It’s banned books week, which some people think of as a celebration of our freedom to read and others as an awareness campaign about the dangers of restricting access to information and infringing free speech. Book bans, impacting libraries and schools and other state funded educational spaces, have gained more media attention in a time of political polarization. There has been some contradictory reporting about whether more books are being banned in 2024 than in previous years, but book banning has become more prevalent since the pandemic and is still limiting people’s freedom to read and access information, impacting budgets and school curricula, and in some extreme cases, getting librarians fired (and fired up). A few librarians who have opposed banned books or defied banned books laws, have been harassed or received violent threats.
Where are books banned? Book bans are uneven and primarily effect school libraries and school curricula. Texas and Florida are usually cited as the states with the most banned books but even in places where books aren’t formally banned there might be “challenged” books or changes to school and library budgets that work to effectively make certain reading material inaccessible to the public and especially to youth.
What books are banned? In some states hundreds of books are banned or “challenged.” The top banned books last year, according to the American Library Association, were:
“Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe
“All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson
“This Book Is Gay” by Juno Dawson
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“Flamer” by Mike Curato
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison
“Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews
“Let’s Talk About It” by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
Literally, you can borrow books from the library for 16 weeks. And want a banned (or really any) book we don’t have? You can request one from any CUNY or SUNY library or use our Interlibrary Loan service. If we don’t have it, we’ll try to get it for you!
Adjunct Reference and Instruction Librarians; Instructor or Assistant Professor, City Tech Library
The Ursula C. Schwerin Library at New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City Tech) seeks to hire Reference and Instruction librarians for part-time work during the Fall 2023 semester, which runs from August 25 to December 20. City Tech is a comprehensive college in downtown Brooklyn, offering associate and baccalaureate degrees in technology and health related degree programs, other career-oriented degrees and liberal arts transfer degrees in its Schools of Arts and Sciences, Technology and Design, and Professional Studies. Adjunct reference and instruction librarians will be responsible for providing high quality reference service in person and online, for teaching in person library instruction classes, and for contributing to instructional design and outreach projects. Other projects, including blogging, maintaining library guides and tutorials, assisting with collection development, occasional website updates, and collaborating on promotion and outreach efforts are within the scope of this position.
Successful candidates will have experience working in an academic library; experience providing in-person and online library reference; experience with library instruction; the ability to work as part of a team of diverse individuals; and excellent communication skills, including the ability to interact positively with colleagues, students, faculty, staff in the library and at the college. Experience with LibGuides and WordPress preferred.
Shifts during the Fall 2023 semester may be scheduled between 9am-5pm Monday through Friday, with a possibility of occasional reference desk shifts on Saturdays from 10am to 5pm. The successful candidate will be able to work around 15 hours per week over 2 or 3 weekdays. Applicants must have an ALA-accredited MLIS; an additional graduate degree is required for appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor.
Applicants should send a cover letter and CV by email to Prof. Anne Leonard at Anne.Leonard81@login.cuny.edu. The position is open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately. Preference is given to applications submitted before August 7.
Hourly rate: approximately $50 per hour; consult the PSC-CUNY salary schedule for non-teaching adjunct hourly rates.
Adjunct Reference and Instruction Librarian; Instructor or Assistant Professor, City Tech Library
The Ursula C. Schwerin Library at New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City Tech) seeks to hire a Reference and Instruction Librarian for part-time work during the June 2023 semester with a possibility to renew during the Fall 2023 semester. City Tech is a comprehensive college in downtown Brooklyn, offering associate and baccalaureate degrees in technology and health related degree programs, other career-oriented degrees and liberal arts transfer degrees in its Schools of Arts and Sciences, Technology and Design, and Professional Studies. The adjunct reference and instruction librarian will be responsible for providing high quality reference service in person and online, for teaching in person library instruction classes, and for contributing to instructional design and outreach projects.
Successful candidates will have experience working in an academic library; experience providing in-person and online library reference; experience with library instruction; the ability to work as part of a team of diverse individuals; and excellent communication skills, including the ability to interact positively with colleagues, students, faculty, staff in the library and at the college. Experience with instructional design platforms, libguides, and wordpress preferred.
The successful candidate will be able to work around 15 hours per week over 2 or 3 weekdays. Applicants must have an ALA-accredited MLIS; an additional graduate degree is required for appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor.
Applicants should send a cover letter and CV by email to Prof. Keith Muchowski at keith.muchowski15@login.cuny.edu. The position is open until filled, and review of applications will begin immediately.
April is National Poetry Month. There is a book display on the 4th floor of the library and you should check a book of poetry out and take it home and read it.
A lot of people in America don’t read poems. A lot of people in America think of poems as decorous or obtuse or useless things.
Here’s the official poster of 2023 National Poetry Month, which I think looks decorous and obtuse and useless, but who am I to say–like Frank O’Hara, I’m not a painter.
Once in awhile someone makes a poem that reaches into the collective consciousness and people take notice. Amanda Gorman’s Fury and Faith, a poem about systemic injustice, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the possibility of liberation was such a poem–a democracy affirming poem, a protest poem, delivered at a the 2021 presidential inauguration.
After the inauguration, lot of people invited Amanda Gorman to talk about and read her poem on TV. I think Fury and Faith is a beautiful poem, an American poem about hope and oppression, and I wish that after Amanda Gorman stopped being on TV all the time, people started reading other poems more often. But I doubt it.
Sometimes I like an American poem without hope. Poems that don’t have birds in them or the word “someday.” Poems about the bus and the uselessness of political discourse, like Claudia Rankine’s poem from Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: “I don’t usually talk to strangers…”–a poem about the ordinary political conversations we chose not to have because some distances are unbridgeable:
I could say something, but my packages are getting heavier by the minute and besides, what is there to say since rhetorically it’s not about our oil under their sand but about freeing Iraqis from Iraqis and Osama is Saddam and Saddam is “that man who tried to kill my father” and the weapons of mass destruction are, well, invisible and Afghanistan is Iraq and Iraq is Syria
Poetry doesn’t need to change the world to be an act of resistance or a statement of witness. Maybe it is is enough to say, like Julian Talamantez Brolaski does, in the poem Stonewall to Standing Rock:
what can poetry do it
cant not not do nothing
Not that many people need to read or hear a poem for it to mean something. Maybe a poem that is a transcription of a dream written for one person and delivered on a bicycle by Mathias Svalina, as part of his “dream delivery service” is the best poem:
Maybe the best poem is on the back of a napkin somewhere, lost in a landfill.
One of my favorite poets, Paul Celan, who spent 18 months in a forced labor camp during World War II because he was Jewish, and whose parents died in a Nazi concentration camp, made poems and kept them in his head because he didn’t have any way to write them down. In his poem Ashglory, written and published after the war, he warns us:
No one bears witness for the witness.
And here we are almost 100 years later reading Paul Celan and remembering the horror of fascism, during the rise of a new kind of fascism. Maybe we need poems to remember or uncover things that history has buried, like the Poems of Lost Privilege Company, which are really collages made from the files of youth who were imprisoned from 1910-1925 as part of the American eugenics movement (not in a lot of history books).
Maybe we need poems to connect or to forget. Poems to counter the decorous poetry that we think is the only kind. Poems that describe real sex and real feelings, unflinchingly, like Ariana Reines’ poem “When I Looked at Your Cock, My Imagination Died” does.
Maybe we need poetry about the things we want to believe in or once believed. Maybe we need a poetics that uncovers our own false gods lovingly like Dodie Bellamy does in her book TV Sutras:
…but my cult was nothing like Mark’s cult, my cult was normal.
And maybe these particular poems aren’t the ones that you recognize yourself and your own experience in, but those poem exist and you should find them.
Here’s one of my favorites, written by my teacher Lisa Jarnot. It is a great poem but I like it because it reminds me of the place I grew up and I recognize myself in it:
The Bridge
That there are things that can never be the same about
my face, the houses, or the sand, that I was born under the
sign of the sheep, that like Abraham Lincoln I am serious
but also lacking in courage,
That from this yard I have been composing a great speech,
that I write about myself, that it’s good to be a poet, that I look
like the drawing of a house that was pencilled by a child,
that curiously, I miss him and my mind is not upon the Pleaides,
that I love the ocean and its foam against the sky,
That I am sneezing like a lion in this garden that he knows
the lilies of his Nile, distant image, breakfast, a flock of birds
and sparrows from the sky,
That I am not the husband of Cassiopeia, that I am not
the southern fish, that I am not the last poet of civilization,
that if I want to go out for a walk and then to find myself
beneath a bank of trees, weary, that this is the life that I had,
That curiously I miss the sound of the rain pounding
on the roof and also all of Oakland, that I miss the sounds of
sparrows dropping from the sky, that there are sparks behind
my eyes, on the radio, and the distant sound of sand blasters,
and breakfast, and every second of it, geometric, smoke
from the chimney of the trees where I was small,
That in January, I met him in a bar, we went
home together, there was a lemon tree in the back yard,
and a coffee house where we stood outside and kissed,
That I have never been there, curiously, and that it never was
the same, the whole of the island, or the paintings of the stars,
fatherly, tied to sparrows as they drop down from the sky,
O rattling frame where I am, I am where there are still
these assignments in the night, to remember the texture
of the leaves on the locust trees in August, under the
moonlight, rounded, through a window in the hills,
That if I stay beneath the pole star in this harmony of
crickets that will sing, the bird sound on the screen,
the wide eyes of the owl form of him still in the dark,
blue, green, with shards of the Pacific,
That I do not know the dreams from which I have come,
sent into the world without the blessing of a kiss, behind the
willow trees, beside the darkened pansies on the deck beside
the ships, rocking, I have written this, across the back of the
sky, wearing a small and yellow shirt, near the reptile house,
mammalian, no bigger than the herd,
That I wrote the history of the war waged between the
Peloponnesians and the south, that I like to run through
shopping malls, that I’ve also learned to draw, having been
driven here, like the rain is driven into things, into the
ground, beside the broken barns, by the railroad tracks,
beside the sea, I, Thucydides, having written this, having
Welcome to a new semester! And welcome (or welcome back) to everyone who is returning to in-person classes or new to City Tech.
Need a book, a quiet place to study or work on a project, or research help? Come visit us on the 4th floor of the Library building Mondays-Thursdays from 9-8pm and Fridays from 9-7pm.
Learning or teaching online? We’ve still got you covered.
Get virtual help 24X7
Off campus or up late working on a project and need help? Just Ask us!
You can chat with CUNY Librarians on weekdays and librarians from other institutions on evenings and weekends.
Access Library Resources from Off-Campus
Use CUNY login credentials to access library databases, research articles, movies, and ebooks from off campus.
Use these same credentials to login to “My Library Account” on the library website. If your preferred name isn’t associated with your library account, you can change that!
Longer Book Loans and More Renewals!
As of January 31st, students can now borrow books from any CUNY library for 8 weeks plus 4 renewals. If you have City Tech books on loan from before January 31st please email us at: NYCCTCirculation@citytech.cuny.edu and ask for a loan extension.
All books can be returned in the library or dropped in the Library Book Drop Box located inside 300 Jay Street entrance past the turnstiles on the left side.
Course Reserves
You can place textbooks and required readings for your courses in the Library’s Reserve Collection for your students to use in the library.
Please place your requests as soon as possible as we purchase on a first-come, first-served basis. Request materials to be placed on reserve using this form.
Interlibrary Loan has expanded its services! Faculty, staff, and now students can request books not available at CUNY through ILL. We are also continuing to fill article and individual book chapter requests and deliver them electronically. ILL is great for scholarly research and course assignments.
Your CUNY login is connected to your ILL account, so you’ll have one less password to remember!
Are you assigning papers or projects that require library research? You can request a library instruction session for your in-person or online synchronous class.
Are you teaching asynchronously or want your students to learn research skills at their own pace? Share the library’s tutorials and research guides with your students. The library is automatically embedded in Blackboard courses and you can add library widgets to your OpenLab site.
Contact your library subject specialist to find out more about subject-specific resources and support for your asynchronous class.
For general questions about library instruction, contact Prof. Rachel Jones, library instruction coordinator.
Open Educational Resources
Identify open and free resources to support teaching, browse your colleagues’ contributions, and much more via the OER at City Tech site.
Questions about assigning OER and other zero-cost resources, creating, and sharing your OER with a wider audience? Contact Cailean Cooney at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu. You can also request a tailored workshop by filling out this form.
Featured Eresources
The library gives access to–and is constantly updating–our collections of streaming video. Take a look at what we have available through Kanopy, Swank, and AVON.
One of our favorite databases is Statista; check out their constantly updating topic pages on issues like sustainability, social media, and more.
In coordination and with support from the ASAP program, the library is offering a limited number of PC laptops for 7 day loan to all City Tech students. Visit the Multimedia Resource Center on the 4th floor to check one out.
Media Browsing
The Multimedia Resource Center (MRC) is piloting an open browsing program. Students can enter the back staff area and browse the library’s collection of VHS cassettes, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and vinyl records. For more information, contact Prof. Junior Tidal.
Support for Scholarly Publishing
Did you know that City Tech just hit 1000 items contributed to CUNY Academic Works? Not only that, but City Tech added the most items to the Publications and Research series in Academic Works for 2021-22 of all CUNY campuses. Find out what the 1000th contribution was on our blog.
And, we’re so excited to see all the scholarly publications coming out of City Tech Library; your library faculty are hard at work on research. Read more on our blog.
Don’t Be a Stranger
Have questions about library resources and services but not sure how to reach us? Want to make sure you get the latest updates about changing policies, new resources, and digital tools available through the library?
The African American Studies department is hosting a screening of the documentary Free CeCe. The filmmaker, Jac Gares, will join for a discussion of this important film about a African American, bisexual, trans woman, and LGBTQ activist who is currently incarcerated after defending herself from an assault.
Where: Academic Complex Theater, followed by refreshments in A105
Today, January 27, is Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was on this date in 1945 that the Soviet Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Americans and the Holocaust Exhibition
This coming November a very special exhibit entitled “Americans and the Holocaust” is coming to New York City College of Technology. The 1100 square foot installation, part of an initiative sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and United States Holocaust Memorial (USHMM), explores what Americans knew about rising authoritarianism in the 1920s and 1930s and asks what public officials and citizens did and failed to do in the lead-up to the annihilation of six million Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others during the Second World War. City Tech is one of fifty institutions across the United States to be hosting the exhibit over the course of its run, and the only host institution in either New York State or New Jersey. “Americans and the Holocaust” will be free and open to the public. Accompanying the exhibit will be programming discussing its themes with noted scholars.
Rising Fascism and Americans Response
Americans in the 1930s were consumed with rising unemployment and homelessness after the onset of the Great Depression. People were also increasingly isolationist in this time just fifteen-twenty years after the Great War. Millions had been killed in the global conflict of 1914-1918. The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 consumed the lives of tens of millions more as the virus spread around the world.
German American Bund parade in New York City on East 86th St. between First and Second Avenues, Oct. 30, 1939. Photo by: World-Telegram
Americans were slow to respond when figures such as Mussolini and Hitler rose in the 1920s and 1930s. After Hitler became German Chancellor in 1933 and began his persecution of Europeans, most Americans advocated to keep America’s borders closed to immigrants and refugees. Aviator Charles Lindbergh and others began the noninterventionist America First movement as tension rose in Europe. The Germans used such events as the 1936 Winter and Summer Olympics in acts of so-called “sportswashing”—a technique in which political figures use major sporting events to soften their image and deflect criticism of their administration—to propagandize. Nearly one million Americans joined the 400 America First chapters across the country. The German American Bund, an organization supporting Hitler and his National Socialist Party, packed New York’s Madison Square Garden with 20,000 American supporters on February 20, 1939.
Using the Exhibition in Fall 2023 Courses and Beyond
“Americans and the Holocaust” is aimed at a general audience and poses big questions. Among other things, it asks viewers to consider what Americans knew about the war and the Holocaust while they were going, and what the nation might have done differently. The exhibit is ideal for college students. The Ursula C. Schwerin Library will also be curating a number of books and other materials which will be available for loan. We strongly recommend viewers watch “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” a 6 1/2 hour documentary based on the exhibit and created by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein that debuted on PBS in September 2022.
While “Americans and the Holocaust” is on display, we encourage faculty to consider incorporating the exhibit in their lesson plans in the Fall 2023 semester. Its themes cut across various disciplines and would be ideal for courses in History, Literature, Law & Paralegal, and Human Services just to name a few. This spring semester the organizing committee in the library will be speaking at events sponsored by the Faculty Commons and other venues to discuss how faculty and their students can engage with “Americans and the Holocaust.”
by Keith Muchowski on behalf of the “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition organizing committee
New to City Tech and want to learn more about how the library can support you and your students? Some of our core services are outlined below. Stop by and say hello! You’ll find us on the 4th floor of the Library Building.
Accessing Library Materials
Search for books, articles, films, and more on our website.
Use CLICS to request items from other CUNY Libraries: cityte.ch/clics
Use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) for books and articles not available at City Tech: cityte.ch/ill
Support for your Students
Students can get research help at the reference desk and connect via chat 24X7: cityte.ch/askus
Subject specific resources are curated in our research guides.
Guides are automatically embedded in Blackboard and available as OpenLab Widgets: cityte.ch/guide
Support for Your Scholarship
Need help navigating the scholarly communications landscape? Want to make your scholarship more visible? The Library offers workshops and consultations: cityte.ch/scholpub
New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York (CUNY), located in in downtown Brooklyn, is a comprehensive college offering 60 associate and bachelor’s degree programs in engineering technologies, health related and other career-oriented disciplines We pride ourselves on the rich diversity of our students, faculty and staff, representing more than 120 countries and speaking more than 85 languages, with many students the first in their families to attend college. We are soliciting applications for a collaborative, thoughtful, and innovative leader to serve as Chief Librarian of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library. This is a faculty position.
City Tech’s Ursula C. Schwerin Library is integral to the educational mission of the college, and fosters connections with and supports students, faculty, and staff in their academic pursuits. We are committed to student success as we implement and acquire services and resources that will have the greatest positive impact on the diverse City Tech community.
City Tech is a member of CUNY’s library system, a federation of 31 libraries and the CUNY Central Office of Library Services supporting the University’s 25 campuses. CUNY’s libraries act both together and individually to acquire books, media, and e-resources, and CUNY faculty and students are welcome to visit and to borrow materials from any CUNY library.
Reporting to the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Chief Librarian will lead approximately 16 full-time as well as ~20 part-time faculty and staff. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of current library technologies and trends, emerging areas of librarianship, and assessing and developing library services, collections, and technologies. They will have an energetic and empathetic leadership style and a commitment to transparency and clear communication across faculty and staff titles and positions.
The Chief Librarian will:
• Provide strategic, financial, and managerial leadership for the library, working collaboratively and collegially with faculty and academic leadership at the college and across the university’s library system.
• Chair the Library Department and guide the work and professional development of full-time tenure-line library faculty, professional and IT staff, civil service staff, and part-time faculty and staff in a collective bargaining environment.
• Serve as the primary advocate and spokesperson for the library and for library personnel on campus, locally, statewide and nationwide.
• Represent the library on the Provost’s Senior Staff, the college Personnel & Budget Committee, College Council, and other college committees.
• Collaborate with Library faculty and staff on the library’s strategic direction that aligns the library’s mission, goals, and objectives with the college and university mission and strategic plan.
• Support assessment activities, resulting in development and implementation of improvement plans and reassessment.
• Represent City Tech and develop effective resources and services across the university’s library system on the CUNY Council of Chief Librarians and other university committees.
QUALIFICATIONS
Minimum Qualifications:
An ALA-accredited graduate degree in library and information studies
An additional graduate or professional degree
A record of scholarly and professional achievement and service appropriate to the rank of associate or full professor
Preferred Qualifications:
A broad understanding of the issues confronting higher education and the role and changing nature of academic libraries
At least five years of library management and supervisory experience, with increasing responsibility, and evidence of effective resource management (including personnel, budget, collections, etc.)
Experience with assessment and strategic planning
Strong commitment to service-oriented collaboration and outreach with multiple campus constituencies
Demonstrated effectiveness in recruiting, supporting, and mentoring a diverse faculty and staff, contributing to an inclusive working and learning environment that supports scholarly, creative, and pedagogical work
A collaborative, empathic decision-making style, and demonstrated capacity for mentorship
Strong advocacy skills on behalf of library personnel and mission and the ability to value all personnel as contributors to the success of the organization
Demonstrated commitment to transparent and ethical decision making through consensus building
Strong analytical, interpersonal, and motivational skills
VACCINE REQUIREMENT
Candidates will be required to provide proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 upon commencing employment. Exemption (medical or religious) requests to this requirement will be considered in accordance with applicable law. Being fully vaccinated is defined for this purpose as being at least two weeks past their final dose of an authorized COVID-19 vaccine regimen. Final candidates must be fully vaccinated as of their first day of employment.
COMPENSATION
CUNY offers faculty a competitive compensation and benefits package covering health insurance, pension and retirement benefits, paid parental leave, and savings programs. We also provide mentoring and support for research, scholarship, and publication as part of our commitment to ongoing faculty professional development.
Salary Range:
Associate Professor: $100,329-$117,805
Professor: $104,057-$124,656
HOW TO APPLY
Visit www.cuny.edu, access the employment page, log in or create a new user account, and search for this vacancy using the Job ID or Title. Select “Apply Now” and provide the requested information.
Candidates should provide a cover letter, CV/resume, and statement of scholarly interests.
CLOSING DATE
Applications will be accepted until the position is filled, with review of resumes to begin on or after January 9, 2023.
JOB SEARCH CATEGORY
CUNY Job Posting: Faculty
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
CUNY encourages people with disabilities, minorities, veterans and women to apply. At CUNY, Italian Americans are also included among our protected groups. Applicants and employees will not be discriminated against on the basis of any legally protected category, including sexual orientation or gender identity. EEO/AA/Vet/Disability Employer.
Banned Books Week, an annual celebration of the freedom to read, will be held September 18–24 this year. During this week, authors, booksellers, librarians, publishers, and readers come together to advocate for the right to read without censorship. The theme for 2022 is “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”
Free and open access to ideas and information is a critical element of our democracy. The observation of Banned Books Week pushes back against censors: people who try to remove or restrict access to books that they find threatening in some way.
Book challenges often come from parents who want to restrict access to materials they find offensive. They want to control what their children, and their neighbors’ children, can read in school classrooms and public libraries. Targets are often books by or about Black or LGBTQ people. Censors label these books as “obscene” or “harmful to minors” or even as tools for “grooming” children for exploitation. For example, the Proud Boys protesting at Drag Queen storytimes claim to be protecting children from the corrupting influence of fairy tales and glitter.
Another disturbing trend is that more states are passing legislation to ban books and to restrict what librarians and K-12 teachers can add to their reading lists and book collections. In states where these new laws are in effect, educators who attempt to share banned materials or even talk about bans are being harassed and threatened. Banned Books Week 2022 is an opportunity to applaud those who stand up for our freedom to read, even at a cost to themselves.
For more information on book banning and censorship:
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2021. Of the 1597 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books:
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, and because it was considered to have sexually explicit images
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, profanity, and because it was considered to be sexually explicit
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted for depictions of abuse and because it was considered to be sexually explicit
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, violence, and because it was thought to promote an anti-police message and indoctrination of a social agenda
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references and use of a derogatory term
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews Reasons: Banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and degrading to women
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Reasons: Banned and challenged because it depicts child sexual abuse and was considered sexually explicit
This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson Reasons: Banned, challenged, relocated, and restricted for providing sexual education and LGBTQIA+ content.
Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin Reasons: Banned and challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and because it was considered to be sexually explicit
If you want to read a banned or challenged book (including some of the ones listed above) and see what all the controversy is about, check out our display in the front area of the library!
This post was co-authored by Rachel Jones and Nora Almeida
