Margaret Atwood on Substack

[Sparkly]

If you read anything on Substack, her writing is worthwhile. Most recently, she responded to a school board in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) banning of Handmaid's Tale.

She quotes from a recent PEN speech at Krakow, when she warned about encroaching dictatorships, saying it's ironic that the book was banned for being pornographic.

That’s quite funny: the book has more often been criticized for not being pornographic – for having sex acts in it that are not sexy. Well, they aren’t supposed to be: it’s a Puritanical regime, after all. So in the Canadian media a minor tempest is raging, as this is the first-ever Canadian province-wide attempt at mass book banning. I’m in good company, however: Brave New World and 1984 are also on the list. I guess they don’t want young people thinking about dictatorships.

https://substack.com/@margaretatwood