What Do These Books Have in Common?
They – and many more – have been challenged, banned and sometimes even burned, by communities or governments who were uncomfortable with the ideas, events or language they contained.
Banned Books Week, held annually at the end of September, celebrates the importance of the First Amendment and our freedom to read. These videos, and our corresponding Library displays, are designed to draw attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States.
At the Arlington Public Library, you’re free to read everything – and to decide for yourself.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX4jWZwYw_A&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTrxRZYDglI&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
1984 by George Orwell
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcJ5ztqG4OU&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomX9w2gADQ&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6cnW7yO0lE&feature=share&list=UUoncRB-soHmPObgt1XsIZlQ[/youtube]
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY3n-DjKQo8&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON1ocKck2u4&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
The Giver by Lois Lowry
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu-uMNDA-BQ&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c41Dq8Eo58Y&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZdSDnRcHio&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_1v1NFQg28&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4wsLK-XcVg&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsh8Xb4U7lc&feature=share&list=SPF4F4F9295D8FDF42[/youtube]
I think it’s in the preface that Vonnegut says it took him a long, intermittent time to write the book. Why this was so seemed to me to be illustrated by the places where in a dream-like way he escapes from his narrative by fleeing into a place in another solar system.
My most enduring memory from “The Grapes of Wrath” is that Steinbeck introduces the concept of a living non-human entity, that once created has to be fed, and that it feeds upon the lives of people — a bank.
Indeed, given that, we don’t have to wait for intelligent machines to enslave us. I assert that mega-corporations are the non-mythical embodiment of what we fear in stories of the undead, that suck the blood of the living.
Nations, religions, and other large organizations can do the same.