The American Booksellers Association has a website.
On that website it has a section for…Banned Books Week.
I’m not making it up.
The most recent item is April 13:
Lovely.
But, so…why are they now screaming that sending Abigail Shrier’s book out to booksellers is “violent” and in need of prompt and searching atonement?
On April 13, the Banned Books Week Coalition announced that Jason Reynolds has been named the inaugural Honorary Chair for Banned Books Week 2021. The New York Times bestselling author will headline the annual celebration of the right to read, which takes place September 26–October 2, 2021, and features the theme: Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us.
A couple of months away. How’s that going to work out?
Since it was founded in 1982, Banned Books Week has highlighted the value of free and open access to information by drawing attention to the attempts to remove books and other materials from libraries, schools, and bookstores.
Like the attempt that the ABA is submitting to right now, as we speak.
I imagine there must be quite some ruckus going on behind the scenes.
Comments
9 responses to “Censorship Divides Us”
We are fortunate to have a large home library of around 5000 volumes (number one daughter and her roommate check out books from us regularly). I used to slip index cards in any volume that was on someone’s banned book list (at one point, around 40% were on some Christian group’s list). Now days, it’s just too much trouble since almost all are troubling to someone.
Uproar elsewhere about Shrier’s book >> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-workers-petition-two-quit-over-anti-lgbtq-book-sales-n1273870
So much silliness, mostly by people who haven’t read the book methinks.
Some books are just asking to be banned. What was it wearing on its cover?
https://twitter.com/OCDismay/status/1415436288573022216
Oh, no, the literal cover? Wow. That’s…
I am glad I have my copy; I hope the efforts to ban it boost sales through the roof.
Since my covers are all figurative I don’t know what that means. It must hurt.
Banning the book should do wonders for its sales. I think that the Harry Potter series took off due to efforts to ban it.
I once cited this to someone: “Another suit was filed one year later [=1987] in Louisiana when seven fundamentalist Christian families asked that several books including The Wizard of Oz be removed from the required reading list of the community grade school. The families said the Oz story teaches that courage, love and wisdom are personally developed traits, rather than God-given gifts. The judge ruled that the books would not be removed, but parents could remove their children from class when material they think is objectionable is being used.” (Hana S. Field, “Triumph and Tragedy on the Yellow Brick Road: Censorship of the Wizard of Oz in America, The Baum Bugle, spring 2000, pp. 22-27)
He replied: “I was going to stop [at] the sentence where you said that the parents were worried that the books taught virtues and they wanted their kids to be slackers.”
I looked up the American Library Association’s “Ten Most Challenged Books of 2020”. I have no idea why Shrier’s book is not in that list, and I wonder what they would do if it were.
Sackbut, it may not have been banned enough in 2020. It seems well on its way to making it for 2021…and maybe in all 10 spots.
It must be on the Books That Must Not Be Named list. “You Know What”, by You-Know-Who.