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
Animal Farm: Banned by the Soviets, Promoted by the CIA
Though the book cannot and should not be divorced from the Russian Revolution, Orwell sees beyond the specifics of that revolution, and even beyond revolution itself, to tell what… More
Reservation Sunsets and ‘Salem’s Lot
Maybe the banning advocate truly is the 13 year old, terrified that his secret life is out, that some novelist had looked into his private world and reported from… More
On Beauty: Banning Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
The narrative that Pecola absorbs from the world around her is simple. It tells her that to be beautiful is to be white. It shapes her identity at the… More
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PEN America On 
In a letter sent to @DuvalSchools in Florida, PEN America and We Need Diverse Books (@diversebooks), along with 70 authors, questioned the removal of 176 book titles from classroom libraries in January 2022 for “review.” https://pen.org/press-release/letter-to-duval-county-fl-schools-from-pen-america-and-we-need-diverse-books-signed-by-69-authors-calls-for-return-of-176-book-titles-pulled-from-classroom-libraries/
Do Publishers Have a Moral Obligation to Diversify American Literature? Join us on December 13, for this year's Town Hall where @rgay, @minjinlee11, Chris Beha, and Erroll McDonald question the complexities of today's publishing industry. Learn more: https://pen.org/event/pen-america-town-hall-do-publishers-have-a-moral-obligation-to-diversify-american-literature/
"Putin has repeatedly claimed that Ukrainian culture and language simply don’t exist. By targeting art museums, music halls, libraries, theaters, and historical sites, he attempts to make it so." https://twitter.com/PENamerica/status/1600212807085359104