Readers, please excuse the extra email this month. Another piece of my memoir writing is out today in Salon, and it’s just in time for the last day of Banned Books Week.
This story about my mom attempting to remove Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends from my elementary school library takes place in the 1980s. If you’ve read my recent HuffPost personal essay, you know my family looked a lot different back then. We were in the throes of religious extremism, which led to absurd situations like being offended by a quirky, endearing book of children’s poetry.
Today, we’re living through a book ban revival, and my family is no longer part of the vocal minority leading the charge. Questioning is encouraged, and our black and white world has softened to gray. We see book bans as another iteration of what could have kept us trapped in ideologies and identities that were either too small or blatantly false.
A new American Library Association report shows 2023 is already on track to be another record-setting year for book banning. Of the thousands of titles targeted for censorship, most involve literature that mentions or centers LGBTQIA+ characters as well as those that focus on the lives and history of people who are not white.
In public schools alone, Florida districts have removed about 300 books from library shelves in the last academic year. And according to a new PEN America report, the state accounts for more than 40% of all book bans in public K-12 schools.
I’m a parent with a kid in the Florida public school system, and I’m combating this trend largely because of my own mom. The plot-twist, nonpartisan ending to her story in Salon is everything. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.
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Really enjoyed it, Melissa. You're making it work!
Great piece. Brought me back!