How the Book-Banning Movemement Censors Sexual Violence
Of the more than 3,000 book bans PEN America recorded in the last school year, a quarter scenes of rape or sexual assault. These include books like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Sold by Patricia McCormick, and Identical by Ellen Hopkins. Sam LaFrance and Kasey Meehan write that these books aren’t harmful—censorship is. Allowing students to learn about rape can help prevent it.
Authoritarians know that controlling their societies takes more than the heavy hand of the police or the courts; it also requires shaping how their populations think and see the world, and how the world sees them. CEO Suzanne Nossel writes for Foreign Affairs that the outcome of the global battle between democracies and autocracies will hinge significantly on culture, a key lever central to PEN America's work.
This week’s Member Spotlight features Mrs. Gulliver by PEN America Member Valerie Martin. It's 1954 on far-flung Verona Island, a tropical paradise with a fragile economy and a rising crime rate. Prostitution is legal and Lila Gulliver is proud of her business, a high-end brothel where her clients are guaranteed privacy and discretion. When Carità Bercy, a young, destitute, and beautiful blind woman arrives at her door seeking employment, Lila decides to give her a chance. Spirits of the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, as well as the devilish denizens of the magical island in The Tempest, haunt this steamy tale of passionate love, found and lost, and found again.
Deborah Jackson Taffa‘s debut memoir, Whiskey Tender, stitches together familial, societal, and governmental history that, together, intricately details a Native coming-of-age in the American Southwest. In an interview with Jared Jackson, Program Director for Literary Programs and Emerging Voices, Taffa discusses cultural inheritances, family lore, and creative patience.
In his collection of stories, Curses, Kevin Huizenga tackles parenthood, theology, politics, and capitalism through surreal monsters and mundane suburbs. In conversation with PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection’s Communications and Editorial Assistant Valentine Sargent, Huizenga shares his process in culminating the nine stories into one cohesive collection along with the influences of Midwestern life, Chekhov, a Victorian ghost story, and others.
Our book ban research was cited in a report about how a community is fighting book bans in Beaufort, South Carolina. (60 Minutes)
In its new Diversity Baseline Survey, Lee & Low cited our report, Reading Between the Lines. (Lee & Low Books)
Florida Director Katie Blankenship wrote that the tide of censorship has gone too far – and noted the evident crack in this latest wave. (The Miami Herald)
Julie Trébault, managing director of the Artists at Risk Connection program (ARC), said global censorship has increased amid nationalist campaigns to suppress and stifle free expression. (The Art Newspaper)
Ahead of Super Tuesday, we worked with partners in Dallas to express concerns about election disinformation, especially impacting the Black community in Texas. (The Dallas Weekly)
Suzanne Nossel spoke about how free speech is under assault in educational settings, school committees, university boards, and political rallies across the United States, and explained why policing speech is a bad solution. (PBS) (VPM)
Kasey Meehan spoke about Florida's outsized number of book bans. (NewsNight)
We joined with a coalition of free expression advocates to call on the Autauga-Prattville, Alabama, Library Board to reverse a new policy to effectively bar the library from purchasing books for minors that contain LGBTQ content. Meehan said the board “is making a mockery of freedom of expression.” (Publishers Weekly)
PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Center Managing Director Liesl Gerntholtz was quoted by Iran International condemning the sentencing of Sepideh Rashno, an Iranian writer and critic of Iran’s mandatory hijab law. (Iran International)
Gen Z and Millennials Reinvent Book Clubs, as they rise 24% (CNN)
"Allowing students to read and learn about sexual violence doesn’t cause more violence. In fact, the opposite is true: Allowing students to learn about rape can help prevent it, and it can help those who have experienced it learn how to talk about it."
- PEN America’s Kasey Meehan and Samantha LaFrance, in Ms. Magazine
TRENDING @ PENAMERICA
Banning the Dictionary in Florida
C is for censorship. Yes, the dictionary really was banned in Escambia County, Florida. PEN America's Kasey Meehan explains how we got here in a video made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation.
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