The Phil Johnson Library at Resource Center Dallas marked Banned Books Week with a reading of material banned from libraries.
Librarian Sandy Swann noted that books are still being banned. Just this week, the Beaumont library and school systems banned the book “Friday Night Lights.” In the book upon which the NBC show is based, the quarterback breaks his back and is unable to walk again, not the image we want to portray of Texas high school football.
Rafael McDonnell read three poems by Walt Whitman including “We Two Boys Together Clinging.” Another reader read the Alan Ginsburg poem “Howl. He noted that this work was upheld as not obscene by the U.S. Supreme Court but the ruling forbids it from being aired on radio at anytime other than midnight to 6 a.m. That ruling still holds.
I read the number one banned book in the country, “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell. This threat to marriage as it has existed since biblical times is about two male penguins who build a nest together and hatch an egg in the Central Park Zoo in New York.
Of the top 10 banned books, three have LGBT content. In addition to “Tango,” “Perks of Being a Wallflower” and “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” are listed. “Tango” has been number one for three years, according to Swann. Surprisingly, “Heather Has Two Mommies” is no longer in the top 10.
Other notable banned books include the Harry Potter series, Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and “It’s Perfectly Normal,” challenged for daring to imply that being gay or lesbian is normal. Another gay favorite on the list is “Wicked.”
Also in Phil Johnson Library news: The will hold their annual book sale on Oct. 9-10 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Resource Center with bargain prices on books, VHS tapes, DVDs and CDs.
— David Taffet
Congratulations to the Phil Johnson Library for taking part in Banned Books Week! But readers should know that the main BBW sponsor – the American Library Association – has failed to defend the most notable recent victims of censorship.
In Cuba, inquiring minds have challenged state censorship by establishing dozens of independent neighborhood libraries at their own expense, offering uncensored literature to fellow citizens. Volunteer librarians in Cuba are being assaulted, persecuted and imprisoned, some sentenced to more than twenty years.
Out of devotion to the Revolution and its literacy campaign now half a century past, ALA violates its own principles by denying and covering up Cuba’s violations of the freedom to read, refusing direct appeals to join the worldwide human rights consensus that demands release of the library prisoners. Although the Association has reported book burning in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Canada, Vietnam and the Republic of Georgia on its “Book Burning in the 21st Century” website, it refuses to post any information about Cuba’s ongoing police raids, beatings and the Cuban court documents of 2003 (available at the “Rule of Law and Cuba” web site) that contain orders to incinerate or destroy entire library collections, including biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
For more details on this betrayal of intellectual freedom, readers can see the “Friends of Cuban Libraries” website on the Internet.