Absolutely True Diary not Banned, Despite Protests

success has occurred in the continuing saga of parents trying to ban books they find too risque from schools.  Antioch Community High School has decided to keep Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian on it’s required summer reading list for its 400 incoming freshmen. Parents have complained about the book containing bad language and frequent mentions of masturbation (which is, as Michael Shaub over at Bookslut said, “a practice which God knows no 14-year-old is familiar with”).

The school board and superintendent of the school decided to keep the book on the reading list, citing its value as an educational tool.

This whole event seems to have sparked some dialogue in the book world about censorship and book ratings. According to Literago, one of the angry parents suggested that books should come with ratings just like cds or movies. This provokes an interesting set of questions. In music, Parental Advisory stickers are placed on albums containing high amounts of offensive language or lyrics depicting sexual circumstances. As hairy as determining what music contains excessive language or sex, I feel that it would be even more impossible to do this fairly with books. Almost all books in the cannon contain some sort of sexual encounter and averse language. Are we going to warn parents to keep their kids from reading authors like Shakespeare or D.H. Lawrence or Hemingway or Marquez? It seems like foolishness to me.