What It’s Like to Have Your Book Banned

"Jane Smiley on What It’s Like to Have Your Book Banned: In Conversation with Tai Caputo From Iowa City’s City High School Student Paper" | LitHub
https://lithub.com/jane-smiley-on-what-its-like-to-have-your-book-banned/

re: Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres in comparison to several books including Shakespeare's King Lear, Dickens' David Copperfield, and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

My original post was deleted when I attempted to scroll in my browser, which meant the loss of a summary, and touchstones aren't working on LibraryThing {ed: fixed}.

What's important is the linked interview, which was done by a student in the affected school district.

Related:

"Authors with banned books talk about protecting access to stories" by Kerri Miller and Kelly Gordon
https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2023/10/13/authors-whove-been-banned-talk-about-...
featuring authors
• Kelly Yang
• Matt de la Peña
• Samira Ahmed

And what it's like not to have your book banned:

When the Regime ordered that books with dangerous teachings
Should be publicly burnt and everywhere
Oxen were forced to draw carts full of books
To the funeral pyre, an exiled poet,
One of the best, discovered with fury, when he studied the list
Of the burned, that his books
Had been forgotten. He rushed to his writing table
On wings of anger and wrote a letter to those in power.
Burn me, he wrote with hurrying pen, burn me!
Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!

--Bertolt Brecht (trans. H. R. Hays)

>3 lilithcat: Bertolt Brecht's books were burned by Nazis in 1933. All of his books published up to then were banned. (Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Also, I think it's important to be aware that we hear from the authors who were already widely recognized in publishing. For every banned book that's talked about, there are others that were lesser known of similar quality that were removed and forgotten—not because their writing was unwanted but because someone in power wanted them forgotten.

>4 aspirit:

Bertolt Brecht's books were burned by Nazis in 1933.

No kidding./snark/

Guess you miss the point.

I suppose the consolation for any author whose book is banned is that they are in some good company.

>5 lilithcat: I guess so. I had to look up who that was, and too many argue for banning as a way to promote books or authors, which is... obviously....

>6 Cecrow: Yeah.

Syrian author has to censor himself in Syria. Moves to Canada, and now we're doing it to him.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/freedomtoreadweek-schools-1.7106913

The irony here is that it's the Muslims who are fuelling anew the once-won war for general tolerance. Without their influence the Liberals' programme for sex education would have passed. But even that isn't enough for some, private Islamic schools without any sex ed whatsoever are on the rise.