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Classics, serious literature included on TDCJ's reading ban list

Eric Dexheimer at the Austin Statesman examined the 5,000 book titles rejected by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice over the last five years and says "Texas prisoners are missing out on some fine reading." A notable excerpt from the story reads:Novels by National Book Award winners Pete Dexter, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx and William T. Vollmann have been banned in recent years. Award finalists Katherine Dunn and Barry Hannah are on the Texas no-read list, too, as are Pulitzer Prize winners Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren and John Updike.Prisoners can't peruse certain books by Pablo Neruda and Andre Gide, both Nobel laureates. "Krik? Krak!" by Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat, who last year won a MacArthur "genius" grant, is prohibited behind Lone Star bars...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 31, 2010 (boomark / email).