Bob LeDrew is an organizer of “Censored Out Loud,” a campaign that is part of Freedom to Read Week.
Aside from sharing the label “literary classics,” books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Harry Potter series, and To Kill A Mockingbird have something else in common. They all have been targeted for censorship.
On Feb. 23 at 8 p.m., the Raw Sugar Café on Somerset Street will serve as the venue for “Censored Out Loud,” a local effort to promote freedom of expression during national Freedom to Read Week.
Co-organizer Bob LeDrew says volunteers will read passages from books and sing songs or perform poetry featured in their original, uncensored form.
James Joyce’s Ulysses, Lenny Bruce’s To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb, and Howl by Allen Ginsberg are just three of the many pieces that will be featured.
“It’s an evening for people who like books, like music and like being able to choose what they’re exposed to,” says LeDrew.
In 2009, the Canadian Book and Periodical Council listed more than 100 books that have been censored in recent years, or are being targeted for censorship.
This past January, Publisher’s Weekly reported that a re-issuing of the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would not contain the “n-word,” described in the article as being the “singularly offensive word” and a barrier to enjoying the book in the 21st century. The “n-word” and the word “Injun” would appear in all instances as “slave” instead.
Ottawa Citizen editorial writer, Kate Heartfield, who will be reading from The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, describes censorship as a “constant threat” and an “insidious enemy” in society, and that it “is a good idea to remind ourselves of that from time to time.”
“The idea that anybody feels that they have the right to take the choice away from anybody else is something that makes me pretty mad,” says Heartfield.
Cheryl Gain, who manages the art and culture website, Ottawa Tonite, is helping to organize the event with LeDrew.
“It’s important for people to say what they mean and to have that opportunity with the right audience that is open to hearing it,” says Gain. Her website says organizers are asking for a “cover charge of $10 or what you can afford to pay.”
All proceeds are going to PEN Canada, an organization that lobbies governments to free writers around the world who have been persecuted.
Censored Out Loud is like a microcosm of the mission of PEN, explains Heartfield.
“We’re all supporting each other . . . (freedom of expression) is not a special interest by any means,” she says.
LeDrew adds that while the passages will be in uncensored form, audience members won’t be “bathing in obscenities.”
“It’s not like people are going to be exposed to this unending stream of filth . . . it’s not just the stuff on the far end of things that gets challenged. It’s stuff that the vast majority of people would find utterly harmless,” he says.