The College Fix

Let no offensive thought go uncensored

A school district in Alaska recently elected to ban several books from its curricula due to their purportedly offensive content. Among the censored titles: “The Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou. The books reportedly contained language and themes too offensive for students to study in the classroom.

So long as that district is banning such seminal works of American literature, it’s probably necessary for them to consider a wider list of books that have no place inside the classroom, or frankly out of it:

– Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck. This book features the tragic death of an innocent puppy, a speciest trope if ever there was one. Plus, it only features one whole female character in the entire novel, and she—well, you’ll have to read it to find out. Wait, don’t read it! We’re banning it.

– The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Um, hello? An entire book about a house is clearly offensive to those who don’t own their own houses. Obviously our tax system is heavily biased in favor of homeownership; a book like this stands in the way of the revolutionary fervor necessary to overthrow this unjust system.

– The Joy of Cooking. This isn’t likely to show up in any American classrooms. But just in case, we need to make sure it never finds its way into the hands of an unsuspecting student. There is no “joy” in cooking, after all—it is a menial domestic drudgery forced upon vulnerable classes for the benefit of the bourgeois. All copies of this book should be burned in communal stoves to cook communal pots of soylent.

– Any and all history books. History is inherently a capitalistic, misogynistic, anti-environmental tool of oppression wielded by the bourgeois—or maybe the capitalists? we’re not sure—to oppress womyn, animals, various types of shrubs and leafy plants, and Her Glorious Majesty Mother Earth Hyrself. Students: History begins today. And every single day after that. No history should ever be written down again, ever.

MORE: Alaska school district removes classic books due to ‘controversial’ content

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