Angry Author Fights Unconscionable Horror

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Dave Eggers is a best-selling author with several fine novels to his credit.  He is also a highly principled individual who established a non-profit publishing house, McSweeney's, in 1988, and has recently declined to let Amazon sell hardback editions of his latest book in protest of the company's stranglehold on the business of selling books.

Now the activist author is on a crusade against schools that ban books.

When Dave Eggers learned that school administrators in Rapid City, South Dakota, had responded to community pressure and had removed five novels intended for use in a literature class for seniors from its shelves and planned to destroy those books, he reacted.   The books included his own novel, "The Circle," as well as "How Beautiful We Were" by Imbolo Mbue,  "Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky, and "Girl, Woman, Other" by Bernadine Evaristo.

"Girl, Woman, Other" won the prestigious Booker Prize, and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" was made into a highly acclaimed motion picture.

The angry author declared:  "The mass destruction of books by school boards is an unconscionable horror, and the freethinking young people of South Daboka should not be subjected to it."  But he didn't stop there, Eggers followed through with this offer:

"Every high school student should have unfettered access to literature, so if you'r a Rapid City high school senior, email our office and ask for any of these titles.  For every copy the school board destroys, let's add a new one to the local circulation."

Eggers responded to the removal of the books from the school by offering to give any senior (the group for whom they had been intended) their own copies of the books that had been pulled from their reach - and he was providing them free!

Dave Eggers, author and activist, was doing his bit and then some to correct the "unconscionable horror" of purging literature from America's schools.  If we survive this age of ignorance, it will be due in large measure to people like him.