{"id":195608,"date":"2025-09-03T01:56:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T01:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/195608\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T01:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T01:56:09","slug":"margaret-atwood-releases-satirical-short-story-critiquing-book-bans-in-canada-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/195608\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Atwood releases satirical short story critiquing book bans in Canada | Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Margaret Atwood<\/a> has released<\/a> a new short story critiquing elected officials for a wide-ranging book ban in the Canadian province of Alberta. The controversial decision<\/a> to remove books purportedly containing \u201cexplicit sexual content\u201d has seen numerous works of literature swept up in the dragnet, including Atwood\u2019s dystopian work The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a social media post, Atwood wrote that since her famed work was no longer permissible in Alberta schools, she had written a \u201csuitable\u201d short work for teens, adding the work was necessary because the province\u2019s minister of education thought students were \u201cstupid babies\u201d.<\/p>\n

The extremely brief story traces the lives of John and Mary, two \u201cvery, very good\u201d children.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey never picked their noses or had bowel movements or zits,\u201d she wrote in the opening lines, adding they were ardent Christians who \u201cpaid no attention to what Jesus actually said about the poor\u201d and instead \u201cpractised selfish rapacious capitalism\u201d in the vein of the conservative literary hero Ayn Rand.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, and they never died, because who wants to dwell on, you know, death and corpses and yuk?\u201d<\/p>\n

Atwood writes that while the pair \u201clived happily ever\u201d, the ominous warnings in her 1985 novel The Handmaid\u2019s Tale \u2013 which describes a totalitarian fundamentalist regime in which enslaved women are forced to bear children \u2013 \u201ccame true came true and [Alberta premier] Danielle Smith found herself with a nice new blue dress but no job\u201d \u2013 a reference to the novel\u2019s elite wives who have power but are not permitted to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe end.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Alberta ban emerged as a product of intense lobbying by socially conservative \u201cparents\u2019 rights\u201d groups in the province and mirrors a trend in the United States.<\/p>\n

Action4Canada and Parents for Choice in Education (PCE) have taken credit for the book ban and the latter sent an email to supporters after the ban was announced thanking them for their efforts in contacting government officials about \u201cgraphic\u201d books.<\/p>\n

The Alberta government defines \u201cexplicit sexual content\u201d in its policy<\/a> as \u201ccontent containing a detailed and clear depiction of a sexual act\u201d. Students from kindergarten to grade 12 cannot access any \u201ccontent\u201d in a school library that meets this definition.<\/p>\n

Alberta\u2019s public schools have until October to comply with the order, but some schools have already released their lists of banned books. The Edmonton school board said it would remove 200 books from school libraries, including The Handmaid\u2019s Tale.<\/p>\n

Other books to be pulled from shelves include George Orwell\u2019s dystopian novel 1984, which officials say contains passages that discuss sexual intercourse and rape; Maya Angelou\u2019s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Aldous Huxley\u2019s Brave New World.<\/p>\n

Last week, Smith criticised officials for drawing up such a wide-ranging list of books to be removed, describing the move as \u201cvicious compliance\u201d.<\/p>\n

Smith showed reporters excerpts from graphic novels \u2013 including Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe \u2013 that prompted the new rules in the first place for the explicit illustrations of sexual acts they contain. The book is a globally acclaimed coming-of-age story about teenage life and young adulthood. Critics of the ban say increasingly powerful lobby groups are targeting books that affirm LGBTQ+ identities.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the ban, Atwood also posted on social media<\/a> warning against reading The Handmaid\u2019s Tale because \u201cyour hair will catch on fire!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGet one now before they have public book burnings of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Margaret Atwood has released a new short story critiquing elected officials for a wide-ranging book ban in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":195609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-195608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115137884097818743","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}