The Clan of the Cave Bear (Censorship (Ready Reference series))
At a glance:
- Author: Jean M. Auel
- First Published: 1980
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: Magic or magicians, Interracial relationships, Human race, Rape, Hunting or hunters, Bears, Clans, Caves, Stone Age
- Locales: Crimea
The Work
The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first book in Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series, attempts to re-create an Upper Paleolithic (Ice Age) community complete with all its social components, including sexuality. In this prehistoric environment, sexual acts occur in a naturalistic manner—sometimes with violence—without recourse to religious decrees or principles. Numerous censorship conflicts resulted after the book’s publication. In 1993 Tom Baldwin, a trustee of the Moorpark Unified School District in Ventura County, California, attempted to remove it and other Auel novels from the eleventh grade recommended reading list. The book, he maintained, contained “hardcore graphic sexual conduct.” A seven-member committee unanimously defeated his action and Auel’s novels stayed in the high school library. English teacher Peggy Blakelock argued that “the right to read what you want is basic to democratic society.” Earlier, in 1985, parents at a San Antonio, Texas, high school disrupted school board meetings in an attempt to have the novel removed from library shelves.
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