Today, 10 years after Harper Lee’s passing and in her centennial year, it’s important to note that in 2021, The New York Times named To Kill a Mockingbird the best book of the previous 125 years. Be that or not, the book encountered significant social challenges in North America over the years.
The book was banned from classrooms and libraries in September 2025 by the Leander Independent School District in Central Texas; from a secondary school in Brampton, Ontario, in 2009; a high school in Texas, in 2012; Virginia, in 2016; Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2017; Duluth, Minnesota, in 2018; and California’s Burbank Unified School District, in 2020-2021; among other places, the book encountered difficulties or was removed from reading lists or classrooms.
People have questioned the book’s appropriateness in classrooms due to its racial slurs, profanity, frank discussion of rape, and occasional “White Saviour” narrative. Nevertheless, the book continues to be a mainstay of American literature, and it’s frequently defended as a crucial teaching tool regarding racial injustice and prejudice.
Actually, since 1963, To Kill a Mockingbird has been a significant source of controversy. After learning that the school administrators were holding hearings to determine whether the book was suitable for the classroom, in an editorial letter to The Richmond News Leader, Harper Lee suggested that the $10 that she sent be used to fund the enrolment of “the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.”
The N-word undoubtedly causes discomfort for many people in the Western world. Perhaps, they see this word’s pronunciation to reflect their history in a mirror. And confronting it makes them feel very uneasy.
Interestingly, in 2006, a poll conducted by the UK Museum, Libraries, and Archive Council named To Kill a Mockingbird as the topmost book everyone should read before their death, even ranking it above the Bible. To be honest, without properly addressing racism, sexism, and religion, any meaningful book on American society might be lacking. Literature reflects society. It may not be a sign of maturity to reject the image of society and its dialects from a century ago. If society has improved, it can be compared to that previous image.
US President Dwight D Eisenhower’s famous quote — “Don’t join the book burners” — came from his 1953 commencement address at Dartmouth College. He especially challenged McCarthy’s anti-communist hysteria and censorship attempts by urging Americans to embrace intellectual freedom, read widely, and not be afraid of ideas. “Don’t be afraid to go to your library and read every book, as long as that document doesn’t offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship,” he said. Naturally, some would argue that students should be at least mature enough to comprehend it.
Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. It’s a tale of a Black man who was charged with the murder of a White woman. The Great Depression is the time frame. Scout, the story’s narrator, was six to nine years old at the time. Atticus, Scout’s father, was the lawyer of Tom Robinson, the Black defendant. Thus, the story’s theme may be a little sensitive. In actuality, the book contains 17 instances of the word “rape.” Is it advisable for our society’s eighth-grade students to read such a book in the school curriculum? Most of my acquaintances I asked responded negatively. But this was not the main problem in America. The primary objection there was the N-word, which was used 48 times in the book. So, yes, societies are different.
Undoubtedly, it’s just as wrong to ban or silence a mockingbird as it is to kill it. But is it at all possible in this era of the internet? Perhaps banning a book will encourage a lot of students who might not have otherwise read the Mockingbird narrative to do so.
Silencing a mockingbird is undoubtedly difficult. That may be the takeaway in Harper Lee’s centenary.
The author is professor of statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
 "To Kill a Mockingbird (Photo: Britannica)")