Alaska school board votes to remove 5 books — including 'The Great Gatsby' — from curriculum (2024)

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Alaska school board votes to remove 5 books — including 'The Great Gatsby' — from curriculum? ›

An Alaska school board voted last week to remove five books, including classic American works like “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and “The Great Gatsby,” from its curriculum for high school English electives because of sexual references, graphic language and other concerns.

The reasons for the banning of The Great Gatsby were cited by the Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough school district in Alaska as containing "sexual references and explicit language".

The Great Gatsby tops the list of books with attempted bans. According to the ALA, the most serious challenge came in 1987 from the Baptist College in Charleston, South Carolina, which objected to “language and sexual references in the book.”

Why has 'Looking for Alaska' been banned? An American Library Association news release lists two reasons for challenging the book: claims that it is sexually explicit; and LGBTQIA+ content. Green disagrees with opponents' thoughts on the the sexual experiences depicted in his writing.

The Hate U Give has been widely banned in schools in the United States due to its depictions of racism and anti-police views.

The 12 titles are Slaughterhouse Five, Persepolis, Persepolis-the Story of a Childhood, Kite Runner, Drama, Crank, Freedom Writers Diary, Nineteen Minutes, This One Summer, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Sold, The Handmaids Tale, and The Lovely Bones.

Some school districts aimed to ban the book from schools because they believed the book has unsuitable topics for children to read about. One major complaints was that the story portrayed talking animals that can communicate and act just like humans.

Though The Great Gatsby was written nearly a century ago, its key themes and ideals still apply today. Students have the opportunity to learn about history and society's foundation through literature. The characters that Scott Fitzgerald illustrates have clear archetypes that can be related to by all.

It frequently came under fire in later decades. In 1957, the director of Detroit's libraries banned The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for having "no value" for children of today, for supporting "negativism", and for bringing children's minds to a "cowardly level".

Why was Captain Underpants banned? ›

He later achieved international recognition with his "Captain Underpants" series, which was adapted as a film. The "Captain Underpants" books are among the American Library Association's list of the top 100 most banned and challenged books from the past decade, due to complaints from parents about violent imagery.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding was challenged in the Waterloo Iowa schools in 1992 because of profanity, lurid passages about sex, and statements defamatory to minorities, God, women, and the disabled.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is regularly on the banned books list put out by the American Library Association. It has been banned because of vulgarity, racism, and its treatment of women. The challenges don't seem to go away as time goes on; even in the twenty-first century, the book is still being challenged.

There were concerns over the violence and increasingly dark tone of the later books but most of the censorship attempts were for religious reasons. It was also banned in some Christian schools in the UK.

As The Banned Books Project points out, there have been “different reasons for the book being banned, including religious objections, hom*osexuality, violence, African history, rape, incest, drug abuse, explicit language, and sexual scenes.” The bans and challenges to The Color Purple, as we know, have nothing to do ...

So, why was "The Catcher in the Rye" banned? For plenty of reasons. Critical readers have accused it of being blasphemous, racist, misogynist, and ableist. Many parents have worried that the overwhelmingly negative content of Caulfield's stream of consciousness will be a bad influence on their children.

Gatsby made his fortune through bootlegging. He sold alcohol through a drugstore that was front for illegal activities.

A written challenge was submitted to the School District Of Manawa (WI). The complaint stated that Looking for Alaska contains sexually explicit encounters in detail, bad language, and normalizes dishonesty, hazing, underage drinking, and smoking. The book was retained.

That is why I feel that it is best read by an older audience. The novel is meant to be a satire on the rich lives of the jazz era, but the moral lesson is lost on young audiences, who will be most affected by tone of flippancy and disgust toward women and sexual relationships.

So, why was "The Catcher in the Rye" banned? For plenty of reasons. Critical readers have accused it of being blasphemous, racist, misogynist, and ableist. Many parents have worried that the overwhelmingly negative content of Caulfield's stream of consciousness will be a bad influence on their children.