18 Banned and Challenged Books Everyone Should Read
variety.comAnna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.A Tennessee school board’s recent ban on Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” is the conclusion to a story we’ve already seen.
A group of adults, whether it be parents or teachers, finds a book’s content to be so offensive that they call for it to be pulled from shelves, taken off syllabi or even banned entirely from schools.In the case of “Maus” — which details Spiegelman’s father’s experience of the Holocaust — it was “inappropriate language and nudity” that caused a Tennessee school board to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel from its eighth grade curriculum.
But many have criticized its removal as just another case in a trend of schools targeting books that teach the history of oppression.
Books such as Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” have famously topped the ALA’s lists of most challenged books throughout the years, with more recent examples including anti-racist books such as Angie Thomas’s “The Hate U Give” and Ibram X.
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