AsBooks Black peopleLGBTQ+ A surge in writers across the United States;DemocraticMassachusetts U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley hosted a discussion on protecting the stories of marginalized people on Friday at the Congressional Black Caucus’ 53rd annual legislative conference.Washington DC The panel, titled “Books Save Lives: The Power of Black Storytelling,” brought together leading figures in literature, education and civil rights to confront the growing crisis of censorship and propose solutions to protect intellectual freedom.
The event featured a lively panel of panelists, including George M. Johnson, author of the oft-banned memoir Not all boys are blue; Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and co-founder of the African American Policy Forum, Devin Morris, co-founder of the Teachers Lounge, and Leonard Egerton, co-owner of Frugal Bookstore in New York.BostonTogether, they discussed the broader impact of book bans, which unfairly target works that explore themes of race, gender and sexual orientation. Pressley addressed the issue bluntly in her opening remarks, calling the proliferation of bans part of a “planned and deliberate attack by white supremacists to silence Black voices.”
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The debate centered on Pressley’s bill, the Books Save Lives Act.Introduced Passed in December, the bill aims to combat increasing censorship by requiring public and school libraries to maintain diverse collections, especially works by marginalized authors. It also makes discriminatory book bans a violation of civil rights law. Pressley’s motivation for supporting the bill comes from a broader concern: book bans don’t just limit what students can read, they represent an attack on fundamental freedoms.
Christopher Wiggins (The Advocate)
“We must fight for reading freedom,” she told the audience. lawyer After the panel, she added, “Project 2025, written by Trump’s friends for the Trump White House, is harming all of the people who call this country home. They want to ban our bodies, they want to ban our books.”
Panelists said they felt deeply about the personal and political impact of these bans, especially Johnson, who wrote a memoir: Not all boys are blue is the second most banned book in the nation. Glamorous It reimagines the stories of 14 Black and queer figures from the Harlem Renaissance, many of whom have been erased from mainstream narratives.
Reflecting on the erasure of queer Black voices, Johnson said, “They were all Black and queer, but we learned about them as Black, not queer. When telling stories, it’s important to write about the wholeness of a person’s existence.”
Johnson was clearly frustrated by the limited number of stories offered to students of color, who described their experiences being assigned books like: of Catcher in the Rye “We have to have empathy for people who don’t look like us, who don’t feel like us, who don’t understand our experiences,” Johnson said, because schools have pushed them to play by stories that don’t reflect reality. But the current wave of censorship has only strengthened their resolve. lawyerJohnson described being on the banned books list as an “honor” and cited literary great Toni Morrison as an inspiration. “You can ban our books, but you can’t ban our stories,” they say. “Every time you attack me, I just come back with another story of queerness for you to attack again.”
The panel also explored the broader social and historical context of book bans. Crenshaw, a leading civil rights lawyer and originator of the concept of intersectionality, linked the recent bans to longstanding efforts to suppress the experiences of marginalized communities. She noted that 23 states have passed “divisive concept bans” to prevent the teaching of materials that cause offense or challenge the myth of meritocracy.
“They’re trying to erase power, so these are ideas of substance,” Crenshaw explained.education “The idea is to make people uncomfortable. To challenge what people have accepted as reality.” For Crenshaw, the book ban is part of a broader cultural and political effort to suppress conversations about race, structural inequality and intersectionality. She said: lawyer“At its core, our common humanity is a forbidden concept. That’s why teachers and parents must come together to take back our school boards and reclaim our future.”
Christopher Wiggins (The Advocate)
Panelists also emphasized the cultural importance of access to diverse literary works, especially for children. Egerton, co-owner of Boston’s only Black-owned bookstore, said that in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, demand for books by Black authors skyrocketed, with Frugal Bookstore receiving 22,000 orders overnight. “People were buying all kinds of books: young adult books, autobiographies, social science, racism. They just wanted to learn,” Egerton said.
For Egerton, bookstores like his serve as essential resources for communities that are cut off from stories that reflect their experiences. “It’s special to have this bookstore and be able to cater to the needs of children and young adults, and even adults who are just learning to read,” he said.
Morris, an educator and co-founder of the Teachers Lounge, emphasized the important role teachers play in creating an environment where students can think critically and develop empathy. With textbook bans increasingly influencing the curriculum, Morris warned that all children, not just Black and Brown students, are being denied any learning opportunities. “White babies need the same learning experiences,” Morris said. “They need to learn about other cultures. They need to learn about our own culture if we want to have the future we deserve.”
Morris also stressed the importance of community involvement, particularly in local school boards, which have become battlegrounds in the fight over banned books. “If you care about giving kids an equitable, quality education, you should run,” he said.
The panelists repeatedly emphasized that book bans are not only an attack on intellectual freedom, but also an attempt to erase the humanity of marginalized communities. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us,” Pressley said on the panel.
She said in an interview lawyerPresley agreed with this opinion and said that blacks and LGBTQ+ Authorship is essential to understanding the full scope of human experience. “It’s so important to have positive representations of your lived experiences, your family models, your culture and gender expression,” she says. “It saves lives.”
As the panelists left the stage, the message was clear: the forces of censorship may be strong, but the stories of marginalized communities will not be silenced. “You can ban our books, but you can’t ban our stories,” Johnson concluded.
Source: Advocate.com – www.advocate.com
