Banned Books Week 2015: Frequently Challenged Classics

It is alleged the book is “racially insensitive,” “oppressive,” and “perpetuates racism.”

The book has been challenged or removed in at least eight different states because of objections to “violent and sexually graphic” content.

Banned for obscene language, other complaints have said the book went against objectors religious beliefs.

Kern County, California has the great honor both of being the setting of Steinbeck’s novel and being the first place where it was banned (1939). Objections to profanity—especially goddamn and the like—and sexual references continued from then into the 1990s.

Challenged for racism, homosexuality, sexual content, offensive language and unsuited to age group.

Among a list of books banned in Arizona because they advocate the overthrow of the United States, promote racial resentment, or emphasize students’ ethnicity rather than their individuality.

It was challenged at the Baptist College in South Carolina because of the book’s language and mere references to sex.

Frequently removed from classrooms and school libraries because it is “unacceptable,” “obscene,” “blasphemous,” “negative,” “foul,” “filthy,” and “undermines morality.”

Parents of students in Advanced English classes in a Virginia high school objected to language and sexual content in this book.

Critics have called it a degrading, profane and racist work that “promotes white supremacy.”

Parental complaints are lodged against the book because of its violence, sexual content and discussion of bestiality.

Allen Ginsberg’s boundary-pushing poetic works were challenged because of descriptions of homosexual acts.

Banned because of racism, insensitivity, nudity and religious viewpoint.

The book was criticized for being immoral and scandalous.

It was rejected or removed because of its “profanity and sexual references.”

The book was banned because it contains inappropriate/vulgar language and behavior by young boys--including violent tendencies.