Top Banned Books In NJ: Reader Poll

By Eric Kiefer

What makes a book “obscene?”

And do you have a right to read it anyway?

For Banned Book Week 2015 – which kicked off on Sept. 27 and ends on Oct. 3 - the ACLU of New Jersey released a list of its top five banned books in the Garden State.

Here’s what the ACLU had to say about their choices:

“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” - Parents in the West Essex school district in 2015 called Junot Diaz’s “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” - a Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award – “vulgar and pornographic.”

“Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology” – The book has been the subject of bans - ironically, for being too “adult” - including in the Burlington County Public Library and Rancocas Valley Regional High School in 2010.

“Norwegian Wood” and “Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamine” - “Norwegian Wood” by acclaimed Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, for portrayal of a lesbian scene, and “Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamine,” an anti-drug memoir, for depictions of drug use. Parents asked Monroe Township in Middlesex County to ban both in 2011, and the school district pulled them.

“Catcher in the Rye” – The J.D. Salinger novel, one of the most frequently banned classics, was banned in 1977 in Pittsgrove. They eventually allowed it in the advanced placement class, although they let individual parents decide for their children whether to read it or not.

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” – The novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a tale of the Russian gulags, was banned in Mahwah in 1976, for profanity.

Which of these “banned” books is your favorite? Take the Patch reader poll below.