October 14th, 2008
My latest read was from my library’s One Book-One Community program. This year the book chosen was To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. An instant classic published in 1960. It is about Scout- a young girl- and how she grows up in Maycomb, Alabama. It follows how she tries to comprehend the world of adults around her, and the process of Negros being free and the issues they face.
Her father, a prominant white lawyer, is chosen to defend a negro man in a rape charge. Scout and her brother have to endure the torment of being the children of a white man defending a negro, as well as try to understand the thinking processes of the adults around them.
It deals with issues of rape, racial injustice, prejudice, lost innocence, social and gender structures. It is often taught in schools, but has been challenged due to it’s use of racial “slurs”, which I find ridiculous, considering that is how they spoke back then. To take it out would cause the book to lose much of it’s validity in my eyes. I think having them in there adds to the impact of the message of the book.
Not by any means my type of regular read, but I am glad I read it. I would recommend that anyone who has not read it go out and borrow it from your local library.