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Banned Books Panel: To Read or Not to Read [1]

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Date: 2023-02-15  

On Wednesday, February 22, 2023, the Hofstra Cultural Center and the Department of Specialized Programs in Education are sponsoring a panel on book banning in the United States. Speakers are Susan Gottehrer, Dr. Theresa McGinnis, Oddette Williams, and Jackson Gomes.

It will be from 4:30 until 6 PM in the Guthart Cultural Center Theater of the Axinn Library. Registration is free but advanced registration is required. For more information, call the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669 or visit hofstra.edu/culture.

From July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America’s Index of books banned in the United States included 2,532 instances of individual books and 1,648 unique book titles by 1,261 different authors, 290 illustrators, and 18 translators. Bans occurred in 138 school districts in 32 states with 5,049 schools and a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students.

Among the banned books, 41 percent addressed LGBTQ+ themes or had protagonists or prominent secondary characters who were LGBTQ+; 40 percent contained protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color; 21 percent directly addressed issues of race and racism; 22 percent contained descriptions of sexual experiences of teenagers; and 10 percent had themes related to civil rights and political activism. On Long Island, Commack, removed Persepolis, an award-winning fact based graphic novel from the 11th-grade reading list, and Plainedge, temporarily banned Front Desk, a middle-grade novel about the Chinese immigrant experience in the 1990, after some parents complained the book was “racially diverse.”

The push to ban books is coordinated by rightwing political action committees that try to enlist local parents. PEN America has identified at least 50 groups. The most banned books include fiction by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison that explores race in America. Her novel, Bluest Eye, is banned in 22 school districts. Another heavily banned book is The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas in 17 school districts. Well known writers like Khaled Hosseini, Margaret Atwood, Jacqueline Woodson, Jodi Picoult, Ibram Kendi, and Laurie Halse Anderson, have also been banned in multiple school districts.

Long Island was featured in the most important Supreme Court ruling supporting the right of students to read. In Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982), the Court upheld that the First Amendment limits the power of school officials to remove books from school libraries because of their content. This was a very divided Court decision and since 1982 the Court has moved decidedly to the right, so it is unclear what will happen if book banning by school districts and state Education Departments is reconsidered. This is likely to happen in the near future because Florida has made all books assigned or available to students subject to review under its 2022 Stop WOKE Act specifically intended to censor material on race and gender. The ACLU is part of a legal challenge to the act. Emerson Sykes, the senior staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, argues, “The First Amendment broadly protects our right to share information and ideas, and this includes educators’ and students’ right to learn, discuss, and debate systemic racism and sexism.”

Panelists are Susan Gottehrer, Dr. Theresa McGinnis, Oddette Williams, and Jackson Gomes.

Susan Gottehrer is the Director of the Nassau County New York Civil Liberties Union, the New York State affiliate of the ACLU. She has done extensive lobbying on federal, state and local legislation on de-carceration, immigration rights, and police reform campaigns and led advocacy efforts to improve public defense in New York State. She earned a Master’s degree in Education from Columbia University, a Master’s in Political Science from the New School for Social Research, and a Master’s in Public Administration/Policy Analysis from New York University.

Dr. Theresa McGinnis is a Professor of Literacy Studies at Hofstra University and is a former middle school teacher in the Torrance, California Unified School District. She has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California Los Angeles, a Master’s degree in Literacy from Loyola Marymount University, and a Doctorate in Reading, Writing, and Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania. Her most recent publication was a chapter in the book Refugee Education across the Lifespan, “Nos Somos Emigrantes Non Defraudadores: Central American Immigrant Youth Exploring Linguistic and Political Borders in a U.S. High School Through Multimedia Narrativity.”

Oddette Williams is the director of literacy and curriculum at Academy Charter Schools in Hempstead and Uniondale. She is a doctoral candidate in the Hofstra Literacy Studies Program and has a Master’s Degree in International Education from NYU and Advanced Certificates in Literacy Studies and Educational Leadership from Hofstra University.

Jackson Gomes, a graduate of City College-CUNY, is the Young Adult Internship Coordinator for the Brooklyn Public Library. As an immigrant to the United States at the age of ten from the Cape Verde Islands, the Brooklyn Public Library was his comfort zone and for the past 12 years, he has been working as the Today’s Teen Tomorrow’s Techies Coordinator, a teen tech program that provides Brooklyn youth, ages 14-18, with hands-on training and in the information technology field. The Library’s Books Unbanned initiative offers young people ages 13-21 across the country a free BPL eCard that gives them access to the library’s full eBook collection and learning databases.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/15/2153202/-Banned-Books-Panel-To-Read-or-Not-to-Read

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