Tag: Pennsylvania

Following up on last week’s blog post: Book Banning

I was gratified by the responses my blog post of last Monday received. Thank you to everyone who responded, and thank you to the ones of you who reblogged my post about book banning. In case you missed it, here’s the link: Book Banning is Democracy Banning!

In last week’s post I listed the 19 books that had been banned the week before by the school board in Hanover County, Virginia. I failed to list other books or tell you how you can find lists of other books that have been challenged in the United States.

You can simply put “Challenged Books” or “Banned Books” in your favorite online search engine. Or, you can look for reputable sites like the American Library Association’s website for intellectual freedom: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/

Barnes and Noble has a list of more than 230 challenged books on its website at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/banned-books/_/N-rtm.

Imagine if these shelves were empty! (Photo by Rabie Madaci on Unsplash)

Let’s flood our public library systems and bookstores with requests for such books! Here’s a partial list. You might find many others when you do your own search. The following list of 101 books that have been challenged or banned somewhere in the United States is in no particular order.

Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera

What I Know Now: Letters to My Younger Self, by Ellyn Spragins

The Giver, by Lois Lowry

1984, by George Orwell

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling

Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History, by Art Spiegelman

Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez

New Kid, by Jerry Craft

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

The Dairy of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank

The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nicole Hannah-Jones

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas and Amandla Stenberg

Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

This Book is Gay, by Juno Dawaon and David Levit

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe

Hop on Pop, by Dr. Seuss

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

How the Word is Passed, by Clint Smith

Twilight, by Stephanie Meye

Beloved, (a Pulitzer Prize Winner) by Toni Morrison

The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett

Girl, Interrupted, by Susanna Kaysen

Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein

The Grapes of Wrath, (a Pulitzer Prize Winner), by John Steinbeck

The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie

All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway

The Poet X, by Elizabeth Acevedo

Looking for Alaska, by John Green

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, by Margane Satrapi

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt

Class Act: A Graphic Novel, by Jerry Craft

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey

Monday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D. Jackson

Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James

The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore

Like Water for Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

What If It’s Us, by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

A Time to Kill, by John Grisham

A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines

The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown

And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Child of God, by Cormac McCarthy

Feed, by M.T. Anderson

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles

Stamped from the Beginning, by Ibram X. Kendi

Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous

Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein

Different Seasons, by Stephen King

For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Native Son, by Richard Wright

Angela Davis: An Autobiography, by Angela Y. Davis

Skeleton Crew: Stories, by Stephen King

Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-Winning Stamped from the Beginning, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram S. Kendi

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens, by Becky Albertalli

All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir, by George M. Johnson

The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane

Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen

The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

Tiger Eyes, by Judy Blume

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1719-2019, by Ibram X. Kendi, Keisha N. Blain

A Thousand Acres, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, by Jane Smiley

Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa, by Mark Mathabane

Beach Music, by Pat Conroy

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, by Heather Ann Thompson

The Tenth Circle, by Jodi Picoult

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

Girl With the Blue Earring, by Tracy Chevalier

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

Palestine, by Joe Sacco

Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Bridge to Terabithia, A Newberry Award Winner, by Katherine Peterson

The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

Addie on the Inside, by James Howe

Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Olive’s Ocean, a Newberry Honor Book, by Kevin Henkes

A Stone in My Hand, by Cathryn Clinton

Tilt, by Ellen Hopkins

How Often Are Books Challenged Where You Live?

There is an interactive map of the United States of the American Library Association’s website, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/by-the-numbers. Hover the curser over a state to find basic information about book challenges in that state in 2022.

For instance, in my home state of North Carolina, there were 32 attempts to restrict access to books last year involving 167 titles. The most challenged book in North Carolina was Looking for Alaska, by John Green.

That map revealed some surprises. There were 45 attempts to restrict access to books in Massachusetts last year involving 57 books. In Michigan, the figures were 54 and 359. In Pennsylvania, 56 and 302. In Florida, 35 and 991. But Texas was at the top of the list (or bottom as the case may be) with 93 attempts to restrict access to books in 2022 involving a whopping 2,349 titles!

Photo by Enrique Macias on Unsplash

Different books are listed as the most-challenged book in the various states; however, Florida and Texas agree on The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. I wrote about that book in my blog post last week. I want to say to the book challengers in Florida and Texas, “You’ve got to be kidding!”

If you want to read more about the topic of book banning…

Here’s the link to the website of PEN America. PEN America is made up of more than 7,500 novelists, journalists, nonfiction writers, editors, poets, essayists, playwrights, publishers, translators, agents, and other writing professionals, as well as devoted readers and supporters who join with them to carry out PEN America’s mission to protect free expression in the United States and around the world: https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/.  

Until my next blog post

I hope you’re reading a book that someone has tried to get banned from a library. Let’s flood our public library systems and bookstores with requests for books that someone doesn’t want us to read!

I hope you make time for friends and family. Read to the children in your life and encourage them to read for fun.

Stop right now and visit my website (https://janetmorrisonbooks.com/) to subscribe to my newsletter. I took a special “field trip” to benefit my historical fiction writing on May 20. I’ll tell you all it in my July newsletter!

Just for signing up, you’ll receive a free downloadable copy of “Slip Sliding Away: A Southern Historical Short Story” to give you a taste of my fiction writing.

Remember the brave people of Ukraine.

Janet

Remembering 9/11 Twenty Years Later

Two days ago, we marked the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 major terrorist attacks on the United States.

Photo credit: Jack Cohen on unsplash.com

It was on September 11, 2001 that we Americans lost our innocence. It was the day we learned that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans could not protect us. We learned that we were naïve and vulnerable. Our lives changed forever.

There have been numerous shows on TV over the last week in remembrance of 9/11 as it is called in the U.S. It has been gut-wrenching to watch the sights and sounds of that day in New York City, the countryside in Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Washington, DC over and over again. Every photograph puts me right back in that day.

The days just before 9/11

We’d had a busy and beautiful weekend. We celebrated the 250th anniversary of the founding of our church with a play and Dinner in the Grove. Descendants of all our former pastors had been invited for the weekend of festivities and had come from several states. I had written the play that was performed on Saturday afternoon.

Our oldest living former pastor, who was in his 90s, came from Virginia to preach the sermon on Sunday morning. Several hundred people enjoyed Dinner in the Grove after the Sunday morning worship service.

Before leaving with his grandson that afternoon, that old pastor insisted on making the trek to the spring between the church and the manse to take one last drink of cool water from the spring he’d last visited more than 60 years before. I held my breath as his grandson held him by his belt as the old man bent down double to get his mouth to the water flowing out of the pipe coming from the springhouse.

It was a glorious weekend!

Our brother and sister-in-law were here from Georgia for the festivities and were staying for a few days. I was tired on Sunday night, so I didn’t set the alarm to get up at any certain time for the morning of 9/11. I planned to sleep until I woke up – whatever the time. I had no plans for that day.

9/11

I was sound asleep when my sister woke me up saying, “The World Trade Center is on fire!” I struggled out of bed and went to the family room where she and my brother and sister-in-law were watching the ABC TV network.

My brother and I stood in the middle of the room, watching in horror as the fire consumed the top floors of one of the twin towers when an airliner came out of nowhere and plunged into the other tower. My brother and I looked at each other, and I said, “That was no accident.”

I knew instantly that life had just changed forever, but I didn’t really know the depths of those changes for a long time.

Within a few minutes, we knew another plane had been hijacked and forced to crash in Pennsylvania. Yet another hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon.

My immediate reactions were digestive problems all that day. My stomach was in knots. What was going to happen next?

The aftermath

All air traffic over the United States was grounded as quickly as possible. Planes were ordered to land at the nearest airport. People ended up not where they had intended to go. Some of the people who had traveled more than 1,000 miles to participate in the celebration at our church had to rent cars and drive home because they didn’t know when they’d be able to get on a plane to fly home. Did they even want to get on another plane with such uncertainty about how and why the hijackings on 9/11 had taken place? I wouldn’t have wanted to.

It was reported on TV that 25,000 body bags had been ordered to recover the bodies of the people killed at the World Trade Center. It was a number I couldn’t get my head around. But what was even more difficult to comprehend as the day went by was that there weren’t going to be many bodies. Nothing remained except dust.

People posted photographs of their loved ones who had been in one of the towers that morning. We saw the pictures on TV. People frantically hoped their relatives and friends had escaped the buildings. Maybe they were injured and had amnesia. Maybe they were unconscious and unidentified in a hospital. People held out hope against all odds. But most of them had to accept that the person they loved so much had not survived.

The remains are still being analyzed 20 years later. In fact, the remains of one of the victims was identified just last week through DNA testing. Many families are still waiting for that official report.

I didn’t personally know anyone who was in the World Trade Center that day, but in the days and weeks after the tragedy we were told the stories of the special lives the victims had led. We learned of their small or unborn children who suddenly became orphans that morning. We learned of the young widows and widowers whose hearts had been torn out with the death of their spouses. Lives that held so much promise. So much intellect and talent wiped out in the blink of an eye.

For weeks after 9/11, we watched on TV as the rubble was removed. One thing I remember is that there was nothing to laugh about for months. The late-night TV talk shows that had depended on making fun of politicians or events in the news no longer had anything to poke fun at. And if they had dared, their disrespect would not have been gladly received by their audiences. It just didn’t seem appropriate to laugh about anything for months following 9/11. That made a lasting impression on me.

Peter Jennings stayed on the air for hours and what turned out to be days on end to inform us about what was happening.

For a long time after that, we knew if regular programming was interrupted for a special report, it probably wasn’t going to be good news. It was something that affected everyone, and it made me hold my breath in anticipation. It was before “breaking news” became something said on cable news every 15 minutes that usually turns out to be something you heard yesterday. And it wasn’t a high-speed chase 3,000 miles away involving a sports celebrity.

There were countless stories of heroism. Not just the first responders, but everyday people. For instance, the people on the plane headed for the White House or US Capitol. Passengers overtook the hijackers and forced the plane down in a field in Pennsylvania to save further devastation and death in Washington, DC. I was prompted to wonder what I would do in such a situation. Would I cower in fear or demonstrate bravery?

It seems quaint now, but in the months and possibly several years following 9/11, all Americans pulled together. All our little differences were forgotten. We were one country. We all rallied under our beautiful flag. We were kind to one another. The exception was that Americans of the Muslim faith were all suspect. They were vilified by some people. That was a sad result of the attack and it has persisted for 20 years.

The entire world came to our aid with moral support and tears. In our “hour of need,” other countries put their arms around us and held us up.

It was a time like no other I experienced before or since.

The mere mention of 9/11 brings to my mind images of those burning buildings, collapsed buildings, dazed survivors running for their lives, first responders rushing toward and into the towers, smoke settling over and shrouding Manhattan, the hole in the ground in Pennsylvania, the ugly hole gouged out of the Pentagon, employees fleeing the White House which was possibly the intended target of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. I can’t erase those images. Maybe I’m not supposed to be able to forget. I should never forget those who died that day – the sacrifices they made and the sacrifices their families made.

I now understand why my parents forever remembered Pearl Harbor on December 7 and why my great-grandfather always noted the anniversary of the Battle of Richmond in his daybooks.

Janet