A Vigil in Observance
of Banned Books Week

This year the American Library Association and other participating organizations will observe Banned Books Week from September 28 through the following weekend. On Sunday, October 6, the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression will begin its fourth annual 24-hour reading of excerpts from books that have recently been banned, expurgated or challenged in the United States and around the world. Readers are needed to fill 15-minute slots between 5 p.m. on October 6 and 4:45 p.m. on Monday, October 7. Readers are, for the most part, free to choose their own selections. The event will take place at the Leland Center, Boston Center for the Arts, 541 Tremont Street, Boston, and will be free and open to the public. Our 1996 vigil, presented in association with the Boston Center for the Arts, is dedicated to the memory of National Writers Union activist Vanda Sendzimir. A partial list of suitable books appears below. We welcome your questions, comments, and ideas. To volunteer to read or help out, contact James D'Entremont at 617/266-5827.

Dorothy Allison - Bastard Out of Carolina
American Heritage Dictionary
The Anarchist Cookbook
Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Anonymous - Go Ask Alice
James Baldwin - If Beale Street Could Talk
Frank L. Baum - The Wizard of Oz
Judy Blume - Deenie; Forever; Tiger Eyes;Blubber;Wifey.
Boston Women's Health Book Collective - Our Bodies, Ourselves
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan
William Burroughs - Naked Lunch
Robert Cormier - The Chocolate War
Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; Witches
Charles Darwin - On the Origin of Species
Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying; Mosquitos
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
E.M. Forster - Maurice
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Nancy Garden - Annie on My Mind
Allen Ginsberg - Howl and Other Poems
Nikki Giovanni - My House
William Golding - Lord of the Flies
Bette Green - The Drowning of Stephan Jones
Judith Guest - Ordinary People
Alex Haley and Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Joseph Heller - Catch-22
Langston Hughes, ed. - Best Short Stories by Negro Writers
Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
James Joyce - Ulysses
Norton Juster - The Phantom Tollbooth
Stephen King - Cujo;The Shining
John Knowles - A Separate Peace
D.H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
Toni Morrison - The Bluest Eye; Song of Solomon
Leslea Newman - Heather Has Two Mommies
Eugene O'Neill - Desire Under the Elms; Strange Interlude
George Orwell - 1984
Katherine Paterson - Bridge to Terabithia
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Pauline R‚age - The Story of O
Luis Rodriguez - Always Running
Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye
Hubert Selby, Jr. - Last Exit to Brooklyn
Maurice Sendak - In the Night Kitchen
William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice; Romeo and Juliet
Jane Smiley - A Thousand Acres
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath; Of Mice and Men; The Red Pony
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Alice Walker - The Color Purple; In Love and Trouble
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass
Michael Willhoite - Daddy's Roommate
Edmund Wilson - Memoirs of Hecate County
Richard Wright - Native Son; Black Boy