Exhibition: Banned Books from a Historical Perspective

Celebrated annually since 1982, Banned Books Week was created by the American Library Association (ALA) to remind Americans of their precious democratic freedom to read. Examples of well known critically acclaimed books that faced banning for various reasons (which the exhibit will explain) include One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Although the books on exhibit in Pearson Library were the targets of attempted banning, most were spared thanks to the efforts of librarians to maintain them in their collections.

Admission is free. The official dates designated by the ALA for the 2007 Banned Books Week are Sept. 29-Oct. 6; the Pearson Library exhibit will run through the month of September.