When Book Banning Hits Home

This display over the past weekend at Malaprop’s, our local independent bookstore in Asheville, NC, made me gasp. The store regularly showcases a selection of books that have been banned by school systems and libraries across the USA. Of the 14 books in the current group, 10 were required reading at my high school decades ago. I remember two of the books consuming an entire quarter each of sophomore year English.

My high school was not particularly progressive, and the city I grew up in was not especially liberal. Nonetheless, our early-1970s syllabus would apparently incite terror in the minds of many American parents today.

Things like book banning can seem abstract and far away, but seeing books that were part of one’s required reading banned decades later makes it much more real and personal. And more serious.