Title: The Awakening and Other Stories
Author: Kate Chopin
Challenged in: Oconee County, Georgia
For: “the cover of the book… shows a painting of a woman’s bare chest and upset the patron”
So this morning I got out my copy of The Awakening (it still has a Lord of the Rings bookmark in it from senior year of highschool!), all ready to comb through it once more for the sexy parts or the parts glorifying suicide or the (multiple) times when Edna is a terrible mother. So you can imagine my delight when I rechecked my list and saw that this book is another one that was challenged for the cover. I’m really pleased to not have to read any part of The Awakening again, since I didn’t really enjoy it the first time!
So, let’s talk about covers and breasts and how upsetting they are. I couldn’t find any reliable news articles about this incident, so it’s hard to know what cover Oconee County is objecting to. Since this book was first published in 1899, there have been a lot of editions with tons of different covers. I did a search on Amazon and came up with at least three possibilities for you: (behind a cut to protect you from painted breasts) Read the rest of this entry »