"No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” — Lily Tomlin
Reviews of subversive literature
Here’s another digest of book banning news from the USA (and Canada, where I thought they had better sense): The New Yorker on A Wrinkle in Time (including some interesting news about Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass movies, which I sincerely hope is not true). More on Philip Pullman and his new novel The Good Man […]
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a difficult read. Difficult, at first, for mundane reasons. Names you don’t know how to pronounce (Sethe, Halle). Irritating, non-standard diction (whitepeople, blackpeople). A narrative structure that jumps without transition from character to character, time to time, location to location, leaving you to catch up as best you can. A general […]
I recently set up a news feed to follow reports of book banning, challenges, and censorship. This is a roundup of current book banning news from the USA: Good news for kids who’ve been missing Captain Underpants Why they’re still freaking over Catcher in the Rye RIP Bruce Roberts, a champion of banned books Come […]
Last year I challenged myself to catch up on a number of banned books I missed while growing up. I’ve read and reviewed 17 of the 18 books on my list, but there are many, many more . . . so many, in fact, I could keep making new lists of banned books to read […]
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker The Color Purple is a story told in short letters. Letters, at first, from a barely-literate Celie to God, letters that are little more than raw observations of a brutal, degraded, hopeless life. Letters, later, from Celie’s sister Nettie, reminding Celie of their shared history, relating the progress of […]
This time they’re after Anne Frank’s Diary (again).
What book? “It’s just not age appropriate,” said Cadmus, adding that this is the first time a book has been removed from classrooms throughout the district. This book.
Forever, by Judy Blume. Prominent on any list of banned and challenged books is Judy Blume’s Forever. It’s a great title, but Judy Blume could just as well have named it My First Fuck. Considering that Blume’s audience is made up of pre-teen and early-teen girls, it’s easy to understand why so many parents have […]