Kelly Jensen, "Anti-Critical Race Theory Parents fight The Hate U Give," book Rion, August 10, 2021. https://bookriot.com/the-hate-u-give-challenge/?fbclid=IwAR3xZMSlv3isO98FaNDjN_BxJ_A3708MG1uTShFYKHpVh_Y6mR5fUUEqZdQ

In most parts of the US, if public schools aren’t back in session, they will be soon. If fights about masking or not masking during a global pandemic and rise of the COVID-Delta variant weren’t enough, nor were protests against access to inclusive sexual education material, now teachers and librarians have to fight a third front. Opponents to Critical Race Theory (CRT) are flooding school and library board meetings, hoping to squash use of titles that explore anti-racism. Angie Thomas’s award-winning debut The Hate U Give is one such title under the spotlight by anti-anti-racism activists in Putnam County, New York.

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The Hate U Give is no stranger to criticism, having been on the American Library Association’s most challenged list since its publication in 2017. Reasons for its continual challenge include it being “‘pervasively vulgar’ and because of drug use, profanity, and offensive language.” 

COMMENT

Librarians are in the role of defending a book from angry parents and maintaining a list of banned books.  Without saying it in so many words,, the article makes it clear that the censors have not read "The Hate U Give" but then again, censors almost never seem to have actually read the books they object to. 
 

 

Utah parents complained after kids were read a story about a transgender boy. Now other diverse books are on hold.

 Courtney Tanner, "Utah parents complained after kids were read a story about a transgender boy. Now other diverse books are on hold. Salt Lake Tribune," February 11, 2021, https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2021/02/11/utah-parents-complained/?fbclid=IwAR1LgTnXZE7lCX9LKgaRrK7xLh4bweSHmCu7rKg1k0mNrgfsCFBKQZ7PAZ0

     It’s not the first time there’s been concern about Utah schools having LGBTQ books. In 2012, a picture book about a lesbian couple raising a child was removed from the shelves of elementary school libraries in Davis County after a group of parents there raised objections.

     But Murray School District is taking its response a step further, now reviewing all of the literature in its “equity book bundles” program — even though “Call Me Max” is not part of that initiative and is not in any of the district’s libraries. It was only in the classroom because the student had a copy.

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     The move also comes after a separate Montessori school in North Ogden was allowing parents to “opt out” of the curriculum around Black History Month, but later reversed that decision after facing community pushback.Perry said that many books by Black authors and about people of color will still be available for teachers and kids to read, including “Of Thee I Sing” by former President Barack Obama, as well as picture books about Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass.
     Some of those also appear on the equity book bundle lists and will remain on the shelves even with the program temporarily suspended, Perry added. Nothing will be pulled until the review is completed.
     “Anything in our libraries is fair game for teachers to use right now, including many books that are in the bundle program,” Perry added. “In fact, the bundle program is by no means an exhaustive list of books on equity. Our libraries have many others.”

     The equity book bundles effort began this fall. Under it, an elementary school is given a copy of the 38 books on the district’s list. The list was curated by Vanessa Jobe, a vice principal at Horizon Elementary where the program started. It includes works by diverse authors, including Ibram Kendi, and on diverse topics, such as what it means to grow up in a Latino family or to live with a disability. It’s meant to encourage educators to incorporate the stories into their lessons.

COMMENT

    An effort to present diverse books to schoolchildren runs into the kind of prejudice that makes it so important for schoolchildren to have diverse books. 

 

 

Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It

Peter Wehner, “Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It” New York Times, December 8, 2019, p. SR3.

Sohrab Ahmari— a convert to Catholicism who is both the op-ed editor of The New York Post and a contributor to the religious magazine First Things— was so outraged that drag queens were reading stories to children at a library in Sacramento that he has relegated civility to a secondary virtue while turning against modernity and classical liberalism “To hell with liberal order,” as Mr. Ahmari put it. “Sometimes reactionary politics are the only salutary path.”

COMMENT

     Judging by the political behavior of Trumpist Christians, you’d think that enforcing stereotypical gender roles was a foundational principle of Christian religion. Mr. Wehner suggests that such prejudice is, in fact, contrary to a practice of spirituality, joy, gratitude, kindness and healing grace.

    As a target of self-appointed morality police the library takes on two roles that appear in other library stories: 1) a target of censorship 2)  a defender of free speech and diversity.

Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture

Jenifer Senior, “Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture,” New York Times, March 10, 2019, p. SF5.

     If the book-buying public had found “A Place for Wolves” as criminally distasteful and insensitive as Twitter did, it would have sunk the novel in slower, more deliberate ways. Librarians would have read it and taken a pass. Bookstore owners would have decided it wasn’t worth the space. Book critics would have savaged it— or worse, ignored it.
     It should have failed or succeeded in the marketplace of ideas. But it was never giver the chance. The mob got to it first.

COMMENT

     The librarian role in this editorial is somewhere between censor and anti-censor— a type of objective reader able to judge the book by literary standards and/or market potential, not a knee-jerk reaction to identity politics. The proposed  antidote to rabid crowd-sourced Internet mobs is a professional class of critics to help sort out literary dross. As a librarian and book reviewer I appreciate the vote of confidence!

     The editorial describes a Twitter mob attack on a YA novel by Kosoko Jackson by people who had never read the book but who objected to the way a particular ethnic group was portrayed. Ironically, Jackson had seen himself as a defender against cultural appropriation, even developing “rules” for writers that claimed fiction must, for some reason, reflect the identity of its author (isn’t that autobiographical non-fiction?):“Stories about the civil rights movement should be written by black people. Stories of suffrage should be written by women. Ergo, stories about boys during life-changing times, like the AIDS epidemic, should be written by gay men. Why is this so hard to get?”

     It’s so hard to get because it is not just wrong but absurdly wrong. Who has authority to declare which contemporary identity groups own which parts of history? Not only does the idea of identity censorship undermine the artistic possibilities of fiction, striving to avoid stereotypes at any cost has the unfortunate side effect of erasing authentic diversity.[1]  If authors were only allowed to write autobiographical fiction about people just like  themselves, we’d just get nothing but segregated books.

     Jackson seems to have fallen into the identity politics trap by assuming that cis-gendered white people are value-neutral regardless of ethnic, national or religious identity. Perhaps that false idea led him all unawares to write about the complicated and violent identity politics of the Balkans, seemingly without po0ndering the meaning of the word “Balkanization.”

[1] See: Autism as Metaphor.  Which is worse? To find people like you in books reduced to caricature or metaphor? or not to find people like you in books at all? 

Nebraska Governor Won't Honor Book by 'Political Activist' who has Criticized Trump

Lisa Gutierrez. Nebraska Governor Won't Honor Book by 'Political Activist' who has Criticized Trump. Kansas City Star, Jan. 8, 2019.

     Nebraska’s Republican governor Pete Ricketts has refused to sign a proclamation honoring a book about a farm family in the state, calling the author a “political activist” and suggesting the book is divisive.
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     “This Blessed Earth,” written by Nebraska writer and journalist Ted Genoways, is the 2019 “One Book One Nebraska” selection chosen by The Nebraska Center for the Book. The nonprofit, affiliated with the Library of Congress, “supports programs to celebrate and stimulate public interest in books, reading, and the written word,” according to its website.
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     “It’s an award-winning book,” Rod Wagner, director of the Nebraska Library Commission, told the World-Herald. “It’s received national attention. Of course there are ideas in the book that people will not agree to, but I think that’s also a reason why it makes for a good one to consider and discuss. “It’s a contrast of the modern farm with that of 40 years ago. It’s one that’s a subject of interest across Nebraska. People who have disagreements with ideas in the book will be able to talk about those.”

COMMENT 

    The governor has failed to understand that some aspects of his job are purely ceremonial.  It makes him look like a book-burner to reject a book award because of his own politics. After all, he does not represent the organization that gives the award and he doesn't get to veto the award the way he could veto a bill.  The book also won a 2018n Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize and was selected for state reading programs in Iowa. What's more, the book is about  issues facing family farmers-- the kind of thing that the governor of Nebraska should probably care about.

   I haven't read the book (yet) either, but apparently in it Big Agriculture doesn't play well with others and farmers are worried that leaks from the  Keystone XL pipeline will contaminate the aquifer that supports irrigated farming throughout the region.  Does the governor think that suppressing knowledge of these problems will somehow cause them to disappear?

     One hopes that the governor's petty behavior draws more readers to the book.  The danger is, if politicians think the librarians who are advocating freedom to read are advocating partisan political positions they might try to cut off public funding for libraries.