PEN Podcast: Philip Fried Reads from the New American Poetry Anthology
The New American Poetry Anthology 1945 was banned in Colorado because of poems like Gergory Corso's "Marriage." In honor of Banned Books Week, the PEN podcast features Philip Fried… More
Sacrifice and Self-Censorship before Russia’s “Gay Propaganda” Law
For those of us outside Russia, it’s hard to convey the kind of risk Wilke and her publisher were contemplating. The Putin presidency has committed serious violence—only some of… More
Rachel Eliza Griffiths Reads The Bluest Eye
Rachel Eliza Griffiths reads and excerpt from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. More
Eyes, Exile, and Opportunity: Banning Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
"The capital and complex imagination of black people has always been banned, unless it is supportive in the service of the privileged body’s desire to view itself as superior." More
Sacred or Profane? On Bless Me, Ultima
And yet, I was only half Italian. I was only half Catholic. I was only half open to these ideas. I was only half. What could make me whole?… More
To Encounter Ocean Power
I can’t shake the image of young students—the gears of their minds at work—as they watch and take account, assess what it means to pull books from shelves, set… More
In Cold Blood: Practicing Our Humanity on the Page
In a great book, even the most despicable characters have a chance for redemption, perhaps, one might argue, more of a chance than he or she might get in… More
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home
Books with any kind of diversity are disproportionately challenged versus books by and about straight white males. More
Chill Blue Paint Box: Rereading Sons and Lovers
In 1975, Sons and Lovers meant to me the Gethsemane of emotional ambivalence—erotic yet ascetic, the stakes high as scripture, translated into genital dialect. More
On James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain
Whatever fear strikes any reader of Baldwin’s book awaits right in that opening paragraph: an unseemly portrait of faith. It is not literary sex, or violence, or the conflation… More