On Sept. 25, Pegasus held it’s annual Banned Books reading. Students and professors gathered in the library to read passages from various books that have been banned throughout history. These books have been banned by schools, libraries, towns and entire countries.
The first person to read was Dr. Wendy Harrison, who read a passage from “The Hard-Boiled Virgin,” a novel by Frances Newman. Published in 1926, the novel was banned in Boston. Following Harrison, Dr. Rachael Price read “Anne of Green Gables,” which was banned in Soviet Poland. Dr. Jeff Newberry read a passage from the Bible, Psalm 5. Dr. Jay Baldwin read from a copy of “Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings” by Peter Kropotkin, an anarchist known for distributing banned books. To close out the event, Jackson Hamlet read another Bible passage, 1 Corinthians 16.
Price, advisor of ABAC’s literary magazine “Pegasus” and organizer of Banned Books, is pleased with how people have reacted to Banned Books over the past few years. “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how open people have been to it.” When asked about the most controversial book she’s seen read, she said, “Well, that’s kind of a tough question, because a lot of the things that were seen as controversial aren’t seen as controversial now. Since I’ve been doing it, I haven’t seen anything that people were just horribly offended by.”
At the end of the event, Price also announced the Horseman Press, ABAC’s new student-staffed press. The press will give students experience in all aspects of book-making, and will promote “forgotten works of rural American literature.” For more information, contact Dr. Rachael Price at rprice@abac.edu.
