Banned Book Week Sept. 24-30

[Hortensis]

1. "Bans of The Handmaid's Tale aren't really just about sex or profanity"

Thanks for this post, Tanuki. When I hear about this at all, it's typically after.

Handmaid's Tale struck me as timely, as it did Newsweek writing on this last April.

"Atwood’s novel was ranked at number 37 on the American Library Association’s 1990-1999 list of the 100 most frequently challenged books." ... “Often what we’ve seen at the Office for Intellectual Freedom is that the complaint is that this is bad language, but [in] The Handmaid’s Tale the language is not nearly as bad as we find in many other novels” that aren’t frequently challenged, LaRue says. “So there’s something else that’s going on there. And I think that the surges that happen of complaints at these schools are really around discomfort with message,” he adds. “People don’t want to see message so they complain about something else. They say well this is about sex. Well no it’s about more than sex, it’s about the harvesting of women’s bodies.”

http://www.newsweek.com/challenges-and-bans-handmaids-tale-arent-really-just-about-sex-or-profanity-591907

And a few other little issues, like depictions of religion and authoritarian government...