Oscar Wilde wrote: “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” So let’s look at a list of books that look at the world’s immorality in its eye. And books that challenge the supposed shame in wonderful things. Also check out “Literature locked up” supports an end to US Prison Book Ban for Banned Books Week, Judy Blume’s 40 Years Censorship Fight, and On The Visibility Of HIV and AIDS in Literature. Level of ban : challenged Level of ban : banned The author responded to the ban in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “When you say ‘Black Lives Matter’ to three different people, you get 30 different reactions,” Thomas says. “There are so many misunderstandings. There’s the assumption that it’s an anti-police book, when the fact is it’s anti–police brutality.” She replied in regard to the language: “There are books with way more curse words in them, for one. And two, there are 89 F-bombs in The Hate U Give. But there were 800 people killed by police officers last year alone.” Level of ban : banned Level of ban : challenged & banned The reason I think you should read this book is summed up in the author’s introduction: “This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me. I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and fee their homeland to be forgotten. One can forgive but one should never forget.” Level of ban : banned