![]() “It looks like him or someone on his staff did keyword searches in a library database, like ‘LGBTQ’ or ‘racism,’ and that’s how they made the list,” Friedman says. ![]() He asked for a detailed accounting of whether their schools had any copies of these books and, if they did, where they were being held and how much money had been spent to acquire them.Īccording to Friedman, the work put into compiling the list was tantamount to a “witch hunt.” Matt Krause, a Republican state lawmaker in Texas, sent a list of 850 books to school superintendents in districts throughout the state. Politicians have now become major drivers of book bans in their states, Friedman says. Unlike in the past, the recent deluge of book bans is not driven solely by concerned parents. “What’s really surprising about it is also the fact that it’s been quite successful.” “We’re talking about the growth of a coordinated effort to encourage people to file the same kinds of challenges against the same books for the identical reasons spreading across multiple states and school districts,” Friedman says. However, the wave of book bans over the last year represents something different from the typically isolated cases of outraged parents. Whenever there is a “culture war” book bans tend to occur, says Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s director of free expression and education programs and author of the report. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University Data from PEN Americaīook bans are far from a new phenomenon. “There are so many wonderful, complex conversations we can have with these books.” Of the 1,586 books banned between Jand March 31, 2022, 47 percent are meant for young adult readers between 13 and 17. “Books are a way for those of us who are uncomfortable with some of these conversations to start those conversations in classes,” says Urbani, who was a classroom teacher in Philadelphia for 12 years. schools are failing not only students but teachers. By further limiting whose story gets to be told in schools, Urbani says, U.S. In fact, Florida’s Palm Beach County did remove “To Kill a Mockingbird” from its school libraries earlier this year, only to return the book after reviewing the book’s content.įor Urbani, the recent book bans are troubling particularly because they target works by or about people of color, LGBTQ people and members of other marginalized groups. According to the report, there were 204 book bans within nine months in Florida alone. There were 713 book bans in Texas alone, and Pennsylvania had 456 bans, largely from a single mass ban.Īnd while Florida’s “banned book list” was fake, book bans are far from rare in the state. “To say that there was going to be a time in my life where there was this mass of banned books–we’re going in the wrong direction.” For each book, we will link to the author or publisher's website.“It breaks my heart,” says Jaci Urbani, an associate professor and director of the early childhood special education program for Mills College at Northeastern in Oakland, California. That's why, for Black History Month, the ACLU of Massachusetts has chosen to highlight a few pivotal, Black-authored books that have been targeted - recently or historically - for censorship. This is partly an obvious backlash to the racial justice movement sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others - but it's also just the latest chapter in a long story of racist censorship. Today, however, this campaign has roared back into life with a relentless effort to remove Black-authored books from libraries, race-conscious subjects from curricula, and any mention of racism from our collective history. The racist campaign of repression against Black authors has never really stopped - only ebbed from time to time. The greatest Black writers have been feared for precisely their ability to highlight the injustices of American society with clarity, lyricism, and urgency. Since at least the Harlem Renaissance, Black writing in the United States has been widely treated as obscene, seditious, and even dangerous. We have been especially interested in defending those who have the least power in our society, who have faced decades or even centuries of racial and economic injustice.īlack literature - indeed, Black art - has long been a target for coordinated campaigns of censorship and repression, usually facilitated by local, state, and federal government action or inaction. ![]() For over 100 years - since the days when "banned in Boston” was a badge of honor for hit new Broadway shows - the ACLU of Massachusetts has fought government censorship in the Commonwealth and defended the constitutional right to express unpopular opinions. ![]()
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