<<\/p>\n
Many books have been freed from censorship by courts, James Joyce\u2019s Ulysses and D.H. Lawrence\u2019s Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover being only two of the most noteworthy. Aycock, a North Carolina writer and librarian who has devoted much of his life to the freedom of literary access, argues that another case matters. In 1982, the Supreme Court heard Island Trees v. Pico. \u201cIn the process,\u201d he notes, \u201cit gave us the first\u2014and so far, only\u2014library book ban case to be decided by the United States Supreme Court.\u201d The case dates to 1975, when the Island Trees Union Free School District, on Long Island, sought to ban 11 books from its libraries, including Kurt Vonnegut\u2019s Slaughterhouse-Five, Richard Wright\u2019s Black Boy, and Oliver LaFarge\u2019s Laughing Boy. \u201cNo one had complained about these books,\u201d he writes. \u201cThere had been no challenges, no letters to the editor, no public shouting matches. \u2026The board simply acted. Like a sleeper cell.\u201d Was removing these books a violation of the First Amendment? The court split. But what matters is the larger question of how potentially transgressive or challenging content can help young people make personal and social decisions. Each of the books in the case gets a full reading here, and the payoff is this: \u201cTeens want sexual information. They need it. \u2026When people search for information, they usually have one of three goals: to seek answers, to reduce uncertainty, or to make sense of a situation.\u201d These goals, for Aycock, constitute the social function of literature. They also constitute the personal impetus for his book. \u201cI entered middle school in 1985 and never received any sex education at all,\u201d he writes. \u201cIs it any wonder I turned to novels?\u201d What makes the book more than a screed against the censor is the author\u2019s unique personal investment. As he says, books teach what cannot be taught in class. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
< Many books have been freed from censorship by courts, James Joyce\u2019s Ulysses and D.H. Lawrence\u2019s Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover being only two of the most noteworthy. Aycock, a North Carolina writer and librarian who has devoted much of his life to the freedom of literary access, argues that another case matters. In 1982, the Supreme […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6555"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}