[Dalya’s Note: This guest post was written by my Assistant, Leslie Rivera.]

Imagine not having the freedom to read books of your own choosing. Can you imagine someone else dictating which books you could or couldn’t read? That’s exactly what had happened for years in schools, bookstores, and libraries. In response to the censorship, Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 by library activist Judith Krug. Since that time 11,300 books have been challenged in schools, bookstores, and libraries.

Banned Books Week is a time to celebrate our freedom of expression, choices, and liberties to seek out knowledge regardless of its controversial nature. Librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers come together this week to show solidarity in the written word.

Check out the Calendar of Events to see what’s happening in your community. For example, in Alameda, CA the Alameda Free Library is hosting a Community Banned Books Week Reading Marathon (September 22-28) and White Hill Middle School (in Fairfax, CA) is hosting an “Uncover to Discover” event (October 1-15).

From classics to contemporaries such as The Hunger Games, Water for Elephants, and Fifty Shades of Grey, important works of writing have been black-listed through the ages. Some of the most pivotal books in American history have been banned including:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, 1884
• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley, 1965
• Beloved, Toni Morrison, 1987
• The Call of the Wild, Jack London, 1903
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 1961
• The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger, 1951
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway, 1940
• Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, 1936
• The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck, 1939
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
• Howl, Allen Ginsberg, 1956
• In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1966
• Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, 1952
• The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, 1906
• Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1855
• Moby-Dick; or The Whale, Herman Melville,1851
• Native Son, Richard Wright, 1940
• Our Bodies, Ourselves, Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1971
• The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, 1895
• The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
• Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred C. Kinsey, 1948
• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein, 1961
• A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams, 1947
• Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 1937
• To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, 1960
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852
• Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963
• The Words of Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez, 2002

Are any of your favorites included on this list? Which ones? Two of my absolute nearest and dearest are The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. I’d love to hear from you on this topic, so please leave a comment by clicking “comments” above.