Some RWers Want Maya Angelou Book Banned In Wisconsin School

[Dinger]

*I posted this in the Wisconsin forum too, but thought it deserved attention here as well.

I e-mailed Oprah about it. Sheesh!
http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?...



Posted November 24, 2006

Fond du Lac parents want controversial book out of class
Angelou account of rape stirs objections

The Associated Press


FOND DU LAC — Some Fond du Lac parents have asked school officials to remove former U.S. poet laureate Maya Angelou's autobiography from the high school curriculum.


Students at Fond du Lac High School read "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" in sophomore advanced English classes.


But some parents have objected to passages that describe Angelou's rape and subsequent unwanted pregnancy. About 80 people attended a meeting Tuesday at the school this week to discuss the book and the request to remove it.


School Superintendent Gregory Maass said the initial complaint came from one family.


"We had a mother and father and student who questioned the book," he said. "The high school provided the student with an alternative book." . . .

[Dinger]

1. Replying To My Own Post Just To Reflect:

ONE parent complains, AND an alertative book was provided, but THAT WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH?

Damn, I hope the district doesn't cave in.

[MadHound]

2. Always a good way to have HS students read a book

Ban it, and they are drawn to the forbidden, easily available at the public library, like flies to honey:shrug:

[Miss Chybil]

3. Perhaps these 80 people should move to the M.E. There are lots

places to live there where they tell you what you can and can't read. I think they would find it very comforting.

[nealmhughes]

4. Maya Angelou has become the bete noir of fundamentalists. The small part of lesbianism

in the book, the part about her rape as a young girl and her general hard life seems to disgust them rather than to inspire them.

This a modern classic, and the fact that she is emerita poet laureat of the USA ought to silence the Talibangelists, but it doesn't. Evidently, in Happy Prerapture Land, one has not to bother with realities of life. Exposing them is "dangerous."

There was a large movement to ban Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton's books fifteen-twenty years ago, and Chris Crutcher's now and, of course the entire Harry Potter series.

That is why we people with MLS or MLIS after their names have a Banned Book Week every year and publicize the banning attmepts loudly and often. Hell hath no fury like a librarian censored! Oh, yes, we appear to be a meek lot with our hip thrift shop retrowear and Birks and soulpatches and NPR listening on the way to work agenda...but scratch the surface and we are a vicious lot, long to hold a grudge and fast to attack in number.

Book banners know not what they are doing to their children and society in general. Books are simultaneously both the most innocent of entities and the most dangerous, for they force one to think yet do not a whit of harm to anyone.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. idiots. Reading that book saved me from being raped... in a round about way

Reading her account was so emotional that it always stayed with me. I was in a few situations that got 'scary' and I would not have had the foresight to remove myself from the situation without that scene playing in the back of my head.

[stepnw1f]

6. RWers are Nothing But Braindead Bigots (nt)

[madrchsod]

7. advanced english....what are they supposed to read?

my little goat?

[Igel]

8. My undergrad literature prof always warned us about books

that were either too violent or too sex-oriented. Any student that wanted to could freely opt out; the canon, both traditional and extended, was rich enough that one could easily take two literature courses per semester for a decade, avoid such books, and not run out of stuff worth reading.

Warn the students, provide them with alternatives and work for when the class is discussing the rejected work, and be done with it. No shortage of English-language literature worth reading.