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Two reports released Monday provide a mixed but compelling outlook on the wave of book removals and challenges as the annual Banned Books Week begins for schools, stores and libraries nationwide. The ALA attributed the decline in book challenges in the first eight months of 2024, in part, to the work of anti-censorship activists and “success in courts” against laws that restrict book access. “But, you know, the First Amendment protects the rights of minors as well.”While the ALA’s report shows signs of book challenges abating, objections to certain titles still persist. Like the ALA, PEN said a large portion of the books targeted have racial or LGBTQ themes. It is supported by the ALA, PEN, the Authors Guild, the National Book Foundation and more than a dozen other organizations.

Persons: “, ” Deborah Caldwell, Stone, ” Caldwell, Toni Morrison’s “, Maia Kobabe’s, George M, shouldn’t, abating, Judy Blume, Margaret Atwood, ”, Kasey Meehan Organizations: American Library Association, PEN, Intellectual, Labor, ALA, “, NBC, New College of Florida, Utah State Board of Education, Read, Book Foundation Locations: PEN America, Florida and Iowa, United States, Nassau County , Florida, Utah, Florida

☆ How Ron DeSantis Joined the ‘Ruling Class’ — and Turned Against It
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-20 | by ( Nicholas Confessore | More About Nicholas Confessore | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

In January, Pinellas school district officials yanked Toni Morrison’s classic novel “The Bluest Eye” from high schools after a parent complained about a two-page rape scene. But in counties like Pinellas, his policies and rhetoric have already had what his critics believe is their intended effect. She objected to parts of the syllabus Mr. Robinson had distributed to his class on African-American history, which her son had briefly enrolled in. “I don’t stop my class and ask my white kids, ‘Hey, how are you feeling?’ What kind of teacher would do that?” Mr. Robinson said. In January, someone reported Mr. Robinson for a TikTok mentioning that he had taught students in his Dunedin sociology class about the Black thinker W.E.B.

Persons: DeSantis, yanked Toni Morrison’s, Ruby, ”, Jeffrey Sachs, Diaz, Laura Hine, Renee Chiea —, —, Brandt Robinson, Robinson, Chiea, Nell Irvin Painter, DeSantis’s, Mr, “ It’s, Robinson’s, W.E.B, Du Bois Organizations: Republican, Liberty, Disney, Acadia University, Dunedin High School, Princeton, America, Mr, The Times, Black Locations: Pinellas County, Pinellas, ”, New Orleans, Nova Scotia, Tallahassee ’, Florida, Dunedin

☆ On Reading ‘Beloved’ Over and Over Again
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For readers, a book’s meaning can change with every encounter, depending on the circumstances and experiences they bring to it each time. “I was sexually assaulted on a study abroad program in Kenya.” Tillet says. “And when I came back to the United States, I entered an experimental program that helped people who were sexual assault survivors, who were suffering from PTSD. And so … looking at what Morrison does in her novel, she’s dealing with trauma and she’s moving, going back and forth in time. So I actually experienced this on a personal level.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general.

Persons: Gilbert Cruz, Salamishah, Toni Morrison’s, “, ” Tillet, Morrison Organizations: The Times Locations: Kenya, United States

☆ Opinion: How to fight back against the ‘anti-woke’ movement
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Opinion Khalil Gibran Muhammad | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Several states across the country have imposed bans on books, K-12 educational curricula and diversity programs in recent months. And even where statewide bans are not in place, restrictive measures are being enacted by local school boards. The mere mention of structural racism or gender discrimination or sexuality can potentially cost educators and librarians their jobs. The beginnings of this national movement to defend the freedom to learn is rekindling relationships between college students and civil rights activists and inspiring new ones between college faculty and K-12 teachers and librarians. With such formidable alliances among students, teachers, organizers and academics being forged in communities across the country, we finally have an answer to reverse the swelling tide of injustice and authoritarianism.

☆ Legendary Female Artists on the Younger Women Who Inspire Them
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

The Artist’s Mind What it feels like for female artists to wrestle with ambition, ego, ambivalence and inheritance. That isolation has, historically, been especially true for women artists, some of the most celebrated of whom have seen “writer” or “painter” or “filmmaker” treated as a secondary part of their identity. For this issue, we asked legendary female artists to tell us about a younger woman whose work excites them and gives them hope. But for the current generation of women artists, who have come of age with models who more closely resemble them, identity seems more like a source of community than a trap. Women artists, born into a Babylon of exclusion and possibility, reveal that creative inheritance is as promiscuous as legal inheritance is strict.

☆ The Essential Toni Morrison
▼ + stars: | 2021-02-18 | by ( Veronica Chambers | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

As we approach the anniversary of a global pandemic that has changed our lives in every way, it seems a fine time to dive back into the world of Toni Morrison. What convinces us that we do?”In everything Morrison wrote, she offered narratives that revealed the journeys of characters, specific but universal, flawed and imperfect, with a deeply American desire for freedom and adventure. As Dwight Garner wrote when she died in 2019, “Morrison had a superfluity of gifts and, like few other writers of her era, bent language to her will. To read Toni Morrison is to know that from her brilliant opening lines to the stunning last pages that leave you shook that you will likely never match her wit and wisdom, but what joy there is in trying! Creatively, Toni Morrison set a large and lavish table of literature.

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