I received an e-mail from Penguin Random House today with a list of banned books I might want to read. As I went through the list, I found four that I had read. I can add a few more to their list from my favorites. It surprises me when I discover what books are deemed offensive by groups around the world.

The four from the list? Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984, and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. I added Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn from my Uncle Sam. I’ll begin with the oldest books. Mark Twain is famous for writing period pieces. Most were from the time in which he lived.

Recently some of Twain’s books have been removed from libraries because of the language used in them. The common term for the word that is objected to is the “N” word. It is considered derogatory in our culture. In Samuel Clemens’s day, it was a word used to describe certain people. Even in that time, some used that term to denigrate others.

These books are valuable for showing us how minorities were abused in the past. These practices need to be corrected in our world. Removing offensive language from the culture can be done without eliminating non-offensive literature. We should agree on which word is acceptable in our society and positively descriptive of this people group.

George Orwell wrote 1984 to show that a tyrannical government can control its citizens in many significant ways. We have the wonderful phrase “Big brother is watching you” from this amazing story. In the 1940s the technology to watch us 24/7 was not yet available. Today it is.

Why it and Animal Farm should be banned is not obvious to me. A story about a society inhabited by species of animals is nothing new to us now. Orwell was trying to teach us about prejudice and trying to control others for our own purposes. There is an alternative message here. Take care of others and you help yourself.

I first met the writings of Kurt Vonnegut in 1973 at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. I was a sophomore, and they offered their first class in science fiction as literature. Our instructor was a Vonnegut fan, and I was not at first. Slaughterhouse has never been a favorite. Again, I do not fully understand why they should be banned. My guess is that someone like me did not enjoy reading it.

You guessed wrong if you believe The Invisible Man is a sci-fi book. I first read this book for a literature class at SMSU. Ralph Ellison writes a memoir of what it was like growing up as a young black man in white America. As you can notice from the title his main observation is that being black made him invisible to many.

The story that I tell most often about this book is sitting in the student union reading it when a nice-looking young lady approached me and began talking to me about it. After a short conversation, I realized she had mistaken it for the H.C. Wells novel. The kicker was that she was African American. I never told her about her mistake. We enjoyed several other conversations that year. When I transferred to another university, we lost track of each other.

As a writer I recommend books I have read, and I also advise against others that I felt were a waste of time. I do not like the concept of banning books for any reason. My wife and I did try to control what our daughters read at each stage as they matured.

I do not support the bill currently in the Missouri legislature that could penalize libraries for offering certain tomes to students whose parents do not believe that they are age appropriate. This type of legislation has failed to reach the floor for a vote in previous sessions. It should fail this year as well.

©Copyright 2023 by Charles Kensinger