Pages from the middle of the book [Girl, Interrupted] have been torn out by the school district after having been deemed "inappropriate" by school officials due to sexual content and strong language. ... "[But] since the book has other redeeming features, we took the liberty of bowdlerizing," [said the English Dept. chair].
"Bowdlerizing is a particularly disturbing form of censorship since it not only suppresses specific content deemed 'objectionable,' but also does violence to the work by removing material that the author thought integral," said Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It is a kind of literary fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience."
Just get another copy, OK? And put the damaged one out in the open as a reminder to what happens when human beings forget their humanity.
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