The Most Controversial Fiction Books: From Denial to Glorification

There are some books that have been challenged so many times that they have actually been banned from certain libraries. Each year, the ALA's (American Library Association) Office for Intellectual Freedom records hundreds of attempts by individuals and groups to have books removed from libraries shelves and from classrooms.
Some books attract a lot of controversy and even calls for banning the book from members of the public or those in religious or political organizations. Some qualities common in the most controversial books include religious degradation or slurs, foul language, violence, racism, extreme political views, and vivid or graphic sexual descriptions.

Here are some of the most controversial books that have fueled the flames of controversy ever since they were published.

Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)

This propagandist tale of cruelty against African-American slaves is legendary for not only stirring up abolitionist sentiment, but also really ticking off the slaveholding South.
In response to its incredible popularity – and what they claimed to be misinformation – slavery supporters began their own literary campaign, which included titles like Aunt Phillis’s Cabin; or, Southern Life As It Is and Uncle Robin in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom Without One in Boston.
Despite the criticism that it helped cement stock characters like the mammy, the pickaninny, and the tragic mulatto into American consciousness, Stowe’s novel has had massive staying power.

Books vs E-Books

How to make our children enjoy reading?

Judging from the look on my 10 and 11 year old children’s faces, I would have guessed it was Christmas.  To the contrary, their delight was the result of a long overdue trip to our local public library.  I had procrastinated and postponed for quite some time due to the anticipated resentment it would induce, but seized an opportune moment to create a few hours of quality time between grandparents, children and I before the former boarded a plane to return home after a wonderful two week visit.   As I registered for our library cards, the kids could scarcely contain their excitement.  And as soon as they put their John Hancock’s on the contract, they ran full speed towards the children’s section.  Evidently, I’ll need to revisit the finer points of library etiquette before our next visit.  

Modern fiction: The Outsider/The Stranger (1942)

Widely considered to be an Absurdist rather than an Existentialist novel, Albert Camus' brilliant The Outsider (or The Stranger) is, in essence, an attempt to describe his belief in man's alienation from his fellow man except as part of an uncaring, amoral, godless universe.

Meursault, a pied-noir (like Camus, a French inhabitant of Algeria), fails to cry at his mother's funeral. He is alienated from the proceedings, able only to experience relative truths by his physical senses. 

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have happened yesterday."

He befriends Raymond and helps him to dispose of a mistress, whose brother confronts the pair, and Raymond is injured in a knife fight. Meursault returns to the beach and shoots the brother dead, in an act not of revenge, but induced by the sun's glare. He is tried for murder where his dedication to truth leads to his conviction. He is convicted for his inability to express emotion, especially remorse. As an atheist he is outraged by the chaplain's attempt to convert him and thus subvert the earthly justice in which he believes so passionately.

Psychological self-examinations are common in French first-person narratives, but Camus’s The Outsider gave the technique of psychological depth a new twist at the time it was published. Instead of allowing the protagonist to detail a static psychology for the reader, the action and behavior were given to the reader to decipher. Camus did this because he felt that “psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.”

Louis Braille sign system

Reading the Braille book

In 1824 Louis Braille, a French student and later teacher who was blind himself, invented the system that enables blind persons to read. It was based on the night writing principle of Charles Barbier, a captain in the French cavalry, who used a combination of 12 dots that were embossed, or pressed, into paper to allow military communications to be read at night. Braille's system used six raised dots arranged in cells of three rows of two. Dots were arranged in different combinations that blind people feel with their fingertips. The patterns formed a code that spelled out letters and numbers and symbolized concepts.