Argumentative Essay About Banned Books

Words: 2255
Pages: 10

As Laurie Anderson puts it in her book Speak, “Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance (“Quotes About Banned Books”).” Censorship is when something such as a book or movie is examined and then supressed. Parts of it may be suppressed while sometimes the piece as a whole is suppressed. Banning is a form of censorship. Banning is the action of prohibiting something usually from the public eye. People have typically banned books and other forms of media due to them finding something offensive in the content while others are afraid of the ideas some of them contain. Some people say this is an infringement on a citizen’s first amendment rights. Others believe that only parents should have a say in what their children can read …show more content…
After writing a book called Boy Toy about a 18 year old boy who deals with the memories of being sexually abused by a teacher when he was only twelve and later has to deal with the same teacher getting out of jail early, Barry was expecting some backlash. He received none. Instead, he received glowing reviews from librarians and magazines, but the sales of the book seemed ridiculously low for such a well liked book. That’s where self censorship comes in. Apparently librarians loved the book, but did not recommend it for students and therefore didn't buy it and put it on their shelves. Bookstores also played a part in the self censorship. Some of them did not carry the book at all while others put the book in the adult section of the store. As Barry Lyga himself described it, “It’s sort of a soft, quiet, very insidious censorship, where nobody is raising a stink, nobody is complaining, nobody is burning books. They’re just quietly making sure it doesn’t get out there (Whelan).” Self censorship is a silent form of censorship that goes unnoticed. It also raises the question of whether or not librarians should be allowed to let their own personal opinions affect what books they let into the