Another Banned Books Week has come and gone here in the “Land of the Free”. It comes with a mix of emotions for those at the center of the stand against censorship because this is an issue that exists 365 days a year, not just 7. While it is...
News Flash: It’s Banned Books Week here in the United States, you know: the land of the free- at least on paper. As usual, there is plenty of media attention on the American Library Association’s annual event to highlight censorship efforts and I take bittersweet pride in reporting on...
The Wild Party is the name of a novel-length poem written by Joseph Moncure March that was immediately banned across the nation, starting in Boston upon its publication in 1928, for its decadent content. In spite of- and perhaps due to- the controversy linked to the piece it was...
Nobel and Pulitzer-winning author Toni Morrison has an impressive resume of literary hits and numerous awards, but with that comes a history of having those same novels censored. In January of 2012, the Plymouth-Canton Schools in Michigan was the latest setting in a long list of schools and libraries...
Here’s a fact for you: One in every eight births in Talladega County, Alabama is to a teen mother, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health. You might be thinking what that has to do with censorship and banned books. Well, not much- unless you happen to live...
The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library knows a thing or two about the controversy surrounding censorship. Vonnegut has found his novels on the banned books list repeatedly and, last year, writer Corey Michael Dalton spent Banned Books Week imprisoned within a jail cell made out of banned books at the...
The freedom of speech comes at a very high price for those few who dare to engage in their constitutional right to use it. For Justin Carter it cost him 5 months of his life- and could still cost him at least 10 more years. Now, a teenage coffee...
I know what some of you are thinking: “He’s finally lost his mind. Could Mr. Free Speech be condoning censorship?” You’d be jumping to an incorrect conclusion on both counts. Let me explain. We know that censorship comes in any form and across any medium. Neither is it isolated...
Growing up in the 1980s many of us had our interest in science inspired and popularized in the television show, MacGyver. Come on, who could forget such classic scenes like when he made a defibrillator out of some candlesticks, a microphone cord, and a rubber mat? Or how about...
Just about anything, in any format, can get censored or banned these days- books, television, movies, art, and music, to name a few. Now we can add classic nursery rhymes to the list of “offensive” material. The world, it seems, has completely lost its sense of reason and logic....