“In Libya, there are no independent broadcast or print media, an anachronism even by Middle East standards.”
“Equatorial Guinea has one private broadcaster; its owner is the president’s son . . . The U.S. State Department reported in 2005 that foreign celebrity and sports publications were available for sale but no newspapers, and that there were no bookstores or newsstands.”
“In Burma, citizens risk arrest for listening to the BBC in public.”
—From Committee to Protect Journalists List of 10 Most Censored Countries.
Banned in Iran
Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody
Banned in Cuba:
Diary of the Cuban Revolution by Carlos Franqui
A Way of Hope by Lech Walesa
Sakharov Speaks by Andrei Sakharov
El Pasado de una Iilusion by Francois Furet
Living in Truth by Vaclav Havel
The Country of 13 Million Hostages by C.A. Montaner
The Magic Lantern by Tomothy Garton Ash
The Art of the Impossible by Vaclav Havel
Toward a Civil Society by Vaclav Havel
Cuba’s Repressive Machinery by Human Rights Watch
L’ile du Docteur Castro by Corinne Cumerlato and Denis Rouseau
1984 by George Orwell
Letter to the Soviet Leaders by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Castro’s Daughter by Alina Fernandez
Persona non Grata by Jorge Edwards
Banned in Malaysia:
Mona Johulan, The Bargaining for Israel: In the Shadow of Armageddon (Bridge-Logos Publishers,
United States)
Mathew S Gordon, Islam (Oxford University Press)
Trudie Crawford, Lifting the Veil (Apple of Gold, United States)
Bobby S Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear of Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (Zed Books
Ltd, United Kingdom)
Dr Anis A Shorrosh, Islam Revealed – A Christian Arab’s View of Islam (Thomas Nelson Publishers,
USA)
John L Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam (Oxford University Press)
Christine Mallouhi, Mini Skirts Mothers & Muslims (Monarch Books)
Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Harper
Collins, UK)
I realize that many of my readers are not going to like my take on Banned Books Week. I do not believe that there are any “banned books” in the United States of America in 2006.
The American Library Association website for Banned Books Week does not list one single book that has been banned by any government entity in the United States of America in 2006. Some books are challenged every year, usually by parents who are concerned that a particular piece of literature is not appropriate for the children or young people to whom it is being taught or made available in the library. Some of these challenges are ridiculous; others have some merit. Saying that a book is not appropriate for a particular age group or even actually removing a book from an elementary school library is not the same as “banning” that book. ALA defines “challenged” as an attempt to ban.
If I say publicly that it is not appropriate to teach Hamlet or Lolita to fourth graders or not appropriate to have those works in an elementary school library, am I attempting to “ban books” or am I suggesting that the selection criteria of the librarians and teachers are poorly suited to the children they are serving? (Actually, I think Hamlet would be fine for kids although some portions of the plot and thematic material would be over the heads of most fourth graders. I’m just picking somewhat random examples.) I attended library school and heard librarians say, with a straight face, that when they chose to not purchase Nancy Drew books or comic books, the process was called “selection,” but when parents or citizens tried to voice their opinions about what should or should not be purchased by the libraries that they support with their taxes, it was “censorship.” Librarians were an elite group of educated professionals who knew how to “select ” library materials; others were yokels who were out to keep information out of the hands of the people, book-banners.
“Censorship occurs when expressive materials, like books, magazines, films and videos, or works of art, are removed or kept from public access.” The truth is, if you use the ALA definition of censorship, librarians “ban” books every day because they cannot purchase every book that is published. They keep those books they cannot or will not purchase from public access. The only difference is that the librarians are assumed to have good motives, to provide as many materials as possible to the lbrary’s patrons, and the public citizens are assumed to have bad motives, to keep materials out of the hands of others. Could we possibly judge each case of citizens questioning or challenging the purchase of certain books or materials on its own merits instead of lumping them all together as instances of book banning?
Truly, no one in the U.S. is completely denied access to any piece of information or literature that he or she wants to read, except in cases of parental oversight or obscenity or financial limitations (can’t afford to buy everything I want to read). Citizens of other countries are not so blessed. Perhaps we should focus on those places where there is true government censorship and attempt to shame them into granting the freedom that we already enjoy here in the U.S.
