In honor of “Banned Books Week, we shared the ALA's list of "Banned Books that Shaped America" with Stanford University Press authors and staffers and asked for their feedback on freedom, censorship and what banned books have meant to them. Here are some of those thoughts. We found it significant—though not surprising, given the nature of our communal and dedicated commitment to the dissemination of knowledge to the wider world—to note how many speak of the importance of supposedly objectionable material, and those who provided access to it, to young people. Another commom theme: that, in the words of one of our contributors, "the outlawing of illicit materials made them that much more enticing."
- "When I was in tenth grade our English teacher, Ms. Grace, set up a wire rack in the back of the classroom with books that we were free to borrow. They were her own personal copies. She made no other comment about it except to say the library would not take them. That shelf became my go-to place to find good reading material, as much or more so than the school library. I obtained at least three Stephen King novels there. Only later did I realize that most of the books would have been banned or risked be banned, and that she was circumventing the PTA." –IT Manager
- "This is probably the only list of books in which you will find both Ulysses and Captain Underpants. It’s easy to compare the banned lists from 50-100 years ago to those that are challenged today and think that those banning books back in the 19thand early 20th centuries were at once more intelligent (in that they recognized real transgression), and also more ignorant (in that they thought it was dangerous or that they could prevent the books’ ideas from reaching people). The preoccupations and uncomfortable ideas of a culture are best revealed by the books that are challenged, and it’s no surprise to me that books like Beloved are still being challenged in the US given our country’s still-precarious and often uncomfortable positions on race and gender." –Acquisitions Editor
- "This list certainly covers a significant number of books that "shaped America" (Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five was a particular favorite in my youth.) It is important, however, to consider the importance of young adult fiction and graphic novels—which are not mentioned on the list—because, so it seems to me, the target audience are in their formative years. I recall Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton books were banned and quite a few graphic novels: Maus, Watchmen, and a recent one, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. Watchmen in particular has stayed with me long after I read it in my twenties. I found the clever way it weaves the ephemera of popular culture into a cohesive narrative surprisingly complex, powerful, and moving." –Production Coordinator
- "One of my all-time favorite books, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, frequently shows up on lists of banned books, and was coincidentally published by Grove Press. As a sheltered kid growing up in the suburbs, no book did more to open my eyes to the complex and unjust realities of our world, and played a large role in my intellectual growth into adulthood. So many banned books exposed me to lives, ideas, and situations I could never experience first-hand, and I’m eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to read so many in my youth." –Advertising and Direct Mail Coordinator
- Not on this year's list, but Bless Me Ultima has been and is still surfacing on assorted "Banned Book Lists" in schools. It shaped my America and those of us in those times and happenings. And it continues to do so. I first read it in a Chicano literature class at CSU Sacramento around 1973. I was an English major, with a minor in Chicano Studies back in the early 70s. This novel was a major event for us and immediately became required reading. Over the years I have recommended this book as a fellow student, teacher, friend and school board member. It's an extremely engaging coming-of-age story, a culturally hagiographical mystical tale and much, much more. Anaya's definitely one of our great story tellers. —Production Manager
- "In my 11th grade English class, we had a straightforward assignment: pick a classic to read on your own and then write an in-depth book report about it. Our teacher handed out a list of books, and a lottery system determined the order in which students selected their classic of choice. My friend Vanessa and I were the last two, the lottery’s losers. The remaining books were E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I had no strong feeling about Beloved, knew nothing of its controversial reception. But I was convinced that Forster’s novel would be crushingly boring. I begged Vanessa to take Forster. Much to my relief, she did. I grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs – white, middle-class, liberal, and nerdy. My mind was curious but my experiences and exposure were severely limited. Beloved floored me. The language was beautiful, poetic, confusing, elusive, and all intentionally so. I knew, because I’d studied them, facts about slavery. This story dropped me into a world that was entirely unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and decidedly historical, yet still delivered a very in-the-present, painful punch. I absolutely hated myself as I read. I felt complicit and ashamed. An ache stayed with me weeks after taking on Morrison, and I remember wondering if Forster’s sleep aid might have been the better choice. I still haven’t read A Passage to India, but I’ve never forgotten Beloved." —Senior Editor
- I would say that a banned book (first published by Grove Press, incidentally) is almost certainly behind most of my adult career choices, though it is not one that I myself have read. The Marquis de Sade–An Essay by Simone de Beauvoir written in 1951-52, was published in the U.S. in 1953 in a volume that included selections from Sade’s writings. To the question posed by the actual title of the essay, “Must We Burn Sade?” the answer of my mother’s parents was apparently a resounding, “Yes!” The book, which my mother, then in high school, carelessly brought home from the house of her cousin and intellectual mentor, was tossed into the furnace with some pomp and circumstance. But if my grandfather had thought to put a stop to something with that gesture, he was ultimately proven wrong. Just a few years later, at that point a French major making her way to Paris for a junior year abroad organized by Smith College, she boarded a ship for the land of libertine literature. The first book she bought there, at a bookstore around the corner from Reid Hall? Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, soon to be another Grove publication and the subject of a celebrated court case. We still had that edition in the house where I grew up in San Francisco. It was shelved alongside other titles not exactly appropriate for children, all of which I read at a very young age (in terms of their placement, they were low-growing fruit, which I see as indicating a sort of ambivalence on the part of my parents). Given that my mother ultimately went on to obtain a master’s degree in French, and I a doctorate (which naturally entailed spending many hours amongst the books housed in the once-notorious “ E nfer ” of France’s National Library) it’s hard not to see the fuss first raised by my ancestors over risqué reading as having set in motion the life choices of at least two individuals. As is so often the case, the outlawing of illicit materials made them that much more enticing." —Senior Editor
- "I remember being excited–titillated, even–to find that Lady Chatterly's Lover was on the syllabus for a Senior Seminar English class on, I think, "The Modern Novel." I didn't care much for Lawrence at the time, but was looking forward at least to reading the "naughty bits." I was surprised--but not dismayed--and bemused at the tameness of the love scenes, while at the same time seriously moved by their beauty and simplicity. Those very quality caused me to rethink, and reread, Lawrence, and I am grateful for that." —Your scribe (and Publicity Manager)
And finally, Loren Glass, author of Counterculture Colophon: Grove Press, the Evergreen Review, and the Incorporation of the Avant-Garde, suggests that we all choose a book published by the revolutionary Grove Press: “Henry Miller, Jean Genet, the Marquis de Sade, The Story of O, My Secret Life, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the list goes on and on. Barney Rosset was a true first amendment fundamentalist; he believed that anything and everything should be published, and he did his best to run his press by that philosophy. A lot of what he published was politically objectionable, some of it was just downright bad, but, as I argue in my history of Grove, freedom of speech is as much about access as about content. Thanks to Barney, we now have the freedom to read. Let’s not waste it.”
