What is the most banned book in the world?
Books get banned for all sorts of reasons. An individual or even community might find the language of a book to be vulgar, so they will challenge it. In various books there might be themes of sex, violence, drugs and alcohol, racism, feminism, goodness any rage of themes can offend an individual or group of people. When this happens, often times a book gets challenged; challenging a book makes the community evaluate the title and decide together what will happen to the book. Once the book has gone through the challenge process, the deciding committee may ban the book from that library or school.
Recently while giving a book talk about banned books, I was asked what the most banned book was in the world. Wow, was I surprised how hard it was to find a single book answer. Rather, there are several books that tend to continually get banned from year to year. According to my findings, I’d say these are the most popular banned books in no particular order. Ironically I have actually read these novles and loved them:
The Absolute Diary of a Part-time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
I literally laughed out loud the entire time I read this book! I loved it. I thought it was an especially poignant book for young adult men. All the changes that a young guy goes through can be shocking and alarming. Alexie brings coming of age back down to reality. He’s raw and truthful and that can be really funny. Plus, the book has illustrations which is always a perk!
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Goodness, I don’t know how many times I have read The Great Gatsby, but it is a lot. I know I for sure read it in high school, and then as an English major from the University of Washington I think I read it a couple of more times. I’m just going to say one word: imagery. How can a book be banned for its amazing imagery. Beats me!
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
This book has been banned in different communities because of these three reasons: rape, racism, and profanity. Well… take at a look at the last couple of years, and I think it could be agreed upon that these three themes are happening today: #metoo movement, #blacklivesmatter movement, and the January 6th stamped of the US Capitol. I don’t know but if a classic book can get banned for this, maybe we all just need to be banned!
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
This was another high school read for me. And, again, I loved it! I was so impressed by all the characters and most especially by Nurse Ratchet. She’s so awful it was painful to read. But wow! What an impressive book that left a definite impression. I’m so happy this book wasn’t banned at my high school!
The Perks of being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
I met this author. I was so excited to tell him how much I enjoyed his book. This was back when he had just wrote it; he had not yet become famous. He was so humble as I congratulated him on this amazing book. It truly is THE coming of age novel–despite the fact that so many tough issues are battled. Believe it or not, I have never seen the movie–the book is just that good!
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
Many, many dystopian novels get the banned treatment. It’s a rather interesting phenomenon. To think, right now, from 2019 to 2021 we are still living in this dystopian type world where humans wear masks protecting themselves from one another, the ease of travel has halted, and people continue to die despite the ability to be vacinated. Yes, dystopia indeed…
