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Banned Book Club reads literature schools won’t teach

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Courtesy of Mary Jo Podgurski

When the Common Ground Teen Center announced its new Banned Book Club on social media, the community hurried to purchase the books on the club’s Amazon Wish List. Titles arrived at the center, including “Catch-22,” “Ulysses” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

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Courtesy of Mary Jo Podgurski

When Podgurski checked the mail late last week, she was pleasantly surprised to find dozens of books for the Common Ground Teen Center’s Banned Book Club had arrived. Within an hour of sharing the club’s Amazon Wish List online, the community had purchased all 32 titles.

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Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter

Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter

Among those books banned by school districts nationwide is Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” which was adapted for the screen in 1998. The book appears on Banned Book Club lists around the country.

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Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter

Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter

Local teens were moved to action when news of a Tennessee school district’s unanimous vote to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel “Maus” made headlines last week ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“One of the young people wrote to me on Thursday,” said Mary Jo Podgurski, who runs Common Ground Teen Center in downtown Washington. “This young person was upset over ‘Maus.’ That was the catalyst.”

The catalyst for a Banned Book Club, where young adults will read and discuss titles erased from curriculums at schools nationwide.

Over the past several decades, classics like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”; John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” have found themselves in the proverbial trash pile when parents or school districts deemed the literature too profane, too risque or too immoral for young adult eyes.

In 1992, the Souderton (Pa.) Area School District called Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” – a National Book Award-winner that explores love and abuse through the eyes of African-American teenager Celie – “smut” and banned the book.

Recent children’s and young adult literature, including native Washington County author Anastasia Higginbotham’s “Not My Idea”; John Greene’s “Looking for Alaska” and Jay Asher’s “Thirteen Reasons Why” (a popular Netflix series) has also been scratched off reading lists across the country.

“‘Frankenstein’ is on the list, so I don’t know,” said Podgurski. “It’s a complicated thing. One of our young people said everybody should read “Grapes of Wrath” – another banned book – “and I’m thinking, this person is 15. They’re deep readers, most of them.”

After “Maus,” penned by Art Spiegelman and published serially in the early ’80s, was banned by McMinn County School Board, it shot to bestseller on Amazon, and booksellers nationwide donated the title to parents and educators in McMinn and across the country.

Podgurski’s phone was a buzz of activity late last week and over the weekend as Common Ground teens voiced their concern for the book’s banning. The young adults said they wanted to read “Maus,” and as many other banned titles as they could get their hands on.

When she suggested creating an Amazon Wish List, Podgurski immediately received from Common Ground teens nearly three dozen books for the list.

“I had 32 titles. I put the wish list together, I popped it on Facebook. Good people purchased all of them within less than an hour,” she said.

Podgurski said friends and acquaintances from near and far rushed to purchase banned books for the Teen Center’s new club.

She had “all these people saying to me, ‘I want to buy something. It’s empty.'” So Podgurski added 30 more titles to the list, which were purchased within hours.

“The young people were so excited. They kept going, ‘It’s almost gone!’ It just tickles me,” she said. “The teens wanted this, and the community responded.”

Podgurski is pleased, though not surprised, at the Common Ground’s teens’ desire to read and discuss books filled with content some adults might find too sexual, too racist, too challenging.

“I don’t think people know how passionate young people are about learning. (A) wise young person said, ‘Do people not realize what we see on our phones?'” Podgurski said. “Teens, they thrive on trying to figure out the world, and reading is part of that. The process of becoming a wise adult is figuring out how to understand what is written. Denying young people access to words denies that process.”

Because literature like “Maus” and “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” is heavy, Podgurski will facilitate the Banned Book Club. The teens plan to divvy up the books – about six books will be read at a time, by two or three teens per title – and meet weekly to discuss the themes and content.

Podgurski will pose challenging questions, like why Banned Book Club thinks adults would want that particular text banned.

“I think with some people, banning has to do with fear and control. I don’t think that young people need us to pretend that evil doesn’t exist,” said Podgurski. “Maya Angelou’s book that was banned – she was raped as a child. I’ve worked with sexual abuse for 45 years. There are children who have experienced this; there are children who live it, who can then say, ‘OK, I’m not the only one.'”

Podgurski said the community’s support filled the Teen Center’s library with at least two copies of each book on the Amazon Wish List (plus new cooking utensils and chess sets); she and the teens could not be more grateful for everyone’s support.

“When people give to young people, it’s not just a present. It’s a validation,” she said. “It’s saying you matter and what you’re interested in matters.”

Podgurski said the Banned Book Club teens are eager to dive into challenging literature, and she’s looking forward to leading meaningful discussions and hearing their insights into classic works.

“They talk to me about character development, story arc. When they read a novel, some of them read it with a writer eye. It’s so much fun to listen to them. My role as an adult is to hear what they have to say,” said Podgurski.

“Young people … see scary things. (At Common Ground) we believe that each person is worthy. The center is a safe and brave space where they can talk about things. That’s why it was so natural for them to say, ‘Let’s look at these books.’ They’re wise. They’re interested in what it means to be human.”

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