Book awards and dangerous books

I like getting awards. But I am also suspicious of the whole process. I like getting banned more.

Sherman Alexie, on receiving the Outstanding Achievement in the Arts award from ArtsFund, quoted in Nicole Brodeur, Sherman's Lunch: Alexie Gets an Award from ArtsFund, Seattle Times, June 3, 2014. (Hat tip to the librarian who has this in her signature block.)

The prolific and offbeat author, who was honored for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, told the crowd of how his National Book Award-winning “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” has been on banned-book lists for years—but was knocked out of first place by “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s book about two male penguins at New York’s Central Park Zoo who cared for an egg together. 

“Gay penguins are more dangerous than reservation Indians,” Alexie cracked.

Id.