Few things are more tempting than those things deemed “verboten”. It has always made me angry when someone (or some group or organization), decided on my behalf that I needed to be protected from reading a particular book. When I was a kid, finding out that a book was banned somewhere was enough for me to decide I wanted to read it, just to spite the people who banned it. I have always felt that if you don’t like a book, for whatever reason, then don’t read it. Or, read it, and then tell others why you didn’t like it. But whatever you do, don’t actively decide for the world, (or, in most cases, for your kid’s school), that not one person should ever get the chance to read this particular book, and make their own decisions about it. Who made you the King of Books anyway?

So, in an effort to thwart those who want to become “Big Brother”, here is a book that tends to get banned, and why you should read it anyway. Knowledge is power, people.

(1)I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

What This Book Is About
This book is a biography. These events actually happened to a real person. Angelou starts her story when she is about three years old, and on a train with her brother on their way to their grandmother’s house, where they will grow up. I found this book to be really sad. Tragedy after tragedy happens, starting when she is still a child, and continuing until she reaches early adulthood. It’s about racism, and class-ism, and abuse of power. But it’s also about family, and love, and faith, and persevering.

Why This Book Gets Banned
Maya gets molested and then raped by a stepfather when she is still too young of a child to realize exactly what is going on. The book describes what happened from her point of view. It’s clear to the reader, even if it was unclear to Maya, exactly what happened. There is a court case that follows, and that again brings up details of the rape, and also Maya’s mixed emotions and confusion about it. It’s not an easy read. If you are an abuse or rape survivor, parts of this book might be especially difficult for you to read. Later on in the book, there are descriptions of some teenage characters having sex. It’s not very graphic, but it is still clear what the two teens who are underneath a makeshift tent in the woods are doing. People who want to ban this book, particularly if they want to ban it from a High School, use the label “mature content” or say the book is “too graphic” for teens to read and then discuss in a classroom setting.

Here Is My Source

Why You Should Read This Book
Despite the things that go wrong in Angelou’s life, (and there are many heartbreaking things that happened), there is still hope. To me, that was the point. No matter how bad life gets, there is still hope. You can’t simply give up and die when things look bleak. You just need to find the one sliver of good in a situation, and hold on tight to that. Belief in God helps, at least, for Angelou. In today’s world of instant gratification and over prescribed antidepressant medications, this is a message people may benefit from hearing. If your life right now is not going so well, you can read what Angelou went through, and maybe decide that things aren’t so bad for you after all in comparison. You can learn a new way to cope with your problems. If your life is going great, then you can read this book of tragedies, and count your blessings. If you ban the book because of the negative content, you never give someone the chance to hear the positive message. And that would truly be a tragedy.