Kurt Vonnegut wiki
Advertisement

"Why Are You Banning My Book?" is an article published in the October 1981 edition of the American School Board Journal. It features a photograph of Vonnegut by Jill Krementz.

Summary[]

Although Slaughterhouse-Five has been banned from school libraries and curricula "perhaps one hundred times... over the past dozen years", it is not because of teachers, librarians, or principals. School board officials—who are generally not educators—are often the source. However, since they are elected officials just as much as the President of the United States, they have no constitutional right to tell other people's children what reading material is acceptable. Like all citizens, they are free to say what is allowed in their homes, but to prevent access by others is a serious crime under the law. Many Americans are unhappy about this and act is if it must be a recent development or the result of political corruption rather than something that has kept all Americans free.

It's this ignorance of and even contempt for the United States Constitution that Vonnegut finds most disturbing and threatening. The lessons such school boards teach children is that a great country is one that prevents them from reading unapproved ideas. Many who have banned Slaughterhouse-Five admit they have not read it, which is curious since it is "such a laughably feeble example" of how offensive a book can be. Vonnegut can only guess that at some point a number of books with nothing to do with each other were chosen at random, since they are "singled out... in school district after school district year after year". He muses that surely some more offensive book has come out in the past dozen years. If such literary lynch mobs are allowed to destroy books as they wish, American democracy "will wind up at the bottom of a garbage can—under the ashes of books".[1]

See Also[]

  • "Dear Mr. McCarthy", a letter to the president of the Drake School Board, which had recently burned copies of Slaughterhouse-Five
  1. "Why Are You Burning My Books?", American School Board Journal, October 1981, pg. 35.
Advertisement