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Rant: My brother-in-law called 'The Bluest Eye' just 'sad kid stuff' and I had to set him straight
We were at a family cookout in Phoenix last weekend and he saw my copy on the table. He said, 'Why read that? It's just sad kid stuff from a long time ago.' I told him it's one of the most banned books in the country, not just for being sad, but for showing hard truths about race and trauma that some people don't want taught. I explained that in my kid's school district, a parent group tried to pull it from the 11th grade reading list just two years ago. He got quiet and said he never thought about why a book gets banned, just that it happens. That hit different because it showed me how easy it is to dismiss a book's importance if you only see the surface. Has anyone else had to explain the 'why' behind a ban to someone who only saw the book's topic?
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the_tara3mo ago
Yeah, that part about him only seeing the surface really got me. I heard a librarian on a podcast say most book challenges come from people who haven't read the whole thing, they just hear about one scene or theme. They called it "outrage by summary," where the real context of the story gets lost.
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calebw501mo ago
Yeah "outrage by summary" is such a perfect way to put it. @the_tara it makes me think of how people hear "The Bluest Eye has incest in it" and freak out without knowing how Morrison actually handles that part in the story. Same with how some folks banned "To Kill a Mockingbird" just for having the n-word in it but totally missed how the whole book is literally about fighting racism. It's like judging a movie by one trailer scene and acting like you saw the whole thing. Feels super lazy honestly lol.
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briancampbell3mo ago
Wait, did that librarian really say most challenges come from people who haven't read the book? That's wild. It explains so much about the news stories I see. It's easier to get mad at a summary than to actually understand a whole story. That feels like a real problem for how we talk about anything complicated.
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