Meanwhile Evan Rakoff Smith and Laura Miller convinced the book’s publisher, Vintage, to make one hundred copies free available for interested students. The American Library Association, the PEN American Center, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Kids’ Right to Read Project quickly campaigned for the school board to reverse its ban. The timing couldn’t be better, since this is the middle of Banned Books Week and we all needed something to do. She pulled all of the juiciest passages out to support her case, which might explain why the nearest bookstore ran out of its ten copies fast. The novel was banned last week after parent Kimiyutta Parson complained about the language, rape and incest, and even its depiction of one character’s “loss of innocence.” Juniors at Randleman High School were allowed to choose Ellison’s novel as part of a summer reading assignment, and Parson, the parent of a junior, wrote the board a twelve-page letter of protest. Another member of the board, Tracy Boyles, said he had a hard time explaining his vote for the ban to his twelve-year-old daughter. “I felt like I came to a conclusion too quickly,” he said to Reuters. Mason also said he did not see any “literary value” in the text, though it won the National Book Award in 1953, was deemed one of the “Books That Shaped America” by the Library of Congress, and was listed as of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by Time magazine.īoard member Matthew Lambeth voted to reverse the ban this week, saying he had now read the book twice and apologized for not consulting with teachers before casting his vote the first time around. Only board member Gary Mason deemed the book “not appropriate for young teenagers,” according to David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times.
Wednesday night, the Randolph County School Board reversed its ban on Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, just nine days after they had removed the book from school library shelves. 2023 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony.
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