Hacker News Books

> A school board in Alaska has got more than it bargained for after pulling classics including The Great Gatsby and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from the school curriculum, with members of the local community offering incentives to students to read the books anyway – including $100 (£80) prizes and free mac’n’cheese.

[snip]

> The books remain in school libraries, but will no longer be taught.

> According to a flier from the district’s Office of Instruction, Angelou’s memoir had been challenged over its “sexually explicit material, such as the sexual abuse the author suffered as a child, and its ‘anti-white’ messaging”, while Fitzgerald’s classic novel was pulled for “language and sexual references”. Invisible Man was marked for containing “language, rape and incest”, while Catch-22 was included for its violence, “a handful of racial slurs” and the fact the characters “speak with typical ‘military men’ misogyny and racist attitudes of the time”.

Here's the full flier as a PDF:

https://go.boarddocs.com/ak/matsu/Board.nsf/files/BNQSWL743B...

Huh.

I was a voracious reader as a child, though I somewhat fell out of the habit once I reached adulthood - other pursuits, chiefly tech, took precedence for me once I was able to afford them on my own. I still read far more than the average; apparently around one in four Americans haven't picked up a book in any form in the past year[0]!

I've read all of these books except "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". I have a vague memory of feeling like the Maya Angelou's poetry was somewhat forced on me in school, and as a result wasn't particularly interested in any of her works. This article lead me to do a bit of reading about who she was and the experiences in her life that were included in her "Caged Bird."

I had no idea she spent much of her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas. That's especially surprising to me because I grew up and went to school in Arkansas - K-1 in Plainview (in central AR) and 2-12 in Lead Hill (in northern AR). I don't know that I've ever been to Stamps but I do know that several of my ancestors lived in that area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This is the second time I've felt that the government schools that I attended have done me a significant disservice w/r/t literature: the first was when I discovered "Summer of My German Soldier[1]," another book centered around significant historical events in my home state.

I just bought "Caged Bird" on Kobo, and plan to read it in the next couple of weeks. Afterward, I'll likely add it to my list of books I'd like my daughters to read.

0: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/26/who-doesnt-...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_My_German_Soldier