Tuesday, September 24, 2013

A Rationale

I'll be:
In a 5-2 vote this week, the Randolph County School Board of Education banned the book from county school libraries after the mother of an 11-grader complained. The mother claimed Ellison's work was inappropriate for 11th grade summer reading, citing both language and subject matter.

In response, Board members each received a copy of the novel to assess for themselves. According to The Courier-Tribune of Asheboro, N.C., at Monday's meeting, the board chair rejected "Invisible Man" as a "hard read," and another member stated he couldn't "find any literary value" in it.
I await the ban of all textbooks.

7 comments:

fish said...

what good is the invisible man? You can't even see him in the book...

Substance McGravitas said...

You do get nice clean white white white pages, so I don't get the ban at all.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Perhaps they can substitute something wholesome, like a story about Caspar the Friendly Ghost.
~

mikey said...

It's a hard read.

With words n shit...

M. Bouffant said...

It won't stop at textbooks.

As evidenced elsewhere, certain types are attracted to school boards & school district admin., esp. in the Bible Belt.

M. Bouffant said...

W/ Casper: "a witch hexes Wendy so all her furniture runs away."

M. Bouffant said...

In honor of Banned Books Week, we're publishing our original reviews of frequently banned books. In this brief look at Invisible Man — Ellison's only novel published in his lifetime — the reviewer notes that Ellison is a master "at catching the shape, flavor and sound of the common vagaries of human character."