Or, rather, books not behind bars. Yesterday, I stumbled across a list of books that have been banned in prison systems:
Some of them have reasons that seem to make sense (the concern the book might cause racial tension among inmates), some of them are silly (really, we’re not letting inmates read sexual content?), and some have no reason given, which makes the banning of The Diary of a Young Girl seem like an odd choice.
I was also intrigued to find that the list did not include books about escaping from prison, or about building bombs, which you would expect to be pretty high on the list of books that wardens don’t want inmates to read.
I was reminded of a scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Andy and a handful of other inmates are sorting through donated books, separating them out by category - fiction or hobby, trade, and educational. One of the inmates picks up a book and reads the cover:
“The Count of Montee Crisco by Alexandree Dumass. Heh. Dumb-ass.”
“What?” Andy asks.
“Well, that’s what it says!” the first inmate protests as others start to snicker. Andy takes the book and looks at it.
“That’s Dumas,” he says, pronouncing it “doo-mah.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, then hands it back to the first inmate. “It’s about a prison break - you’ll like it.”
“We oughta file that under ‘educational,’ oughtn’t we?” Red asks.