. She asked the title, and when I told her it was The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne she all but did a Hollywood dive into the fireplace to rescue the book. She thought it wonderful and was shocked I didn’t like it.
In looking back, I realize she had drunk the male dominant caste’s Kool-Aid. Men being the superior/dominant caste, she being female accepted her place as the inferior/subordinate caste. And in thinking back, I realized that’s what made me so angry, though at the time, I didn’t have the words or knowledge to verbalize it. I must have been a huge disappointment to the women in my mother’s family. I never completely bought into that role; I only sipped the Kool-Aid. I joined the church. I tried to submit to God and Male superior. But it wasn’t worth the psychic and physical agony.
So, yeah, ban the good books. The books that make kids think, because after all, school shouldn’t teach them to think and form opinions of their own, should it? School shouldn’t teach them how to weigh facts against fairy tales, should it? School should only give them pablum, make them feel good, train them not to question, only to obey, shouldn’t it?
In the meantime, to fill the void created by banning To Kill a Mockingbird, I strongly recommend the class read and discuss at length, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. Does the book make you too uncomfortable to read? You’ll find my deepest sympathies in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents should be mandatory for any student who wants to graduate from high school.
In the meantime, would Boston, or some town/state/school district, ban Jibutu: Daughter of the Desert. Please. It’s about a strong-minded woman who shakes up her world and makes it a better place. It’s about a culture where males and females are (shudder) equal. Surely that’s against enough rules to be worthy of a banning. Yes?? It will surely upset male supremacists. Ban it, please! I need the sales. Oh, yeah, and became a slave and ruined that culture, too.
Photo of the Week:
Entertainment:
Still watching the brain candy, though not as much. But, I have to admit, happy endings are more fun than today’s news.
Books: Remember, when I finish a book, I review it at Rainy Day Reads.
I finished I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong. It may be a day or so before I can get the review up, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Talk about an education! Loved it. Easy to read
Still reading frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss. Love it. She is a real inspiration to write my own sonnets. Not, mind, that I’m competition. But…
Education: I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong. Yeah, a real education! I hope to get some more online courses this next week, too. On using my iPhone camera and on photo editing software.
Writing: Have written 5 or 6 sonnets this last week.
Quote of the Week: Three quotes for the price of one. I couldn’t decide. 😉
“Yes, books are dangerous. They should be dangerous – they contain ideas.” ― Pete Hautman
“Banning books is just another form of bullying. It’s all about fear and an assumption of power. The key is to address the fear and deny the power.” ― James Howe
“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” ― Salman Rushdie
The Brave Dog and Auntie Lenora hope you have a great week, remember to laugh out loud often, dance like your four years old, and enjoy life!
Great thought-provoking blog post!
If they’ll ban Dr. Seuss, they’ll ban anything. I too read whatever I was told not to read (by teachers not parents). My parents didn’t censor my reading material.
We obviously read The Scarlet Letter differently. I took it as a protest against the injustice of the Puritanical system. IMHO a much more satisfying way to look at something they choke down your throat and expect you to swallow willingly. I admit my take on it is probably wrong — look at some of Hawthorn’s other books, maybe Young Goodman Brown.
I remember thinking it was a stupid story. I’d read it again, but my stack of books is too high to bother with it now.
“Politico” reports, “A new state law will soon bar educators from requiring courses or teaching concepts that cause any individual to ‘feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress’ due to their race or gender.” But I wonder if the lawmakers who voted it in, complete with an emergency deployment for July 1st, were thinking more of avoiding your reaction to “Scarlet Letter,” or your mother’s?
But the Seuss books matter is a bit different — according to the AP not a ban, but the Seuss family business deciding to cease publication and sales of six of the books, due mainly to racist stereotyping. I was part of Seuss’ target audience when they came out, and enjoyed them immensely — but it was only when I recently saw, for example, Seuss’ drawings meant as humorous depictions of traditional Chinese coolies verging on the grotesque, that it occurred to me to wonder what a Chinese-American kid my age would have thought when he saw it, as I did, at the local library.
Sorry — that’s an Oklahoma state law.
Why am I not surprised? Those poor kids. They’ll grow up with smaller brains than their parents, will never know how to read, discus, wonder. They’ll grow up obeying those in power (you know, the ones who made the law) and be just as bombastic as their ignorant parents.
Why am I not surprised? Those poor kids. They’ll grow up with smaller brains than their parents, will never know how to read, discus, wonder. They’ll grow up obeying those in power (you know, the ones who made the law) and be just as bombastic as their ignorant parents.
I had to give written permission for my son to read To Kill a Mockingbird. It was an alternative the teacher suggested rather than have him read a SECOND book about the holocaust. Needless to say, we were delighted with the substitution.