This Banned Books Friday, y’all, as we are nearing the end of this project, I am grouping together two books that have nothing in common – that we might finish this up next week and get on to our new banned books project I am so excited for. ❤

This week’s books are Richard Wright’s Native Son and Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. Both of these excellent works were revisits from my school days – and I definitely recommend reading them if you haven’t.

Wright’s Native Son has been banned for “objectionable language,” as well as “sex, violence, and profanity,” at times, and those are mild descriptions of the contents of this book. It is powerful – and the points Wright is making are important. The violence and profanity in Books One and Two are the proofs of the injustices he is speaking to in Book Three – and the fact that this offends the sensibilities of some doesn’t change that it is basic existence for others.

Again, it is a painful but important read.

Our second banned book this week could not be more relevant to our times in that it is one about good old political corruption – Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men. Apparently its ban was due to a “depressing view of life” and “immoral situations,” which is both fair enough and just funny to me. That said, it is beautifully written and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. Again, if you haven’t read this one, do.

We now just have two more books and we’ll be on to our next banned books project. I am stoked!

Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Grace and Blessings.

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Awakening – Kate Chopin

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence

Animal Farm – George Orwell

1984 – George Orwell

Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston

A Separate Peace – John Knowles

Lolita – Vladmir Nabokov

A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway

The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner

LOTR – The Fellowship of The Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien

LOTR – The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien

LOTR – The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

Lord of the Flies – William Golding

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey

Beloved – Toni Morrison

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

The Call of the Wild – Jack London

Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin

Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence

Ulysses – James Joyce

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence

Naked Lunch – William Burroughs

The Satanic Verses (substitute Knife) – Salman Rushdie

The Jungle – Upton Sinclair

Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

Native Son – Richard Wright

All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren