Challenged Books, Challenged Readers
According to this story in The Atlantic, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, a novel that won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature when it debuted in 2007, is the American Library Association‘s second most challenged book of 2010.
Note that it’s “challenged” and not “challenging.” The ALA defines a challenge as “a formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that a book or other material be restricted or removed because of its content or appropriateness.”
My guess is that challenges most often grow out of priggish, indignant reactions like this one by S. Cook in regards to Alexie’s novel on Amazon:
I am very upset this book is being recommended for children-I bought it for my son because of the “glowing reviews”. I read it after he did and was appalled to find the “f”word in the book and lots of talk of masturbating!!! I will throw it in the trash just to be sure no other child gets his hands on it!
I’m assuming that Portnoy’s Complaint is therefore not to be found in S. Cook’s home library.
Also on the 2010 list is And Tango Makes Three, a book about a same-sex penguin couple and its adopted baby, and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight — no big surprise with either of them. It was, however, a surprise to see Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich’s decade-old nonfiction account of the American working-class, but only because I doubt that the challengers objected to the same things I did. Namely, Ehrenreich’s sanctimoniousness and egotism.
While it’s easy to despair about the warped thinking behind a formal complaint about a century-old vision of dystopia and chalk it up to the American penchant for misguided moralizing, keep in mind that there were only 348 official challenges last year.(For a bit more context and folly, here are the challengers’ all-time favorite targets.)
