Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky
This entry was created for the Fall 2014 semester by Anastasia Kuehn.
Why Banned: Bad for Children

Banning History:

The majority of the reasons this book is banned is due to the sexually explicit material, drug use, and profanity. And these were why in 2003, one of the first bannings took place in the school libraries of Fairfax, Virginia. It was a led by a group named "Parents Against Bad Books in Schools." The next year, in 2004, it was taken off the reading list in a socilogy course at an upstate New York High School because of general "offensiveness." The memorial library system in Montgomery County, Texas, challenged Perks as well as 15 other books because of their positive, gay themes. In 2006, an Arizona Superintendent went the extra mile due to his belief in the excessively profane and sexual material, and asked to make sure that the book was no longer available to any minors or students in his district. In 2009, still reeling from the book's two-page rape scene, a Portage, Indiana high school removed the book from all classrooms. In 2012, the book was challenged by parents at a Clarkstown, New York high school due to "teenage sex, homosexuality and bestiality." The most recent removal of this book from school curricula happened this year in Glen Elyn, Illinois due because of the content and language, but after a meeting of school board members, it was reinstated and put back into the school's library. Parents in Glen Elyn, however, still have the right to shield their children, because a parental notification letter was sent, letting them know they're children would have access to it in the library. There are no large-scale bannings of this book in the United States or anywhere else in the world, but that hasn't stopped people from criticizing Chbosky and his choice of language and content since the 1999 publication.

Author Bio

Chbosky was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1972. He then went on to receive a bachelor of fine arts degree in film writing from the University of Southern California. His first screenplay was titled "The Four Corners of Nowhere, which he also directed, It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995, eventually winning Narrative Feature Honors at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Chbosky also penned the screenplay for the critically acclaimed film adaptation of the musical "Rent." Aside from his book, "Perks of Being a Wallflower," he's probably best known for being the co-creator on the post-apocalyptic TV drama Jericho. In the book world, aside from writing "Perks of Being a Wallflower," he edited a short story collection for Pocket Books entitled "Pieces," which contained similarly "provocative" material to his novel, such as a housewife encountering a gunman, and the revelation of a young man's hidden sex life. Currently, he lives in Los Angeles, California where he directed and wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Perks that was released in 2013. Chbosky has stated that he never intended Perks of Being a Wallflower to be a novel geared toward adolescents, which is the aspect of its publication that has caused the most upheaval. On this topic, Chbosky says "People can't agree to disagree, and they can't find common ground. The people who object for moral reasons cannot see the value of the book. " He is an active gay rights supporter in the Los Angeles area and hasn't shied away from any criticism he's reserved on the novel's publication.

Discussion Questions

1. Throughout the novel, Charlie is writing letters to an unknown recipient and mentions two traumatic experiences he's had in the past, the death of his Aunt Helen and suicide of his only friend in middle school, Michael. In the novel, Charlie is a 15-year old high school freshman. Do you, or do you not, think Charlie's age has anything to do with how he deals with trauma? Explain.

2. Rocky Horror Picture Show is a major plot line and theme that runs throughout the novel, and according to Chbosky, it was one of the only things that kids could do for fun in Pittsburgh when he was growing up. How do you think the theme of Rocky Horror relates or ties in to the novel as a whole?

3. The majority of the book is written as a series of letters, as I already mentioned, from Charlie to an anonymous recipient. What affects do you think this structure has on the book? Why do you think Chbosky chose this method of storytelling? What purpose does it serve?

4. A major reason this book is so often challenged or banned is because of the explicit gay and homosexual content that's present. Do you think that it was banned for these reasons due to the "explicitness" of the description, or because of the time period in which the novel was published? Why?