Funny how Ann Frank and Huck Finn get banned for sending out messages, but HP Lovecraft almost always gets through, no matter how dark his stories and creatures are.
Not to mention racist, have you read Lovecraft? (please note that I'm not calling for anyone to ban Lovecraft, his stories, if you can get around the horrible racism, are really good for the most part, I'm just sayin')
Lovecraft's racism flies under the radar because it's not widely known or obvious in his writings. There are a couple of his stories which deal with this anxieties over "miscegenation." (
Shadow over Innsmouth, for instance, was written in the wake of his horrifying revelation that one of his ancestors was...
gasp... Welsh.)
I actually don't see the issue with studying works of authors with horrible opinions in the classroom. I mean, Shakespeare's portrayal of women is far from positive, but all but the most extremely bigoted (like
The Taming of the Shrew and some interpretations of
The Merchant of Venice) are popular reading in high school courses. As long as students are encouraged to examine the attitudes in those works critically, I don't see the problem with it. The issue is that a lot of English teachers don't really get students to think about the work critically.
