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To Kill a Mockingbird Removed from Mississippi School Reading List

By October 16, 2017Literature, News

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s classic novel about racism in the American South has been removed from a school’s reading list because language in the book “makes people uncomfortable.”

The Biloxi school board this week decided that the novel should be removed from the curriculum, though it will still be available in the school’s library. The vice-president of the school board told the Sun Herald newspaper that they had received several complaints about the book because the language it uses makes people feel uncomfortable.

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel is often challenged, as books with an uncomfortable message often are. To date 40 million copies of To Kill a Mockingbird have been sold, it’s won a Pulitzer Prize, among many others, has been voted the greatest novel of all time many times, and the 1962 movie adaptation won three Oscars.

It seems the decision to pull the book was made mid-lesson plan, as the book’s repeated use of the word nigger was causing problems. It’s a disturbing example of censorship for this often challenged book, especially as the book’s message is one of the best known examples of anti-prejudice literature.

We hope parents in the school district make the effort to read the book with their children, because while the school board may have decided to remove it, we know from To Kill a Mockingbird that the one thing that doesn’t abide to majority rule is a person’s conscience.



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