Book
Mammoth Book of Tattoos, The
Mammoth Book of Tattoos, The is a book by Lal Hardy. The Wisconsin prison-ban record treats the book as excluded reading inside state custody, which shows how prison and mailroom censorship function as a government reading regime.
Description
About the work
Mammoth Book of Tattoos, The is a book by Lal Hardy. The Wisconsin prison-ban record treats the book as excluded reading inside state custody, which shows how prison and mailroom censorship function as a government reading regime.
What makes it interesting is the prison-censorship logic: officials treat the book as a practical threat model and collapse the distinction between reading about something and doing it. As a book, it can be read not only for subject matter but for the way form, tone, and circulation make a text feel dangerous, intimate, or politically usable to anxious officials.
It also matters as part of a wider censorship history in Wisconsin. The present page is a dossier starter built from source-tracked ban records; the surviving note currently says: The Wisconsin prison-ban record treats the book as excluded reading inside state custody, which shows how prison and mailroom censorship function as a government reading regime. The exported reason says: DOC. More publication history, translations, and close reading can be added later.
Overview
Why it was banned
Mammoth Book of Tattoos, The entered censorship debates as a book associated with circulation politics, institutional control, and risk knowledge. In the current dossier, the main state objections cluster around instructional harm, obscenity, public morality, and public order.
The earliest event currently captured here is 2010-05-13 in Wisconsin, where Wisconsin corrections agencies and prison mailrooms excluded from prison circulation. The Wisconsin prison-ban record treats the book as excluded reading inside state custody, which shows how prison and mailroom censorship function as a government reading regime. The exported reason says: DOC. The Wisconsin prison-ban record treats the book as excluded reading inside state custody, which shows how prison and mailroom censorship function as a government reading regime. The exported reason says: DOC 309.04(4)C.8.a. Nudity on 198 and 230
This entry is still incomplete: more jurisdictions, court orders, and translated justifications should be added over time.
This page is intentionally incomplete. The ban history is a starter dataset, not a final census of every jurisdiction or decree.
Counter and critical readings
Context, rebuttals, and criticism
- 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova
A compact reference on how censorship systems moved across states, churches, and courts.
- Banned Books: 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. Anne Lyon Haight
Useful for comparing older obscenity, heresy, and political bans with modern free-speech disputes.
Ban history
Known government actions
| Date | Jurisdiction | Action | Reason | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-05-13 | Wisconsin | excluded from prison circulation | The Wisconsin prison-ban record treats the book as excluded reading inside state custody, which shows how prison and mailroom censorship function as a government reading regime. The exported reason says: DOC. | The Wisconsin prison-ban record treats the book as excluded reading inside state custody, which shows how prison and mailroom censorship function as a government reading regime. The exported reason says: DOC 309.04(4)C.8.a. Nudity on 198 and 230 |
Sources
Harvested references for this page
- The Marshall Project: Banned book lists from 18 states database partial
- Wikipedia REST summary API database partial
- 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature book partial
- Banned Books: 387 B.C. to 1978 A.D. book partial