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Friday, September 30th, 2016

Texas State Prisons: You Can’t Read The Color Purple but Mein Kampf Is Fine

Author:    
Source:     Houston Press
Publication Date:    
Link: Texas State Prisons: You Can’t Read The Color Purple but Mein Kampf Is Fine
Stephan:   I have lived on both coasts and in the middle, and I spent four years criss-crossing, North America in a Bluebird Wanderlodge. I have spent time in every state in the Union  and it has taught me states have very different characters; and there are some that seem notably odd to me. Texas is one them. It is a state in love with punishment, and incarceration. But then there is this.
You can get "Mein Kampf" with Texas Department of Criminal Justice blessings, but Thomas More's "Utopia" has been banned. Credit: Gwyndion Williams

You can get “Mein Kampf” with Texas Department of Criminal Justice blessings, but Thomas More’s “Utopia” has been banned.
Credit: Gwyndion Williams

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has steadily been banning books for decades, but the latest decision, to keep the book Wolf Boys out of state prison circulation because of a single page the TDCJ found offensive, has caused a lot of double takes.

This month, the TDCJ powers-that-be looked over the book by Dan Slater, which tells the story of two teenagers who end up joining the Zetas cartel and then land in state prison, right here in Texas. Any book not included on the list of approved reading material gets kicked to this committee, and if the committee finds the book problematic it is banned, and that’s that.

This time, the committee opted to keep the book out because of two sentences:

“Mario purchased pickup trucks from which […]

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1 Comment

  1. Steven K Hovland on Friday, September 30, 2016 at 10:35 am

    During WW2 a lot of German POWs captured in Africa were interned in Texas. These people were fully indoctrinated into the Nazi ideology. Some may have stayed after the war.