Guest Author Post: Sarah Kate on Censorship and Amazon Banning Her Book

I first heard of  self-published author  Sarah Kate when she did a guest post about her book, Pretty When She Cries:

Synopsis: 22 year old beauty Nicole Hudson is abducted from a gas station by a serial rapist. Follow Nicole as she endures the destruction of her world, trying to find a chance for escape, before her time runs out in the hands of her mentally unstable captor. NOTE: R18+ This is not a story about consensual sex. If reading an erotic story with non-con sex makes you uncomfortable, this is not for you.

As you can see from the synopsis above, this is about a young woman who's kidnapped and brutally raped throughout the course of the novel (And even tortured at one point. Her rapist pours boiling water on her hand). This is not a book for everyone and the faint of heart because of the subject matter, which is unflinching, over the top extreme and graphic.

When I heard Amazon banned Pretty When She Cries, I was surprised. Amazon allows incest (Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Flowers in the Attic by VC Andrews, Forbidden, a YA by Tabitha Suzuma, Torn by Sage Whistler), books featuring bestiality (The Girl Who Loves Horses by Peter de Sade) and other books with extreme violence available for purchase by the public on their site. (American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis anybody? Beware the edge of a wire hanger and rats who are starved!). Why would Amazon ban Sarah's book?

Sarah saw how I highlighted Pretty When She Cries in my WTFckery post, not only because of the tone of her story but the fact that Amazon had banned her book. She offered me a copy, which I accepted and read (my review will be posted her tomorrow). I then offered her to write up a post here about censorship and banning books, which is appropriate because of it being Banned Books Week.

Sarah and I have shared emails about her book and censorship. She is fully aware her book is shocking, and  when people read it, they will have some sort of reaction, mostly like a disturbing and OMGWTFBBQ what f*ck did I read? I can tell you, I had quiet that reaction and it took me a few days to get over what I had read.

Censorship and banning books, especially in schools and libraries as a way to keep questionable materials from children and teens is a very heated topic and one that I think should be discussed. This includes a discussion about Amazon that will allow some books on their site, while others are not for no valid reason.

As we all know, books are very subjective, even a book like Pretty When She Cries.

Sarah Kate:

A few months ago, I set out to conduct an experiment covering both personal and general community environments, to see how far I could go if I wrote a book without worrying about what other people would think of it, digging right down in the dark places I had closed off many years ago, to find the things that people just would never talk about openly, even in this day and age of apparent enlightenment.

This book has turned into quite a controversial and hotly argued (I wouldn't say debated, because really there's no debating going on) point amongst many people on forums and other blogs. It's been a very interesting experience, quite enlightening and it also has highlighted an uglier side of human nature that I had only previously glanced at but now have a full glaring view of.

Should Amazon have banned my book? Well on a completely rational level, it's their store-front and as such I respect their right to decide which books they shall sell. There are some finer points of dual-standards happening but overall it doesn't change the fact that to be able to sell on Amazon is a privilege that Amazon extends to writers, as opposed to an actual right. Fortunately (for me, and many other similar writers), it is not yet a criminal or civil offense to write "inappropriate" books in our respective countries.

On the topic of state/government level censorship, it's a very rocky path to walk, trying to balance between the populist views and the rights that have to be protected to ensure that we don't have the path of "good intentions" lead us to hell as is so often said. My personal stance is that censorship should apply to content that has been created or obtained at the expense of someone's pain, liberties or life (eg, child pornography and snuff films).

Literature provides a more complex problem, as do fictional movies. The calls for censorship of such material commonly stems from people being concerned that exposing people to it will turn them into villains of the same vein, corruption of the soul and mind as it were. My general view is that if people are going to be turned through such exposure, chances are that they already were the sort of person who would ultimately become such, irrespective of censorship. I personally would not care to read about certain things, though I would likely still fight for their right not to be censored. It is at times useful to have ourselves pushed outside of our normal comfort zones in order for us to obtain a clearer perspective on our personal stances - doing this through fictional means would appear to be a victimless route.

I see a form of censorship being something that is required to protect the general populace from experiencing something that they would not be anticipating at the time based on the existing norms. You don't anticipate to see explicit sex during a kids show, nor do you anticipate to watch gruesome direct war footage during the morning show. However, censorship in the form of total elimination, to prevent people from obtaining material from well defined, limited access sources falls in to a different category, it becomes a draconian, totalitarian trait, the beginnings of the loss of rights. Would we care to return to the days where we'd be stoned in the town square for having uttered God's name, or for having even read the bible?

An unfortunate and problematic aspect of censorship (or politics, religion, ice-cream flavours...) is that rational, logic and fair comparison get throw out, in their place, assumptions, prejudice and group-hate take precedence. The trouble is that you cannot even talk about things which are censored without being socially stoned by the stalwarts and their followers. Even if there are those behind the stalwarts that may warm to your views, they'll likely stay back in order to avoid being stoned and ostracized themselves.

We must be careful where we draw a line on what is permitted and not, across any strata of population we'll find that the moral limits blur to be a vague sweep in the sand. We all have our personal choices of what we think is acceptable and we have every right to hold those; what we do not have the explicit right to do is to impose those on everyone else.

Censorship and banning books. What are your thoughts?