Banned books brought back to life

In celebration of Banned Books Week, the White Dog Cafe hosted an evening of storytelling and engaging discussion last week. Larry Frankel, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, encouraged the audience to delight in the "freedom to read what we want." He said he hoped the readings included in the evening would both illuminate civil rights issues and entertain. Frankel led off the evening by sharing a passage from Catcher in the Rye, a novel attacked for its profanity and references to premarital sex and alcohol. High schools, which most commonly read J.D. Salinger's book, have attempted to ban it as recently as 1994. Astounded by the controversy, Frankel said he revisited his "glory days of youth and rebellion" through the novel's pages. Ken Bingham, an English instructor at Drexel University and a local writer, offered his selection of banned material found in the American Heritage Dictionary. Due to "obscene" words such as "intercourse" and the entry of God written with a lowercase "g," the dictionary is banned in several locations, including a township in New Jersey, Bingham said. The Bible is banned in schools in West Shore, Pa., near Harrisburg, due to its "language and stories that are inappropriate for children of any age, including tales of incest and murder," Bingham said, reading from the school district's policy. Toby Venier, a desktop publisher who works for Frankel, read a passage from To Kill a Mockingbird, another text often read in public high schools. Banned in Indiana Township, Pa. -- near Pittsburgh -- for allegedly promoting institutionalized racism, Venier read a passage which he said contradicted this very claim. It stated that evil is not race-specific, but universal to humanity. Jennifer Toner, who described herself as "none but the lover of books," recited several poems from Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic. This children's book has been challenged because it encourages destructive acts, like the breaking of dishes so children would not have to dry them, according to Toner. Also, some say Silverstein's poems glorifies Satan, suicide, cannibalism and disobedience, Toner said. After the readings, audience members shared their own favorite banned passages. College junior Adam Eisner read "Harrison Bergeron" from Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House. "Harrison Bergeron" is an imaginative story of the government's attempt to create an equal society through handicaps. Eisner said a teacher was actually dismissed after assigning Vonnegut's book to her high school class, based on its supposed promotion of killing off the elderly and free sex. This year was a success in the fight against the government's power to regulate literary choices, Frankel said. The ACLU successfully challenged government censorship in issues such as abortion on the Internet while fighting the Communications Decency Act. "Freedom to read, freedom to think, freedom to write -- that is what it really means to be an American," Frankel said.