Manga fight isn't over yet; Kaffir Boy challenged.
A few weeks after the book was pulled from the shelves of all San Bernardino County libraries, the Barstow Community College is planning on putting copies of Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics on display:
From The Desert Dispatch:
"Our feeling is that we would like to see the book returned to the shelves of the county libraries," Kyri Freeman, librarian at the Thomas M. Kimball Library at the college.
The book was yanked from the county library shelves after a 16-year-old Victorville boy told his mom that the book contained sexual illustrations.
Freeman said she and many librarians believe the book did not go through an appropriate process before it was banned.
"In effect, we feel it was an act of censorship and not appropriate," she said.
Yar! Bring back the hamster sex!
As for Kaffir Boy... it's a very familiar story. The book has been used in a 12th grade Multicultural English class for years. Students are told to discuss the book with their parents prior to reading it, they are not required to read the two paragraphs in question -- in fact, they aren't required the entire CHAPTER that the paragraphs appear in -- the passage is not discussed in class, and they are also given an alternate book choice. You know, just in case that the evil words 'penis' and 'anus' would burn their way through the unread chapter and scar the baby-soft skin of the 18-year-old hands holding the book:
"It's illegal and abnormal to the extreme," one of those parents, Traci Mattila, said in a recent interview, referring to the depiction of pedophilia in the book.
That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, you nitwit.