Friend told me to check out a 'banned book list' for fun and it got weird fast

My buddy Mark said I should look up books that got banned in schools in the US. He was like 'it's just silly stuff, you'll laugh.' So I found a list from 2023 and half the books were ones I read in high school like 'The Bluest Eye' and 'Slaughterhouse-Five.' Then I noticed my own county had pulled like 22 titles from the library last year. I asked him about it and he goes 'oh yeah I forgot your area was crazy about that stuff.' Has anyone else had a friend downplay how bad censorship is near them?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowan_butler931d ago

Your area was crazy about that stuff" - man that's a wild way to downplay 22 books getting pulled. I'd be freaked out if I found out my local library was quietly removing books I actually read in school.

taylor_fox1d ago

Hang on, lets look at this from the other side for a second. 22 books is a lot, but maybe the library was just making space for new stuff. Libraries have to rotate things out all the time, nobody has room for everything forever. Plus those books you read in school were probably required reading that most people hated anyway, like old Shakespeare or boring classics nobody picks up for fun. Maybe the new books they brought in are actually more relevant to kids today, like stuff about current events or diverse authors nobody heard of before. Its not always some dark censorship plot, sometimes its just a boring budget decision. People get too dramatic about this stuff without seeing the whole picture.