It is funny this very topic came up yesterday at the monthly book discussion group at the local library. The book read and discussed this month was To Kill a Mockingbird (surprisingly a few book club members had never before read it). Part of the discussion turned to this very issue, and how different advocacy groups have attempted to ban it from use in schools for widely varying reasons. From it negative portrayal of the US South and the racist nature of that society and the justice system to, from completely different groups, the use of word nigger and the portrayal of blacks as poorly educated and powerless. I spent a good part of my youth in the South and can say that even into the late 1950s to early 1960s the novel was quite accurate. It is sad when groups attempt to make history vanish, or to re-write it, especially when it involves banning great literature.

What I think is funny is that fortunately it is difficult to really ban something in the US in the sense of preventing its publication and distribution. All that can be accomplished is to make the book difficulty to obtain by removing it from use in schools or from public libraries. This is more likely to have the effect of ginning up interest in the book, among the youth or the public at large. This is not quite the same thing, but just look how stories about the banning of Slaughter House Five and The Scarlet Letter generated interest in these books as monthly selections for the book club here at Mobile Read.