I often like to think of myself as a busy person, as an individual who can handle the multiple challenges society and life presents. When I’m not spending my hours researching information for my thesis or preparing workshops, you can usually find me procrastinating by doing my favorite de-stressing activity, online shopping! In honor of Banned Books Week, I decided to look on my social media to see if there was a sale on banned or challenged books. Luckily for us, Humble Bundle, Inc. is currently offering the Humble Book Bundle: Forbidden Books Supporting Banned Books Week 2018, which is a sale you can’t miss.
(Picture found on Instagram @problematicshopaholic)
With all this talk about banned books and sales, you are all probably wondering what Humble Bundle is? Humble Bundle, Inc. is a distribution platform that specializes in selling an array of digital content, such as video games, ebooks, software, and others. Since establishing themselves in 2010, Humble Bundle, Inc. have dedicated to supporting charities while providing wonderful content to customers at a great price–hence their name Humble, as in helping raise money for charities, and Bundle, because they offer a lot of content depending on the price the customer decides to pay.
(Screenshot taken in humblebundle.com)
For Banned Books Week, Humble Bundle, Inc. is offering their Humble Book Bundle: Forbidden Books Supporting Banned Books Week 2018, which provides a great collection of banned Children’s picture books, Young Adult novels, comic books, graphic novels, manga, and much more content.The only aspect that took me by surprise in the bundle was the unavailability of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, the winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and a novel which highlights important social issues such as race, rape culture, and abuse towards women. When you think about it, you would understand why most parents would inform schools and libraries to have this book banned from the curriculum. However, the main reason we celebrate Banned Books Week is to express our right to have conversations about these social issues without censorship.
(Screenshot taken in humblebundle.com)
Even though I was disappointed with the exclusion of The Color Purple, I was still pretty amazed by the variety of content provided in this bundle, mostly because it does not offer classic literature or any “updated” or “remastered” version of them that someone could just find for free on websites such as Project Gutenberg. Most of the content is from well known authors such as Neil Gaiman’s Gods & Tulips, Lauren Myracle’s old school hotmail messenger and “high school scandalous” novel ttyl, and comic books such as Jeff Smith’s Bone Vol. 1. Of course, this is just a gist of the content Humble Bundle, Inc. has to offer. If you notice the price on top of each set of books, that determines how much content you are going to receive depending how much you are willing to pay for the bundle. Therefore, the more you pay, the more content you will receive in exchange.
(Screenshot taken in humblebundle.com)
As an extra bonus, this bundle also includes two very resourceful books that teach you the reasons why certain books are banned, the process of censorship, and tools for students and parents informing them on what they can do to advocate against censorship and open spaces for conversations around taboo subjects. Read Banned Books: A Guide to Banned, Challenged, and Controversial Comics and Graphic Novels is a short compilation of the most well-known banned books that explains the differences of the censorship process of each book by genre, and how students can benefit from the use of illustrative texts as a tool for developing visual literacy skills, memory skills, and the way the combination of written text and illustrations can help students practice language skills.
Kid’s Right to Read Action Toolkit is basically an informative toolbox with tips on how parents and students can fight against the overuse of censorship, which is a common practice and the reason why many books get banned or challenged each year. In addition, this toolbox also offers ways to start a campaign on educating about banned and challenged books. Besides getting a lot of ebooks, you will also have the opportunity to support charities such as the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), an organization that dedicates itself to promoting “freedom of thought, inquiry and expression and oppose censorship in all its forms.” In addition, part of your purchase also goes to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), a non-profit organization dedicated to “protecting the First Amendment rights of the comics medium.”
(Screenshot taken in humblebundle.com)
All in all, Humble Bundle, Inc. has provided us with the opportunity to obtain a variety of banned books across different literary genres while also promoting the importance of exerting our freedom to read what we desire and to not censor or hide information that should be available for the public to enjoy. This bundle will be available for purchase until Wednesday, October 3rd at 11am, which means you better hurry up and make this purchase while you still can. Trust me, the pain of spending money is only temporary, but the joy you will feel after looking at all those forbidden books in your virtual library will be worth it!