Rant: The old lady who schooled me about a book I never read

I still remember this woman at the public library in Salem, Oregon back in 2014. She saw me checking out a copy of The Handmaid's Tale and said, 'You know they tried to pull that from schools here in the 90s, right?' Then she told me about how her daughter's teacher got fired for assigning it. She was calm but dead serious. Has anyone else had a stranger tell them something like that face to face about a banned book?

2 comments

2 Comments

charles_coleman1mo ago

That line about the teacher getting fired really sticks with me. I actually watched a documentary last year called "The Banned Book Club" that covered this exact thing happening in multiple states in the 90s. They interviewed a librarian from Texas who said she kept a secret shelf in the back for books that got challenged, including Handmaid's Tale and even Harry Potter at one point. It's wild how something as simple as a teacher wanting to teach a thoughtful book could get them in trouble. The whole idea of banning books just seems backwards to me, like we're scared of letting people think for themselves. That woman at the library probably changed how you look at that book forever, which is kind of the point of reading in the first place.

tylerr391mo ago

And the secret shelf thing really drives home how local this all is. One school bans Harry Potter while another has teachers getting fired for Atwood, it's like the whole thing depends on who's angry that week. Makes you wonder how many good books just sit in the back of some library closet because one person complained.