Banned Books Week Hop

You know, I used to think that I lived in a free country, that banned books and censored novels were a thing of the past. I thought that fiction was the one thing we could take for granted. And you know what?

I was wrong.

I'm not American; I'm Spanish. Here, we don't have lists of challenged books or lists of books that might be a poor influence for our youth... that's why I thought we were just fine. But the fact is that we still censor contents, bias stories to make them suitable to what should be considered "proper" and "right". The first time I notice it was after reading a manga, a comic: I had devoured the original story in Japanese, and when I saw the translated, licensed volume in Spanish I just went and browsed for my favorite scenes, out of curiosity.

The violence was toned down. One of the secondary characters was in love with a travestite, and the small nuances that conveyed those feelings in the original were gone in the translation. Two samurai, minor roles who appear in just a couple of chapters in a series of over 30 volumes, had a relationship: now, it had become friendship.

It was the same story, only... more "appropiate".

I'd like you to be aware of this: even if you don't know it, there's a lot of people out there who is still trying to tell us what kind of world we should see... and worse. what kind of world we should imagine. And I'd like you to use choose a book that deals with something problematic, something not pretty, something that makes the book challenging and real.

You can pick whichever book you want, from Book Depository, under 10$

To win, just fill in the rafflecopter form below. And if you have time, check out more info about Banned Books Week in this link. a Rafflecopter giveaway Visit the rest of the blogs taking part on this hop: