This week the American Library Association celebrates Banned Books Week, honoring notable literature that has been challenged for controversial material. This September, PEN American Center reached out to writers, editors, literary illuminati, and PEN staff to write about the banned books that matter to them most. Below you’ll find the list of books we covered along with the writers who contributed to PEN’s Banned Books Month.
Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal
by Melissa Broder
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
by Amy King
Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago
by Matthew Zapruder
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
by Deji Olukotun
Judy Blume’s Forever
by Lydia Kiesling
D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
by John Oakes
Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”
by Larry Siems
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
by Ana Božičević
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried
by Leily Kleinbard
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
by Rob Spillman
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
by Sheila Schwartz
Robie Harris on the Banning of Her Books
Vladimir Nobokov’s Lolita
by Lydia Kiesling
James Joyce’s Ulysses
by Margaux Weisman
Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War
by Justin Alvarez
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
by Nate Brown
J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
by Steven L. Isenberg
Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
by Jasmine Davey