On Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
Throughout the novel, Vonnegut punctuates each horror with the words, “And so it goes.” Nothing protects the Billy Pilgrims of the world from brutality. Innocence is no protection. More
Robie Harris On the Banning of Her Books
How can we hold back writing about powerful feelings, or not include certain information children crave and have the right to know, simply because we are afraid? More
On James Joyce’s Ulysses
Until I graduated from college—and had to find a job, get my heart broken, bear the burden of being a twenty-something during recession, watch friends go to rehab, watch… More
On Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War
The Chocolate War (along with its sequel) has been consistently challenged and criticized by schools, libraries, and parents for its language, sexual content, violence, and bleak message. At the… More
On John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
The story is a tragedy predicated on the idea that working one’s fingers to the bone for little pay and no security is fundamentally corrupt. It’s a tragedy about… More
On J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye
What Salinger gave to us were memorable meeting points between innocence and the world’s soiling stains. There was so much authenticity in his stance and sympathy that his artificialities… More
On Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited
You could make a case for a kind of parallel between the events of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited and the fact of it being challenged in Alabama schools for… More
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