Banned Books Week: Challenged Books With Wine Pairings!
Banned Books Week is an annual celebration of the freedom to read. Yet this freedom goes beyond access to challenged books; it also encapsulates having access to literacy resources, public spaces with diverse books, and school systems that don’t censor their curriculum. The week that we spend celebrating challenged books does several things for our community. For one, it raises awareness about which books are being challenged in real-time. Many of these books are highly-regarded classics like Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. However, it’s not just classics that booksellers are dedicated to protecting. The most banned book in 2021 was Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, a contemporary graphic memoir that celebrates sexuality and gender in a gentle, human way. The truth of book banning as it exists presently is that it works predominantly to silence diverse voices.
For Banned Books Week, Book + Bottle is hosting several events to celebrate authors and delicious wine alike. In line with banned books, Prohibition has been on our minds. When the production and sale of alcoholic substances were banned in the 1920s, the thriving wine industry in the U.S. was reduced to either church wine production or no wine at all—a very sad way to live in our opinion. To get you thinking about current and past banned authors—and the luxury that is wine—here are some fun banned book and wine pairings to go with them. We have all of these items in the shop, so come by and grab a copy of a banned author in honor of the week!
In The Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado + Domaine Font-Mars Picpoul de Pinet
Carmen Maria Machado’s work has been challenged for a number of reasons. Her memoir In The Dream House chronicles her experience dealing with domestic violence within a same-sex relationship. It raised alarms for violence and sexual content. Her short story collection Her Body and Other Parties is on banned book lists because its experimental nature enhances those same themes of sexuality and female power that her memoir upholds. Each story explores myth, horror, and pop culture in a way that literature has never seen before. And, it represents bisexuality in a way that is, simply, bisexual people existing.
We’ve paired Machado’s work with the Domaine Font-Mars Picpoul de Pinet. This wine is called the “lip stinger” because of its crisp acidity. It has notes of green apple and peach. Machado’s eclectic writing and this wine make for a zingy pair!
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas + Jasmine Monet Organic Vineyard Brut
The beloved fantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas has been added to the list of banned books for its sexual content. But fans of the series will likely tell you that the first book is tame compared to later books in the series, where the sex gets better and the characters cling to love in light of war. The first book in the series is a Beauty and the Beast retelling. With this in mind, it actually makes sense that it would have sexual content, as many of the original folk tales dealt with taboo topics like bestiality. We’ve paired this book with the Jasmine Monet Organic Vineyard Brut. It has notes of apple, lemon curd, and crushed stones. This sparkling wine’s personality comes from its terroir in the same way that A Court of Thorns and Roses gets its personality from the roots of the original Beauty and the Beast story.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls + Trentadue Winery “La Storia” Merlot 2018
There are many high school curriculums that include The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This memoir is a story about a family that endures the destructive nature of having an alcoholic father and a neglectful mother. It has been challenged in schools because of its foul, explicit language and content that has been deemed disturbing. In reality, this story is honest and promotes resilience in light of one's challenges. A haunting tale of childhood and self-sufficiency, it shows the reader what life would look like if you lived in a state of constant instability. Because of the book’s heavy themes, we’ve paired it with a full-bodied merlot: The Trentadue Winery “La Storia” Merlot 2018. Its notes of dark cherry, plums, black licorice, herbs, and cocoa dust compliment the gritty nature of Wall’s memoir. Also, its name—“La Storia”—feels appropriate to pair with a real story that we’re working to protect as booksellers.
We’re celebrating Banned Books Week from September 17th to September 25th! Here’s a list of events for the week:
September 17th - Banned Books Fair!
We’ll have tables featuring currently banned books, books we believe will eventually be banned, and a Say Gay table all day long!
September 22nd - Writer’s Retreat: Banned Books Edition!
The prompt will help writers channel their favorite banned authors and write content that they think would be banned if it were published!