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Feb 13 2022
A British writer, presenter and former model says he is shocked to find himself at the centre of an unprecedented wave of book banning in the US.
A Mississippi mayor has told the Madison County Library to remove LGBTQ+ books from its shelves or lose funding. One of the books singled out as an example was The Queer Bible, a collection of LGBTQ+ history essays edited by Jack Guinness. Ridgeland’s Republican mayor, Gene McGee, has refused to release funds to the library until “homosexual materials” are withdrawn...
...Guinness and other Queer Bible contributors joined crowdfunding efforts to replace the $110,000 withheld by the mayor. The target has now been reached...
...“It’s terrifying to think that one individual, due to their personal beliefs, can withhold texts from an entire community,” said Guinness. “I grew up under section 28, which forbade the promotion of homosexuality in schools. An entire generation grew up without information about their history or any understanding that they were not freaks.
“Banning any book is also a slippery slope. In certain countries, LGBTQ+ people do benefit from equal rights but this shows how easy it is for things to slip. There is a shift, an idea of criminalising or deleting certain communities. Today it’s the queer community – tomorrow it could be your community.”
Dec 22 2021
Carolyn Foote was shocked and angry when hundreds of books about race, equality or sexuality in Texas school libraries were targeted by Republican lawmakers. She and other librarians focused on making their collections more reflective of the increasingly diverse community and their work was now under threat.
Over the past several weeks, the retired school librarian in Austin, Texas -- along with three other library professionals -- has been spearheading a grassroots effort known as #FReadom. Their goal is to fight back against the wave of book challenges in the state and create a space for school librarians to help each other.
"We wanted to make a statement that we are out here and that we are willing to speak up for our students, for authors and for the books that our students deserve to have access to," Foote told CNN...
Nov 11 2021
...It’s easy to caricature a particular movement with some of its most extreme promoters. And there is a demonstrated history of efforts to ban books in schools, including by liberals. Such efforts have often involved classics such as “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Of Mice and Men” for their depictions of race and use of racist language more commonly used at the time the books were written. More recently, conservatives have often challenged books teaching kids about LGBTQ issues.
But advocates say what’s happening now is more pronounced.
“What has taken us aback this year is the intensity with which school libraries are under attack,” said Nora Pelizzari, a spokeswoman at the National Coalition Against Censorship.
She added that the apparent coordination of the effort sets it apart: “Particularly when taken in concert with the legislative attempts to control school curricula, this feels like a more overarching attempt to purge schools of materials that people disagree with. It feels different than what we’ve seen in recent years.” ...
Jun 25 2020
In an article in Vox titled "Bad Romance", Constance Grady (staff writer on cultural issues) talks about the long simmering issues in the world of romance publishing that have come to a head over these past few months:
... For years, the Romance Writers of America members of color had felt stigma and hostility ... they’d felt unwanted, disrespected, or simply shut out. So had the queer members, and the poly members, and everyone else who didn’t quite fit into the traditional romance mold. And in December 2019, all those years of slights, of aggressions both micro and macro, of implicit and explicit bias, would finally become impossible to ignore.
RWA imploded in a spectacular public meltdown, an imbroglio that led to the resignation of the president, executive director, and, eventually, the entire board. It was a wildly convoluted controversy that involved secret backroom committees, public denunciations, and no small amount of schadenfreude from popcorn-munching onlookers in publishing and media.
There’s an unkind stereotype that romance novels are for sex-starved spinsters with too many cats. So to those observing on social media, the spectacle of one romance figure after another toppling like dominoes appeared to be coming out of nowhere. “Who knew that romance novelists were so wild?” was the general response. But the chaos was the culmination of a long-simmering culture war within the insular world of romance publishing, one that played out for years through microaggressions, attempts to censor queer authors and storylines, and the refusal to recognize the work of authors of color...
Apr 21 2020
Attempts to remove books from libraries across the US rose almost a fifth last year, with children’s books featuring LGBTQ characters making up 80% of the most challenged books.
Jun 02 2019
People are fortunate if they have one great passion in life. Robert L. Bernstein, who died May 27, had three, starting with his family. He also had publishing. For a quarter century, he led Random House Inc., turning it into an enterprise as luminous as it was successful. In the mid-1980s, when Fortune magazine listed its “100 Best Companies in America to Work For,” Random House was among them. And there was Bernstein’s passion for human rights, starting with his support of individuals under KGB pressure, then moving on to do whatever was possible by peaceful means to protect whole societies from tyrants around the world.
Forty years ago, Bob cofounded Helsinki Watch (named after the signing place of a pact among 35 countries on a range of issues) to monitor the activities of dissidents such as Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia. In time, watch committees were added for the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the United States, women’s rights, children’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and others...
Nov 05 2018
Beginning today and lasting a week, more than 300 booksellers around the world are not selling titles on AbeBooks, the Amazon subsidiary that specializes in collectible and used books, to protest AbeBooks' decision to ban booksellers from several nations, including South Korea, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia. The action is called Banned Booksellers Week and was begun, the New York Times said, by British bookseller Simon Beattie.
Sep 26 2018
Writing in The Washington Post, Ron Charles asks if we still need Banned Books Week? He concludes:
Far from it being dated, James LaRue (from the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association) believes that Banned Books Week may be more relevant now than it’s been in a long time. "It’s not just about these quaint old books," he says. "It’s about speakers. It’s about displays and exhibits. It's about libraries as a center for civic debate." ...
"The censoriousness of our time is growing," LaRue warns. "It’s not just that we say we want to remove books; we don’t want people to voice in public opinions that someone else in the community might dislike."
Which is why, despite the imprecision of the terms "banned" and "challenged," I suppose I’m glad we have Banned Books Week. As LaRue argues, it encourages us to reflect on what we’re not discussing.
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