Invisible Man Banned
 

Invisible Man Banned: Ralph Ellison's Landmark Novel Banned From School Libraries

A lack of "literary value" has apparently left Ralph Ellison's landmark 1952 novel, Invisible Man banned from school libraries in Randolph County, N.C., the Asheboro Courier-Tribune reports.

According to the Tribune, a parent of an eleventh grader wrote the school district expressing her disapproval of the book's availability to students stating:

The narrator writes in the first person, emphasizing his individual experiences and his feelings about the events portrayed in his life. This novel is not so innocent; instead, this book is filthier, too much for teenagers. You must respect all religions and point of views when it comes to the parents and what they feel is age appropriate for their young children to read, without their knowledge. This book is freely in your library for them to read.
As the school district's policy requires, the parent's complaints lead to votes on the school and district levels. Both held that the book should remain available to students in the library. However, in a 5-2 vote, the school board voted to ban the book, with one board member, Gary Mason, stating, "I didn’t find any literary value."

Mason's blunt assessment however, runs counter to decades of intellectual criticism of the novel, which won the 1953 National Book Award for fiction, beating out Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

In 1995, writing for the New York Times, Roger Rosenblatt praised the novel as a masterpiece.

"Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," which won the National Book Award in 1953, was instantly recognized as a masterpiece, a novel that captured the grim realities of racial discrimination as no book had, " Rosenblatt wrote. "Its reputation grew as Ellison retreated into a mythic literary silence that made his one achievement definitive."

Including the book in its list of 100 Best English Language Novels since 1923, Time literary critic Lev Grossman also expressed great admiration for Ellison's work.

"Evenhandedly exposing the hypocrisies and stereotypes of all comers, Invisible Man is far more than a race novel, or even a bildungsroman. It’s the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century."

Still, this kind of high praise wasn't enough to prevent the book from being banned from school libraries in Randolph County, N.C.

So with the internet, racy movies, and tv advertising depicting everything from dildos to limp dicks, they are going to ban this book..Makes sense...:spock:

That guys needs to immediately be fired

Safe from pain. And truth, And choice. And other poison devils~

:facepalm:

Decision being reconsidered.

NC school board lifts 'Invisible Man' book ban

A North Carolina school board reversed its decision to ban Ralph Ellison's classic novel "Invisible Man" from school libraries after a fierce public backlash.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A North Carolina school board lifted its ban of Ralph Ellison's classic novel "Invisible Man" from school libraries on Wednesday after being ridiculed by residents and undercut by a giveaway of the book at a local bookstore.

The widely publicized ban by the Randolph County Board of Education in central North Carolina came after a high school junior's mother complained that the sexual content in the book, chosen for a summer reading program, was "not so innocent" and "too much for teenagers."

Five of the board's seven elected officials agreed on Sept. 16 to bar the novel, with one member saying he "didn't find any literary value" in Ellison's account of African-American alienation in the United States in the early 20th century.

But after a fierce backlash by hundreds of citizens, the board held a special meeting on Wednesday and voted 6-1 to put the book back on school library shelves.

"I felt like I came to a conclusion too quickly," board member Matthew Lambeth said of his earlier vote to bar the book.

In an interview, Lambeth said he has read the book twice and enjoyed it. He changed his vote, he said, after being convinced by local educators that the novel's educational value outweighed his concerns about the appropriateness of certain sexual themes for teenagers.

Ellison achieved worldwide fame and critical success with "Invisible Man," which won the National Book Award for fiction in 1953 and was named by the Library of Congress as one of the "Books That Shaped America." Ellison died in 1994.

"Invisible Man" is commonly included in the curriculum of U.S. high school and college literature classes.

Word of the ban, which spread quickly thanks to national news coverage and social media, inspired one former resident to ask the book's publisher to donate free copies to area high-school students.

Vintage Books agreed, and a giveaway of "Invisible Man" began on Wednesday at a local Books-A-Million store, said Evan Smith Rakoff, a New York-based writer and Web editor who grew up in Randolph County.

"I think banning any book is abhorrent, but banning a book that's so undeniably great is incredibly upsetting," Rakoff said.

http://news.msn.com/pop-culture/nc-s...snews11&stay=1

I support the ban. He wasn't a very good superhero. Only one power and it wasn't all that great. Plus he had to be naked for it to work, no wonder the parents were upset. They should be reading Batman graphic novels instead.

Thanks a bunch for reminding me what a hippy-dippy piece of shit that movie was.

The parent who suggested the ban in the first place is a moron.

Too much sexual content for a teenager to handle? JFC, Ellison describes a naked lady with an American flag painted on her and I don't recall the scene where the Narrator cuckolds the white dude's wife as pretty graphic. You have to be kidding me.

Too much for a teenager to handle... does the **** realize her son or daughter has *probably* been sending or receiving pictures of genitalia for the last four or five years (unless he/she is a total ****ing loser) ??

I just read this in College, well "Battle Royal". I actually have to write my first essay on this and "Barn Burning". Had not one clue there was more to it than that. I need to check this out.

ROFL

I don't think that guy actually read the book.

Like the originally parent complaining, probable never got past the fight scene at the start.

Yea, I don't remember that book for the sexuality. That was tame.