L
angston Hughes is best known as a defining figure of the Harlem Renaissance. And, he remains a significant literary figure today. Jason Reynolds’ picture book There Was a Party for Langston is evidence of Hughes’ enduring legacy.

It’s inspired by a photograph of Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka dancing up a storm at a “fancy-foot, get-down, all-out bash” honoring the grand opening of the Langston Hughes Auditorium in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. And, not surprisingly – with the help of illustrators Jerome and Jarrett Pumphrey – it’s positively pulchritudinous.

Though Hughes is shown as a child, There Was a Party for Langston is more than a Langston Hughes biography for young readers. It’s a celebration of his influence on generations of African American authors like Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Nikki Giovanni. And it does so with the jazzy, be-bopping rhythms Hughes’ poetry is known for.

Consistent with the photo that inspired it, Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka are the most prominently featured Black word makers who are shimmying and filled with dazzle. One spread shows Maya as a constellation, dancing in a deep blue sky.

There are also delightful verbal and visual allusions to both Angelou’s and Baraka’s works. And ABCs that become drums, “bumping, jumping, thumping like a heart the size of the whole wide world.”

There’s also a library of great African American authors who come joyfully alive on the spines of their books – smiling and laughing from the shelves where they rest. There Was a Party for Langston isn’t only a delightful tribute to master word maker Langston Hughes. It’s also an enchanting celebration of the “word-children” he inspired throughout his career.

This exquisite book also reminds us that, sadly, Hughes’ works have been banned. It speaks to the divisive nature of book banning, and how “some folks think by burning books they burn freedom.” But it also points out that “freedom stands up and laughs in their faces,” a call to action we should all answer.

There Was a Party for Langston is an invitation to a most marvelous party indeed, one that is not to be missed.

Who is Langston Hughes?

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an influential American poet, novelist, and playwright, as well as a columnist and social activist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the form of literary art known as jazz poetry. Hughes was also the first Black American to earn a living exclusively from his writing and public lectures.

He’s best known, however, as a defining figure of the 1920s’ Harlem Renaissance.[1]

What is the Harlem Renaissance,
and what impact did Hughes have on the movement?

The Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was the first major northern destination during what is known as the Great Black Migration – when waves of Southern Blacks began to move north, starting around 1910. Augmented by the Great Black Migration, Harlem produced a cultural, artistic, and political blossoming of Black excellence. This movement included Black luminaries such as W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes of course, and Josephine Baker.[2]

From the 1920s to the mid-1930s, the Harlem Renaissance was a golden age for African American writers, artists and musicians. It gave artists pride in, and control over, how the Black experience was represented in American culture.  In doing so, it set the stage for the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s.[3]

In 1926, Langston Hughes published what came to be considered a manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance, an essay titled The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.[4] In this essay, Hughes describes Black artists rejecting their racial identity as “the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America.”[5] He declared that rather than ignoring their identity:

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.[6]

 Hughes is admonishing Black artists in America to stop copying whites, because they’ll never create anything new that way. He’s saying they should be proud of who they are, proud to be Black. And, that they should draw from Black culture. This clarion call about the importance of pursuing art from a Black perspective is not only the philosophy undergirding much of Hughes’ work, it’s the vision at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance.[7]

Pride in African American identity
and its diverse culture permeates Hughes’ work.

Langston Hughes was one of the few prominent Black writers who championed racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for Black artists. He protested social conditions, confronted racial stereotypes, and broadened African America’s image of itself. He was a “people’s poet,” seeking to reeducate both audience and artist by making the theory of the Black aesthetic a reality.[8]

The racial consciousness and cultural nationalism Hughes stressed was one devoid of self-hate. His poem My People provides is but one example:

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.[9]

Hughes’ fiction and poetry depicted the lives of working-class Blacks in America, portrayed as full of struggle, music as well as laughter and abounding joy. Pride in the African American identity and its diverse culture permeates his work.

In his own words, he describes his poetry as “racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know.”[10] Hughes characterizes his poetry as being about:

…workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July. 

He further states that in many of them, he tries “to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz.”[11]

What is Jazz Poetry?

Rooted in Black communities, jazz poetry like the music it’s named for, alludes to the lived Black experience in America. Technically speaking, jazz poetry can take a couple of forms. It can be strictly about jazz. Or… it can take its structure from jazz-like rhythms, as well as demonstrate the feel of improvisation.[12]

As noted above, Hughes was a vocal proponent of racial consciousness. He considered jazz and the blues to be uniquely African American art forms, in that they both spurned the desire for acceptance and assimilation by white culture. Both forms rejoiced in Black heritage and creativity.

The formal devices, rhyme, anaphora and rhetoric, as well as his integration of the blues, emerge from a cultural tradition that, up until Hughes, had never had a voice in poetry. And, the blues, rather than wishing away hardship, elevated the tribulations of the workaday African American into art. In that sense, Hughes’ use of these forms was itself political. Not just the subject matter of his poems.[13]

For Hughes, jazz was a way of life. He enjoyed listening to it at nightclubs. He collaborated with musicians from Monk to Mingus. And, he frequently held readings accompanied by jazz combos. He also wrote a children’s book called The First Book of Jazz.

No matter what the subject, Hughes’ writing has jazz in its voice. He often incorporated syncopated rhythms, and jive language or looser phrasing to mimic the improvisatory nature of jazz. The verse of other poems reads like the lyrics of a blues song. The result? It was as close as you could get to spelling out jazz.[14]

The Weary Blues, first published in 1925, is but one example:

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
 O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
 “Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
 Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.[15]

Structured like a blues song, this poem is divided into two stanzas, each organized around a set of quoted lyrics. While the quoted lyrics represent the “verses” of a blues song, the other lines function as the instrumental portions.

And syncopation, the rhythm at the heart of jazz music, appears throughout The Weary Blues. The varying lengths of the quoted lyrics play against the underlying four-beat rhythm of the unquoted lines. The counterpoint between these two rhythms creates a sense of syncopation.[16]

Finally, The Weary Blues is describing a Black piano player performing a slow, sad blues song, a performance that takes place in a club in Harlem. The poem is a meditation on how the piano player’s song channels the hardship and injustice of the Black experience in America, and transforms it into something cathartic and beautiful. Thus, it reflects on the immense beauty of black art… and the prodigious pain that is at its core.[17]

Langston’s Legacy

 Hughes frequently offered advice to young Black writers, and introduced them to other influential people in the literature and publishing communities.  This group includes Alice Walker, who he is credited with discovering and getting their first story in print. One of their earliest stories caught Hughes’ attention and he included it in 1967 anthology The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers.[18]

Loren Mitchell, another of these young Black writers, observed that, “Langston set a tone, a standard of brotherhood and friendship and cooperation, for all of us to follow.”[19]

Hughes’ artistic influence can be seen in jazz poets like Sonia Sanchez, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Jack Kerouac.

The influence of his message is reflected in others’ work as well. The title of Lorraine Hansberry’s play Raisin in the Sun is derived from Hughes’ 1951 poem Dream Deferred (originally titled Harlem):

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?[20]

Echoes of Hughes’ Dream Deferred can also be heard in Martin Luther King Jr’s iconic I Have a Dream speech.[21]

What’s fantastic about Hughes’ work and movements like the Harlem Renaissance is the vast net of influence he clearly cast, both during and after his career. Every reader has been influenced by Hughes’ work in some way. His impact endures, as readers and writers are introduced to his work, school children listen to and read I Have a Dream, and even musicians consider his words.

Langston Hughes stands at the pinnacle of literary relevance among Black people. He occupies this position in the memory of his people because he recognized that “we possess within ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength.”[22] And he used his talent to reflect this message back to the people.[23]

The significance of Hughes’ enduring legacy can be seen literally carved into the wall of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall, in the form of a quote from his 1926 poem I, Too:

I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.[24]

There’s also the auditorium in Harlem’s Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture named for Langston Hughes. A photograph taken at its grand opening – one of Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka dancing up a storm – inspired Jason Reynolds to write a book about this event.

Reynolds’ book There Was a Party for Langston is also a significant part of Langston Hughes’ legacy. This dazzling collaboration will have children rushing to their libraries to learn more about Hughes, as well as the other “word makers” named in its pages.

Books like Reynolds’ and the Pumphrey Brothers’ are more important than ever. Because, the more we know about each other, the better we understand each other. Understanding each other helps us realize that we have more in common than many of us have been led to believe, that we’re all just human beings trying to make our way in a complicated world. And this realization makes the world a less scary place – one where we’re more inclined to work together rather than Other and vilify those who don’t look like us, or have life experiences different than our own.

Endnotes:

[1] Francis, Ted (2002). Realism in the Novels of the Harlem Renaissance. (https://books.google.com/books?id=82XIw4ykVAAC&pg=PA2 8)

“Langston Hughes.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/langston-hughes#:~:text=Although%20Hughes%20had%20trouble%20with,received%20from%20average%20black%20people.

[2] Datcher, Michael. “Harlem at Four.”  New York: Random House Studio, 2023.

[3] “Harlem Renaissance.” February 14, 2024. History.com https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance

[4] “Langston Hughes.” National Museum of African American History & Culture. Smithsonian. https://nmaahc.si.edu/langston-hughes

[5] Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69395/the-negro-artist-and-the-racial-mountain

[6] Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69395/the-negro-artist-and-the-racial-mountain

[7] Kettler, Sara.“Langston Hughes’ Impact on the Harlem Renaissance.” August 25, 2020. Biography.com https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/langston-hughes-harlem-renaissance

[8] Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914–1967, I Dream a World (https://books.google.com/books?id=qclO9rdN1XIC&pg=PA11), Oxford University Press 1988, vol. 2, p. 297.

West, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, 2003, p. 162

[9] Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914–1967, I Dream a World (https://books.google.com/books?id=qclO9rdN1XIC&pg=PA11), Oxford University Press 1988, vol. 2, p. 297

My People” in The Crisis (October 1923) pg 162.

[10] Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Poetry Foundation.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69395/the-negro-artist-and-the-racial-mountain

[11] Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” Poetry Foundation.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69395/the-negro-artist-and-the-racial-mountain

[12] Jackson, Ashawnta. “What is Jazz Poetry?” Jstor Daily. May 77, 2021.

Wallenstein, Barry (1993). “JazzPoetry/Jazz-Poetry/’JazzPoetry’???”. African American Review. 27 (4): 665–671.doi:10.2307/3041904 . JSTOR 3041904 . (https://doi.org/10.2307%2F3041904) (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3041904)

[13] “A Reading Guide to Langston Hughes.” poets.org https://poets.org/text/reading-guide-langston-hughes

Gross, Rebecca. “Jazz Poetry & Langston Hughes.” National Endowment for the Arts. https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2014/jazz-poetry-langston-hughes

[14] Gross, Rebecca. “Jazz Poetry & Langston Hughes.” National Endowment for the Arts. https://www.arts.gov/stories/blog/2014/jazz-poetry-langston-hughes

[15] Hughes, Langston. “The Weary Blues.” From The Weary Blues New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. This poem is in the public domain.

[16] “Langston Hughes and The Weary Blues.” Girl in Blue Music.

“The Weary Blues.” PoemAnalysis.com  https://poemanalysis.com/langston-hughes/the-weary-blues/

[17] “The Weary Blues.” PoemAnalysis.com  https://poemanalysis.com/langston-hughes/the-weary-blues/

[18] “Alice Walker.” New Georgia Encyclopedia. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/alice-walker-b-1944/

Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914–1967, I Dream a World (https://books.google.com/books?id=qclO9rdN1XIC&pg=PA11), Oxford University Press 1988, vol. 2, p. 413

[19] Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914–1967, I Dream a World (https://books.google.com/books?id=qclO9rdN1XIC&pg=PA11), Oxford University Press 1988, vol. 2, p. 409.

[20] Hughes, Langston. Harlem. Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem

[21] Eschner, Kat. “How Langston Hughes’ Dreams Inspired MLK’s.” Smithsonian Magazine, February 1, 2017.

[22] “Langston Hughes.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/langston-hughes#:~:text=Although%20Hughes%20had%20trouble%20with,received%20from%20average%20black%20people.

[23] Lewis, Jessi. “Langston Hughes is Still Powerful on His 115^th Birthday.” Feb 2, 2017. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/langston-hughes-is-still-powerful-on-his-115th-birthday/#:~:text=Yusef%20Komunyaaka%2C%20Sonia%20Sanchez%2C%20Jack,his%20poetry%20with%20jazz%20accompaniment.

“Langston Hughes.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/langston-hughes#:~:text=Although%20Hughes%20had%20trouble%20with,received%20from%20average%20black%20people.

[24] Ward, David C. “What Langston Hughes’ Powerful Poem ‘I, Too’ Tells Us About America’s Past and Present.” Smithsonian Magazine. September 22, 2016. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-langston-hughes-powerful-poem-i-too-americas-past-present-180960552/#:~:text=In%20large%20graven%20letters%20on,I%20am%20the%20darker%20brother.

Images:

Jason Reynolds and the Pumphrey brothers at the ALA conference.

Who is Langston Hughes: Langston Hughes, photograph by Jack Delano, 1942. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Langston-Hughes#/media/1/274926/11795

What is the Harlem Renaissance: The Cotton Club, Harlem, New York City, early 1930s. Science History Images/Alamy.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Harlem-Renaissance-American-literature-and-art

Pride in African American identity: “Harlem Renaissance ushered in new era of black pride.” USA Today. February 3, 2015.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/03/black-history-harlem-renaissance/22825245/

What is Jazz Poetry:  Dust jacket of The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes. Illustration by Miguel Covarrubias. Published by Knopf, New York, 1926.

Langston’s Legacy: Head of Langston Hughes. Teodoro Ramos Blanco. Sculpture. 1930s. The Schomburg Legacy Exhibition.

T
his Juneteenth, we celebrate Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose lifelong crusade to make lynching a federal crime finally came to fruition on March 29, 2022 – 124 years and 21 presidents later.[1]  Wells-Barnett was an educator, investigative journalist, and early civil rights activist during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[2]

Lamentably, it’s become exceedingly difficult to tell stories like Ida’s and make her writings known in American schools. Because more and more states are introducing legislation that restricts how teachers can discuss racism, sexism, and issues of systemic inequality in their classrooms.

Forty-four states have done so or have taken other steps that would limit how teachers can discuss these issues, since January 2021.[3]

And there’s a long history to this type of tactic – attempting to ban knowledge and control the historical narrative. During the days of slavery, it was illegal to teach enslaved persons to read – but secret schools were organized in hidden places at night.

During the Civil Rights movement, terror organizations like the KKK threatened organizers against spreading “dangerous” ideas – but organizers refused to capitulate.[4]

And today, extremist groups like Moms for Liberty threaten librarians with doxing or even gun violence for making books addressing racism in America accessible.[5]

But, it’s still be possible for young people to learn our nation’s true history. If not in school, from books, music, or on other avenues… websites like ThisBookisBanned.com, for example, whose organizers stand in solidarity with teachers and librarians facing this heinous legislation and threatened violence.[6]

Today, we’re seeing to it that Ida B. Wells-Barnett is celebrated. And, we’re doing our part to ensure that her anti-lynching campaign for racial justice doesn’t get swept under the proverbial rug – as much as the book banners at Moms for Liberty would like to see that happen.

Born into slavery

Ida Bell Wells was born into slavery on July 16,1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.[7] During the Reconstruction era, her parents were involved with politics and the democratization of education. Her father belonged to the Freedmen’s Aid Society, and helped start a school for newly freed enslaved people.[8]

Throughout her late teens, Ida was a teacher at Marshall and Tate County schools in rural Mississippi.[9] After her parents’ death, she and her siblings moved to Memphis, Tennessee to live with a relative.

At this time, she was hired by the Shelby County school system, and attended sessions at Fisk University – a historically Black college in Nashville – during her summer vacations.  She also studied Lemoyne-Owen College – a historically Black college in Memphis.[10]

“I have a seat and I intend to keep it.”[11]

Decades before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Ida B. Wells (not yet Barnett) resisted giving up her seat on a passenger train going from Memphis to Woodstock, Tennessee. While Parks was arrested, Wells was not. She was, however, manhandled, and writes about the incident in her autobiography:

One day while riding back to my school I took a seat in the ladies’ coach of the train as usual. There were no jim crow cars then. But ever since the repeal of the Civil Rights Bill by the United States Supreme Court in 1877* there had been efforts all over the South to draw the color line on the railroads.

 When the train started and the conductor came along to collect tickets, he took my ticket, then handed it back to me and told me that he couldn’t take my ticket there. I thought that if he didn’t want the ticket, I wouldn’t bother about it so went on reading. In a little while when he finished taking tickets, he came back and told me I would have to go in the other car. I refused, saying that the forward car was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies’ car I proposed to stay. He tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand.

 I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn’t try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggage-man and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out. They were encouraged to do this by the attitude of the white ladies and gentlemen in the car; some of them even stood on the seats so they could get a good view and continued applauding the conductor for his brave stand.

By this time the train had stopped at the first station. When I saw that they were determined to drag me into the smoker, which was already filled with colored people and those who were smoking, I said I would get off the train rather than go in… which I did. Strangely, I held onto my ticket all this time… [12]

And then, she sued the Chesapeake, Ohio & Southwestern railroad company.[13] Surprisingly, the court decided in Wells’ favor, ordering the railroad company to pay damages. Needless to say, the railroad appealed the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court, and not so surprisingly, the decision was reversed. [14]

Suffragist and founding orgnaizer of the NAACP

Years later, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a founding organizer of the NAACP.[15] She was also instrumental in the establishment of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club, an organization which was created to address issues surrounding women’s suffrage and civil rights.[16]

As significant as these contributions are to civil rights and American history generally, Wells-Barnett’s name is most frequently associated with her campaign to make lynching a federal crime.

The Peoples Grocery Lynching

Just at the point when Wells-Barnett realized she could make a living from her newspaper, the Free Speech, the lynching that changed her life occurred. On March 9, 1892, she learned that Thomas Moss (whose daughter was her godchild), had been murdered – to be more precise, lynched – along with two of his employees, Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart.

Moss was a black man who owned Peoples Grocery, a successful grocery store in Memphis, Tennessee. As such, his store and its owner were seen as a threat by the white grocer whose store had served the community before Moss opened his.

The incident was sparked when a racially charged mob grew out of a fight between a Black and a white youth over a game of marbles near Moss’ grocery.

In short, adults got involved, violence ensued, and about 30 Black individuals were taken from their homes and jailed – among them Moss, McDowell, and Stewart, as well as the Black adolescent who was involved in the marble game that triggered the episode.

In the wee hours of the night, Moss, McDowell, and Stewart were dragged from their cells by 75 men, transported to a railroad yard outside the city’s limits, and shot to death. Given that Moss, McDowell, and Stewart were the only victims of this extralegal violence, there is little doubt that it was punishment for becoming an economic competitor to the white grocery store owner.[17] 

Wells-Barnett was not in Memphis when this atrocity occurred. But, the leader in the Free Speech for that week called for the Black population to follow Moss’ dying words (reported in a newspaper the day after his death), “tell my people to go West – there is no justice for them here.”[18]

And, the Black community did just that. Within two months, six thousand people had abandoned Memphis. And, every type of business began to feel “this silent resentment of the outrage, and failure of the authorities to punish the lynchers.”[19]

On May 21, 1892, Ida B. Wells-Barnett published an impassioned editorial about the recent lynchings in the Free Speech. In response to her article, a mob burned down her press while she was attending a conference in New York City. And, her life was threatened if she were ever to return to Memphis.

In light of these threats, she remained in New York City until 1893, when she relocated to Chicago where she lived for the rest of her life. [20]

Her lifelong campaign begins

Wells-Barnett explicitly attributes the Peoples Grocery lynching with changing the course of her life. And, in response to the frequency of lynchings throughout the American South, she dedicated her life to documenting these horrific occurrences.

She published her research in a pamphlet titled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, prefacing this searing work with the words:

It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so.[21]

Southern Horrors was the culmination of her intensive investigative work, providing eye-witness accounts, as well as statistics for lynchings reported in newspapers across both the South and the North.

It was groundbreaking, providing evidence that white men were rarely punished for sexual violence they perpetrated against Black women, while Black men were murdered by mobs for consensual sexual relations with white women.

She undermined the notion that lynchings were in response to rape, by pointing out that this accusation was levied at an unrealistic percentage of all victims. Wells-Barnett also challenged the fundamental assumption that it was only Black men who had been subject to lynchings. She revealed that Black women were also the victims of this heinous act.

In 1895, she published the first documented statistical report on lynching – A Red Record. With this book’s publication, she not only became one of the first prominent Black women journalists in the U.S., she was one of the first data reporters decades before the discipline formally existed.[22]

Ida B Wells-Barnett goes to The White House

And, Wells-Barnett took her campaign to William McKinley’s White House. During her visit, she gave the president a petition appealing to him for national anti-lynching law, which stated:

For nearly twenty years lynching crimes, which stand side by side with Armenian and Cuban outrages, have been committed and permitted by this Christian nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the U.S. of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless. Statistics show that nearly 10,000 American citizens have been lynched in the past 20 years. To our appeals for justice the stereotyped reply has been that the government could not interfere in a state matter. Postmaster Baker’s case was a federal matter, pure and simple. He died at his post of duty in defense of his country’s honor, as truly as did ever a soldier on the field of battle. We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home. Italy and China have been indemnified by this government for the lynching of their citizens. We ask that the government do as much for its own.[23]

During the same period, she also lobbied Congress for the national anti-lynching law introduced by Illinois Congressman William E. Lorimer. But, to no avail on both fronts.

That didn’t stop her crusade, however. Wells-Barnett turned next to President Theodore Roosevelt, who merely addressed the issue through appeals to public morality and sentiment rather than actual federal reforms.

After that was President William Howard Taft, who wanted to leave the issue to the states but promised his personal support once his presidency was over. And, the anti-lynching campaign got even less aid during President Woodrow Wilson’s administration.

President Warren G. Harding supported the Anti-Lynching Bill that was introduced in Congress during the Wilson administration but had been halted by filibuster. And, he delivered a speech that condemned lynching. But public response was largely negative, indicating the difficult road that lay ahead for anti-lynching activists.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett died on March 25, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois. Though lynching still raged and the legacy of her tireless dedication was not fully realized, her activism was instrumental in establishing the space for future discussion to take place.[24]

On May 4, 2020, she was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize, “for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans.”[25]

Finally, on March 29, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the anti-lynching measure she had worked so hard to make happen into law, rendering lynching a federal hate crime.[26]

So, we’re celebrating Ida B. Wells-Barnett in observance of Juneteenth. And, to help keep her story alive, here are some of her works to download. [Be advised, given the subject matter this material contains disturbing images and accounts of violence]:

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases.
Eye-witness accounts of lynchings reported in newspapers
across both the South and the North.

A Red Record.
The first documented statistical report on lynching.

Mob Rule in New Orleans.
An examination of the dynamics of racial violence
and lynching during the Jim Crow Era.

And for all you educators out there, here’s a lesson plan to download,
Ida B. Wells and the Long Crusade to Outlaw Lynching,
designed by RetroReport, a fabulous source for classroom resources.

#civil rights movement        #Juneteenth             #banned authors

Endnotes:

[1] “Ida B. Wells and the Long Crusade to Outlaw Lynching.” February 15, 2024. RetroReport.org
https://retroreport.org/has-lesson-plan/ida-b-wells-and-the-long-crusade-to-outlaw-lynching-2/?utm_source=Retro+Report+Education&utm_campaign=c212e1f834-MAR11_DOUBLEV_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_64a84ba2bf-c212e1f834-357769000&mc_cid=c212e1f834&mc_eid=bd14da2bcd

[2] “Letter from Ida B. Wells-Barnett to President Woodrow Wilson.” March 26, 1918. DocsTeach from the National Archives. https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/ida-b-wells-wilson

[3] Schwartz, Sarah. “Map: Where Critical Race Theory Is Under Attack.” June 6, 2024. EducationWeek. https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/map-where-critical-race-theory-is-under-attack/2021/06

[4] IBWEP Statement on Recent Attacks Against Critical Race Theory in Schools.” The Ida B. Wells Education Project Blog. https://www.idabwellseducationproject.org/ibwep-blog

[5] Altschuler, Glenn C. “Six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization.” July 9, 2023. The Hill. https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4086179-six-reasons-why-moms-for-liberty-is-an-extremist-organization/

[6] IBWEP Statement on Recent Attacks Against Critical Race Theory in Schools.” The Ida B. Wells Education Project Blog. https://www.idabwellseducationproject.org/ibwep-blog

[7] Norwood, Arlisha R. “Ida B. Wells. Barnett.” National Women’s History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett

[8] Levesque, Faron. “Ida B. Wells and People’s Grocery.” The MIT Press Reader. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/ida-b-wells-and-peoples-grocery/

Heather-Lea, Patricia. “Ida Wells an inspiring heroine for international Women’s Day.” Addison County Independent. https://web.archive.org/web/20201104023730/https://addisonindependent.com/letter-editor-ida-wells-inspiring-heroine-international-womens-day

[9] Bay, Mia. To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells.  New York: Hill and Wang, a division of Farraar, Strauss and Tiroux, 2009. Pg 34.

[10] Levesque, Faron. “Ida B. Wells and People’s Grocery.” The MIT Press Reader. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/ida-b-wells-and-peoples-grocery/

[11]“Chesapeake, Ohio & Southwestern Railroad Company v Ida B. Wells.” Digital Public Library of America. https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/ida-b-wells-and-anti-lynching-activism/sources/1113

[12] Wells, Ida B. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Edited by Alfreda M. Duster. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1970. Pg 18-19.

*The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was, among other things, designed to provide all citizens regardless of color access to public accommodations. Wells was in error, however, about the date when this act was held unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. That actually occurred in 1883.

[13] “A legal brief for Ida B. Wells’ lawsuit against Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad Company before the state Supreme Court, 1885.” Digital Public Library of America.
https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/ida-b-wells-and-anti-lynching-activism/sources/1113

[14] “A legal brief for Ida B. Wells’ lawsuit against Chesapeake, Ohio, and Southwestern Railroad Company before the state Supreme Court, 1885.” Digital Public Library of America.
https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/ida-b-wells-and-anti-lynching-activism/sources/1113

[15] Sullivan, Patricia. Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the making of the Civil Rights movement. New York: The New Press, 2009.

[16] Norwood, Arlisha R. “Ida B. Wells. Barnett.” National Women’s History Museum. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett

[17] Mitchell, Damon. “The People’s Grocery Lynching, Memphis, Tennessee.” Jstor Daily. January 24, 2018. https://daily.jstor.org/peoples-grocery-lynching/

Wells, Ida B. “Lynch Law in all its Phases.” February 13, 1893. Voices Of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/wells-lynch-law-speech-text/

[18] Wells, Ida B. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Edited by Alfreda M. Duster. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1970. Pg 50-51.

[19] Wells, Ida B. “Lynch Law in all its Phases.” February 13, 1893. Voices Of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project. https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/wells-lynch-law-speech-text/

[20] Mobley, Tianna. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Anti-lynching and the White House.” The White House Historical Association. https://www.whitehousehistory.org/ida-b-wells-barnett-anti-lynching-and-the-white-house

Little, Becky. “When Ida B. Wells Took on Lynching, Threats Forced Her to Leave Memphis.” May 18, 2023. History.com https://www.history.com/news/ida-b-wells-lynching-memphis-chicago

[21] Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. New York: The New York Age Print, 1892.

[22] Mobley, Tianna. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Anti-lynching and the White House.” The White House Historical Association. https://www.whitehousehistory.org/ida-b-wells-barnett-anti-lynching-and-the-white-house

[23] Cleveland Gazette, 9 April 1898. Reprinted in Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 2, (The Citadel Press: New York, 1970), 798. https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/56

[24] Mobley, Tianna. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Anti-lynching and the White House.” The White House Historical Association. https://www.whitehousehistory.org/ida-b-wells-barnett-anti-lynching-and-the-white-house

[25] “Ida B. Wells,” Special Citations and Awards (The Pulitzer Prizes, 2020) . https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/ida-b-wells

[26] “Remarks by President Biden at Signing of H.R. 55, the ‘Emmett Till Antilynching Act.’” March 29, 2020. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/29/remarks-by-president-biden-at-signing-of-h-r-55-the-emmett-till-antilynching-act/

Images:

Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Ida B. Wells Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Born into Slavery: Historic Charleston.org https://www.historiccharleston.org/research/photograph-collection/detail/slave-cabin-with-child-in-doorway/8C433E91-F909-47F7-AF1F-459819142111

I have a seat and I intend to keep it: Digital Public Library of America. https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/ida-b-wells-and-anti-lynching-activism/sources/1113

Suffragist and founding organizer of the NAACP: Capper’s Weekly (Topeka, Kansas) 01 August 1914, pg. 3.

The Peoples Grocery Lynching: Thomas Moss family-Ida B. Wells Papers, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

Her lifelong campaign begins: Cover of Southern Horrors. Public Domain.

Ida B Wells-Barnett goes to The White House: President William McKinley.https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/william-mckinley/

Juneteenth Flag: Lisa Jeanne Graf, who modified the original Juneteenth flag created in 1997 by Ben Haith, the founder of the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation. Alvarez, Beatrice. “What Does Juneteenth Celebrate? The History of the Holiday.” PBS, 15 June 2022, www.pbs.org/articles/learn-about-and-celebrate-juneteenth/.

I
n this edition, we talk with Federico Erebia about how young readers being able to see themselves in books like Pedro & Daniel can literally be life-saving. And, how it offers hope for those who may be dealing with stigma and abuse.

Our freedom to read has been under assault for what seems like an eternity. And, the books being banned are consistently those of marginalized voices. Books with diverse characters, primarily characters of color and LGBTQA+ characters were overwhelmingly targeted. And continue to be.

And, the books being banned are consistently those of marginalized voices. Books with diverse characters, primarily characters of color and LGBTQA+ characters were overwhelmingly targeted.[1] And continue to be.

Throughout this collection of conversations with authors, we talk about the power of books, and the question of why it’s important for stories containing characters that have diverse backgrounds and life experience to be told.

In considering this vital question, we also touch on the dangers of restricting or erasing these narratives – what damage is being done when books about diversity are banned and reading is restricted?

Needless to say, each of the authors in this series brings s different perspective and life experience to the conversation, adding nuance and depth to the combined answer of why it’s important for stories about diverse lives to be told… as well as the dangers that arise when they’re expunged from our national discourse.

Federico Erebia is a retired physician, woodworker, author, poet, and illustrator. He received the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Exceptional New Writer.

Other distinctions for his debut novel, Pedro & Daniel (Levine Querido 2023) include: 2024 Ohioana Book Award – Finalist; 2024 Massachusetts Book Award – Longlist; 2024 Crystal Kite Award – Finalist; 2024 Américas Book Award – Commended Title; 2024 Bank Street BEST BOOK; 2023 Kirkus BEST BOOK; and starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness.

He and his husband live near Boston, Massachusetts.

Pedro & Daniel follows two gay, neurodivergent, Mexican American brothers, over a 24 year span, who experience joy and laughter, despite years of abuse and oppression.[2]

Research has shown how important it is for children to see themselves in their books, on TV, and in movies. It’s also vital for kids to see others who are unlike themselves: kids from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, socioeconomics, and family structures.

When there are fewer unknowns, there is less to fear. [3]

.

First, I’d like to say that Pedro & Daniel is a heartbreaking and heartwarming book at the same time. Thank you for writing it for, as your dedication says, all the kids who aren’t seen for their worth, beauty, and potential. Why is important for the stories like the one you wrote to be told?

There are many ways to answer that question. But ultimately, I think that readers like to either identify parts of themselves in the characters that they’re reading, and/or to empathize with them.

I certainly have never read a book like mine, primarily not just the story itself or the societal issues that I mention in the book. But also the structure of the book, and going back and forth between different voices – also third person versus first person. And I even break the fourth wall occasionally, which is subtle, so I don’t think a lot of people necessarily pick up on it.

But, I wrote a story that I would like to read over-and-over myself, and I have read over-and-over. Because for me, it checks off a lot of things. In terms of storytelling itself, and also giving voice to characters that are rarely seen in any literature —  let alone Chicano literature for children. So, I thought it was important to have that available for people… so people can see themselves in these characters.

.

It’s an incredibly important thing for people to see themselves.

In an interesting way, in my mind I thought people would identify more with the intersectionality of being both a gay and person of color and/or neuro-divergence. But, so many people are identifying with the social issues, such as the colorism or the domestic violence – which can be separate from child abuse. I’ve heard from so many people who really are thankful that these things are in a book, that address some the things they dealt with as children.

I would have loved to read this book as a twelve-year-old. I think a lot of it depends on the individual, but I don’t think it’s targeted for any particular age group. I know that a lot of adults would appreciate it, and do appreciate it. So, I don’t necessarily want to rely on the Young Adult classification for recommending it to people.

.

Absolutely…  a good story is a good story is a good story. And Pedro & Daniel resonates on all kinds of levels. To your point about wishing you had a book like this at twelve or thirteen…  clearly my perspective is from book banning and banned books, and a lot of the books that are being targeted right now are exactly what twelve and thirteen-year-olds need – as you just expressed. So, because my viewpoint is from that of banned books, let’s flip that previous question on its head. What damage do you think is being done by squashing access to books like the one you just wrote.

Another terrific question with so many different answers. Ultimately… we’ve all heard that books save lives. And books do give an outlet to children to go into a different world, one similar to theirs (but is not their own). Seeing that there’s abuse in Pedro and Daniel’s house allows children who also have abuse in their house to still feel some safety while dealing with these issues.

My main concern, one that I hope isn’t reaching children, but I know it is – is that they hear these books are bad, and  internalize what they’re hearing about the characters and the books themselves. And that’s just not right. It’s not fair.

.

And, the fact that you were a doctor is another interesting aspect of your background, one that goes a long way in supporting the idea that kids actually benefit from reading books that contain such material. That it’s developmentally appropriate for twelve and thirteen-year-olds to be reading about the types of experiences you depict, those that often get banned under the auspices of protecting children. You being a doctor brings some gravitas to the idea that this assertion is simply baloney.

Sure, for various reasons. The fact that despite everything I went through, not just the abuse but the colorism, the homophobia, and the racism, I was still able to be successful and become a doctor — and, in some ways, study what is needed for kids to develop in ways that will help them come out of their shells.

Everything I studied when I studied medicine, I found fascinating. When I studied pediatrics, I wanted to be a pediatrician. When I studied cardiology, I wanted to be a cardiologist. I have that kind of mentality. I really dive into whatever it is that I’m doing at the moment. In fact, I’m doing it right now with writing.

I’m really surrounding myself in every way with access to authors and books, and stories and storytelling, in a way that I hadn’t done when my focus was woodworking or medicine or whatever.

.

I tend to do the same thing… if it’s interesting to me, I’ll go way down that rabbit hole.

It’s significant that you expressly state in your book… yes, “this work contains descriptions of abuse, physical abuse and domestic abuse,” noting that these depictions are necessary to show how children are affected by such events. I want to note this because your explanation nullifies one of the reasons given for banning books, that of “protecting” children from “disturbing” material.

The point is that children are living this from the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions, around the world on a daily basis. And, they should be able to see themselves in a book and come away from it with an understanding that they’re not alone. That they are beautiful. That they do have worth. And that, hopefully, things will get better in time.

.

And you’re saying this not only as a doctor with an understanding of childhood development, but as someone who has lived through such experiences. Given those credentials, your insight carries significantly more weight than when a person like me makes such a statement.

It’s wonderful that you’re giving me the platform to say it.

.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. After the first couple of vignettes, it’s clear that despite its Young Adult label, Pedro & Daniel isn’t just for kids. This is good stuff for readers of any age.

As you may know, the very first words that I wrote are the last fifty words in the book, the fifty precious words – those on the very last page across from the picture of myself with my brother. I started writing it as part of a writing contest called “Fifty Precious Words.” So I wrote those fifty precious words, and that became a picture book manuscript that I sent to an editor.

Then he asked me for more work, which ultimately became other chapters in the first part of the book. They were all picture book manuscripts, and then he asked me if I would combine them… And that’s how the novel came to be. So, it’s an unusual origin story. And, I thought it would be interesting to have the original fifty words be the last fifty words of the book itself.

But when I finished the first draft of the novel, I realized I hadn’t addressed the elephant in the room, which is the mother’s abuse. I really needed to tackle that conundrum. I didn’t want it to come across as if, all of a sudden, she’s abusive. That wouldn’t make sense. So, since the brothers are five and six at the beginning of the book, it made sense to put the reader in media res… in a situation where they are experiencing what the brothers are experiencing as their mother is approaching them to hurt them.

It tells the reader many things, among other things that this is already their life. They already fear their mother. And there are implications that a lot of that abuse is because of their skin color and/or their presentation of sexuality, which at five and six they don’t understand – there’s no way they could understand, especially in 1968.

I found that very interesting. So, when I started writing that very first sentence (it’s 175 words long), I really needed to put the reader in a place where they were experiencing what the brothers were experiencing without a way to escape. No periods, just commas. And, just as the brothers aren’t able to escape, the reader can’t escape. And I’m very happy with the way that turned out at the very beginning of the book.

.

And the devise works fantastically – as you said, drawing the reader in to engage this difficult subject matter on an emotional level. It’s remarkable storytelling. And, a perfect example of how/why there’s more to a book than simple surface narrative if we just look for it.

Referring to Pedro & Daniel as a debut novel suggests we should expect another one. And I am really looking forward to it.

There is a sequel – which didn’t start out as a sequel. I started writing this other story, again based on my own experiences. And at one point, I realized that this character is Pedro. So, it will basically be a work about Pedro without Daniel. But I use a lot of writing devices to bring Daniel back in many scenes. Some of it will be memory. Others will be Pedro’s autistic mind conversing with Daniel in other ways. Daniel’s presence will still be there. Though it’s a sequel, you won’t need to have read Pedro and Daniel first. 

Really looking forward to it. And thank you for your insightful and compassionate storytelling.

Federico Erebia’s adult fiction sequel to Pedro & Daniel that’s in the works is titled Pedro Without Daniel.  A prolific and insightful storyteller, he is also working on a series of short stories, a poetry collection, two graphic  novels, and four picture books.  We’re looking forward to seeing them all in the very near future.

And, be sure to see what the other authors in our Power of Books Series
have to say about the importance of books: 

Ryan Estrada,
author of Banned Book Club

Edward Underhill,
author of  Always the Almost,
and This Day Changes Everything

Dr. Michael Datcher,
author of Harlem at Four

Jamie Jo Hoang,
author of My Father the Panda Killer

And for all you educators out there, download this
Daniel & Pedro discussion guide.

#Power of Books Author Series        #Federico Erebia       #LGBTQ+ authors        #domestic abuse

Endnotes:

[1] Bruinius, Harry. “Banning Books: Protecting kids or erasing humanity?” October 6, 2023. The Christian Science Monitor.
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2023/1006/Banning-books-Protecting-kids-or-erasing-humanity

Rado, Diane. “In 2024, more censorship and bans: FL, TX removing large batches of books in public schools.” December 21, 2023. News From The States.
https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/2024-more-censorship-and-bans-fl-tx-removing-large-batches-books-public-schools

Unite Against Banned Books 2023 Censorship Numbers.

[2] https://fjebooks.com/pedro–daniel.html

[3] Understanding Colorism in Fiction with Federico Erebia.
https://bookishbrews.com/colorism-in-fiction-federico-erebia/

Images:

Power of Books: Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash    Edited: Added Power of Books Author Series text.

Federico Erebia: Joel Benjamin https://fjebooks.com/pedro–daniel.html

Cover of Pedro & Daniel

FYI:

This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

M
alcolm X, needless to say, was a legendary civil rights activist and advocate for Black empowerment, one who continues to be widely celebrated for his pursuit of racial justice. His powerful speeches and fiery rhetoric challenged societal norms, which made him a controversial figure in the eyes of many white Americans – both during his lifetime and today.

His revolutionary ideas are espoused in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which is regarded as one of the most influential books in the U.S. In fact, it has been awarded a spot in the Library of Congress’ “Books that Shaped America” exhibit. As the name indicates, the LOC’s exhibit displays and highlights books that “have had a profound effect on American life” – many of which, like The Autobiography of Malcolm X, have unfortunately been banned.[1]

Malcolm X’s autobiography tells his life story in its entirety, from childhood memories of his mother to his involvement in organized crime and subsequent incarceration – during which he joined the Nation of Islam. It continues through his break with Elijah Muhammad and conversion to Sunni Islam, to his well-founded belief that “there are those watching every move I make, awaiting their chance to kill me.”[2]

Given the fact that his ideas challenged existing power structures, he was acutely aware of how the powerful elite would try to label him. Understandably, he saw his autobiography as a chance to shape the way he would be perceived in history.[3]

How was The Autobiography of Malcolm X originally received?

Upon its release a mere eight months after his assassination, New York Times reviewer Eliot Fremont-Smith described The Autobiography of Malcolm X as “a brilliant, painful, important book.”[4] And the public clearly agreed with that assessment, because more than 6 million copies of the book were sold by 1977. And it continues to inspire readers half a century later.

As historian Zaheer Ali notes, reading The Autobiography allowed people to explore Malcom X’s story on their own terms, rather than absorb the derision for Malcolm within the predominantly white press. And, the overall public mood toward Malcolm X did indeed take a positive turn after the book’s release.[5]

However, given Malcolm X’s unapologetic nature and the fact that his ideas challenged the status quo, it should come as no surprise that his autobiography was decried by some as a “guide to crime and chaos.”[6] Such characterizations continue to fuel the frequent bannings of this book.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a literary rarity.

Written in collaboration with Alex Haley, this book is a literary rarity…  an “autobiography” written by someone other than the subject.[7] How does that work, you ask? In short, Haley acted as a guide to navigating the storytelling process, but the words are all Malcolm’s.

It begins with Malcolm’s insistence:

Nothing can be in this book’s manuscript that I didn’t say, and nothing can be left out that I want in it. [8

Then there’s Malcolm’s penchant for directness…

I’m telling it like it is! You never have to worry about me biting my tongue if something I know as truth is on my mind.[9]

As well as his motivation for collaborating with Haley:

I have given to this book so much of whatever time I have because I feel, and I hope, that if I honestly and fully tell my life’s account, read objectively it might prove to be a testimony of some social value.[10]

And finally, the fact that both men agreed wholeheartedly on Malcolm’s passionate desire to historicize his own existence while simultaneously seeking to change American history.[11]

Who was The Autobiography of Malcolm X influenced by?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X has been compared to St. Augustine’s Confessions. In that they are both spiritual autobiographies, telling the story of a wayward young man who undergoes a religious conversion. As with Augustine, Malcolm’s project is the story of a sinner, one who finds God, transforms his life in this regard, and writes an autobiography as a guide that may lead others to spiritual transition.[12]

Given America’s history with race, we also see slave narrators like Frederick Douglass over Malcolm’s proverbial shoulder. Those who, like him, knew their narratives had to involve the secular enterprise of chronicling their search for earthly freedom and earthly power.[13]

So, Malcolm’s story is about both the spirit and the physical, about psychology as well as ideals. And, this blending of spiritual and social levels of experience is one of the defining achievements of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. As a unique blend of spiritual confession and oral social history, Malcolm X’s story becomes more than a simple testament of his lived experience. It’s also a polemic about the powerful elite, and ultimately a searingly honest baring of the inner self.[14]

Who did The Autobiography of Malcolm X influence?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X helped give voice to the emerging Black Power phase of the Black freedom movement. Black Power developed because for many African Americans it expressed what the mainstream civil rights movement did not – their frustration and anger with the intractability of racial injustice.

Ideas that Malcolm articulated, like self-respect, racial pride and self-determination, became philosophical mainstays of the Black Power movement.[15] According to African American Studies scholar Manning Marable, during the Black Power movement Malcolm X was quoted “with Talmudic-like authority,” and passages from The Autobiography were cited “chapter and verse.”[16]

Malcolm X’s autobiography resonated with young African Americans enrolling in historically white colleges and universities at greater rates as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Many of these students were not only seeking education, but an identity different from the one demeaning one historically decreed for them.[17] Marable describes The Autobiography of Malcolm X as being an “almost sacred text of Black identity.”[18]

Recorded and amplified by The Autobiography, Malcolm X’s voice spoke to black men languishing in prison as well, inspiring some to tell their own stories.  George Jackson’s Soledad Brother, for example, and Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, as well as Poems from Prison by Etheridge Knight, to name a few.[19]

Malcolm X’s story was also relatable to Black Americans experiencing homelessness. As Margari Hill, co-founder and Executive Director of Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, observes:

He exemplified a way of being dignified without having to go through respectability politics. He showed you could still build and create a life for yourself.[20]

What describes Malcom X’s Communication Style?

Malcolm X communicated in a precise, direct manner, one consistent with Michel Foucault’s concept of parrhesia. In parrhesia, the speaker “uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find” to express “as directly as possible what he actually believes.” And, he avoids the use of any rhetorical form that would veil what he thinks.[21]

The following sentiment from Malcolm X regarding communication between the races confirms his parrhessiatic style:

Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country—to clear the air of the racial mirages, clichés, and lies that this country’s very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years.[22]

Parrhesia also has an element of criticism to it, speaking truth to a powerful elite that does not wish to hear it.[23] Once again, consistent with this concept, Malcolm X spoke the uncomfortable truths no one else had the courage or integrity to broach.

The following reproach of governmental actions during the World War II era is clearly directed at America’s white population – many of whom justify the actions Malcom X is condemning to this day:

Where was the A-bomb dropped…“to save American lives”? Can the white man be so naive as to think the clear import of this ever will be lost upon the non-white two-thirds of the earth’s population?

Before that bomb was dropped—right over here in the United States, what about the one hundred thousand loyal naturalized and native-born Japanese American citizens who were herded into camps, behind barbed wire? But how many German-born naturalized Americans were herded behind barbed wire? They were white! [24]

As poet, playwright and activist Sonia Sanchez points out, Malcolm X said out loud and in public what African American people had been saying behind closed doors “forever.” And he did it in a way that says:

I am not afraid to say what you’ve been thinking all these years… That’s why we loved him. He said it out loud, not behind closed doors. He took on America for us.[25]

Sanchez sums it up by stating, “He expelled fear for African Americans.”[26] And in doing so, Malcolm X became a fearless, partisan, straight-talking hero.[27]

When you accept the parrheisiastic game,” as Foucault states in no uncertain terms, “you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken.[28]

This is, of course, how Malcolm X ultimately lived his life. He accepted the risks that came with speaking clear, direct, and unwavering truth to power. And on February 21, 1965 he was silenced. But his ideas live on… The Autobiography of Malcolm X was released the following October. And, it remains an extremely influential piece of literature, one that continues to speak truth to a powerful elite. Perhaps that’s why there are so many attempts to ban it.

For all you educators, download this teaching guide to
The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

#banned biographies                    #banned books                  #civil rights movement

Endnotes:

[1] “Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)”
Books That Shaped America 1950 to 2000. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/books-that-shaped-america/1950-to-2000.html#:~:text=Malcolm%20X%20and%20Alex%20Haley,become%20a%20classic%20American%20autobiography.

[2] Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Pg 401.

[3] “Malcolm X: Make it Plain.” PBS American Experience. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/malcolmx-autobiography-malcolm-x/

[4] Fremont-Smith, Eliot. The New York Times, November 5, 1965.

[5] Gandhi, Lakshmi. “55 years later, ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ still inspires.” Sept. 10, 2020. NBCnews.com https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/55-years-later-autobiography-malcolm-x-still-inspires-n1239797

[6] “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” The Censorship Files: A Study of Texts, Images, and Information. November 15, 2016.

[7] “Malcolm X: Make it Plain.” PBS American Experience. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/malcolmx-autobiography-malcolm-x/

[8] Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Pg 408.

[9] Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Pg 399.

[10] Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Pg 289.

[11]Stone, Albert (1982). Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw (Paperback ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pg 249.

[12] Rampersad, Arnold. “The Color of His Eyes.” In Malcolm X: in our own image. Edited by Joe Wood. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Pg 120.

[13] Rampersad, Arnold. “The Color of His Eyes.” In Malcolm X: in our own image. Edited by Joe Wood. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Pg 120.

[14] Rampersad, Arnold. “The Color of His Eyes.” In Malcolm X: in our own image. Edited by Joe Wood. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Pg 120.
Stone, Albert (1982). Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw (Paperback ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pg 250.

[15] “The Foundations of Black Power.” National Museum of African American History & Culture.
“Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)” Books That Shaped America 1950 to 2000. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/books-that-shaped-america/1950-to-2000.html#:~:text=Malcolm%20X%20and%20Alex%20Haley,become%20a%20classic%20American%20autobiography

[16] Marable, Manning. “Rediscovering Malcolm’s Life: A Historian’s Adventures in Living History.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. Vol. 7 Issue 1, 2005. Pp 20-35.

[17] “A Literary History of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Harvard University Press Blog. April 20, 1012.
https://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2012/04/a-literary-history-of-the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x.html

[18] Marable, Manning. “Rediscovering Malcolm’s Life: A Historian’s Adventures in Living History.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society. Vol. 7 Issue 1, 2005. Pp 20-35.

[19] “A Literary History of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Harvard University Press Blog. April 20, 1012.
https://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2012/04/a-literary-history-of-the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x.html

[20] Gandhi, Lakshmi. “55 years later, ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X’ still inspires.” Sept. 10, 2020. NBCnews.com https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/55-years-later-autobiography-malcolm-x-still-inspires-n1239797

[21] Foucault, Michel. The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia in Discourse & Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia, 1999. https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/

[22] Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Pg 289.

[23] Foucault, Michel. The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia in Discourse & Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia, 1999. https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/

[24] Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.  New York: The Random House Publishing Group, 1992. Pg 284.

[25] Sonia Sanchez. “Eyes on the Prize II Interview.” Blackside, Inc. Washington University in St. Louis. http://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/rn301512c

[26] Sonia Sanchez. “Eyes on the Prize II Interview.” Blackside, Inc. Washington University in St. Louis. http://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/rn301512c

[27] Stone, Albert (1982). Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw (Paperback ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pg 250-251.

[28] Foucault, Michel. The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia in Discourse & Truth: the Problematization of Parrhesia, 1999. https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/

Images:

1st edition cover of The Autobiography of Malcolm X: public domain via Wikipedia

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a literary rarity: Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash

Who was The Autobiography of Malcolm X influenced by: photo of Frederick Douglass – public domain via Wikimedia commons

Who did The Autobiography of Malcolm X influence: Fenton, David. “The Foundations of Black Power.”
September 1970. National Museum of African American  History & Culture.

Malcolm X’s communication style:
Parks, Gordon. “Malcolm X Gives Speech at Rally, Harlem, New York from the portfolio IAM YOU, 1963. Buffalo AKG Art Museum.

FYI:

This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

B
iography is one of the oldest forms of literary expression. This literary genre features an account of a person’s life by someone other than the subject of the work.[1] When the biography of a person’s life is narrated by that person, it’s called an autobiography. And, believe it or not, both forms of this literary genre have been banned.

Biographical literature is said to begin in the Western world during the 5^th century BCE, with the poet Ion of Chios. He wrote sketches of his famous contemporaries – most notably, Pericles and Sophocles. [2]

The first Western autobiography is The Life of first-century Romano-Jewish hagiographer and historian Titus Flavius Josephus (in approximately 94-99CE).[3]
In toto, Josephus’ works are one of the most important sources for all the history of this period.[4]

During the 2^nd century CE, biographies grew in length. Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (also known as Plutarch’s Lives) is a multi-volume series, consisting of 48 paired biographies of famous Greeks and Romans who shared similar destinies.[5]

The Middle Ages, on the other hand, was a period of biographical darkness – one dominated by the priest and the knight. Not surprisingly, the priest typically shaped biography into tales emphasizing a moral, or to illustrate a point of doctrine. While the knight, found escape from routine daily brutishness in allegory, broad satire and chivalric romances.

Glimmerings can nevertheless be seen in the literary genre during this period. A number of the saints’ lives contain anecdotal material that gives their subjects a sense of humanness. Most remarkable, is the 9^th-century biography The Life of Charlemagne, written by a cleric of his court named Einhard, who said he composed the work to ensure that Charlemagne’s life would not be “wrapped in the darkness of oblivion.”[6]

By modern standards, Einhard’s biography lacks sustained development. But, it skillfully reveals the chief patterns of Charlemagne’s character. As such, it is far closer to modern biography than the drama and rudimentary poetry of his age are to their modern counterparts.[7]

It was also during the Middle Ages that the earliest autobiography written in English was produced, The Book of Margery Kempe.[8] Consistent with the era, this book was not only dictated by Kempe to a priest, the manuscript tells of her pilgrimages to the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostela.[9]

Biographical writings are often regarded as a branch of history. The 15^th-century Mémoires of the French councellor of state, Philippe de Commynes, or the 16^th-century Life and Death of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, for example, are frequently treated as historical material rather than as literary works.

Be that as it may, biography remains a branch of literature. Because… while a biographer does indeed have a responsibility to truth, a tension exists between the search for facts and an effort to transform plain information into the illumination of a life lived.[10]

What is generally agreed to be the world’s supreme biography was written in 1791 – Life of Samuel Johnson, by James Boswell. And, National Biographer’s Day commemorates the day Samuel Johnson met with James Boswell, a meeting that resulted in one of the most celebrated biographies in English literature.[11]

 Not only did Boswell’s research and narrative style set the standard for biographers ever since, Life of Johnson also constitutes a representative psychological expression of The Age of Enlightenment.[12]

 Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography was also published in 1791. It was the first autobiography to achieve widespread popularity. Franklin’s literary work not only functions as an important historical document, it remains one of the most enduringly popular examples of the genre ever written. And yet, it’s been banned… quite recently, in fact, for being “socially offensive.”[13]

Buck the bans! Check out these examples of this fabulous literary genre from your local library, or pick them up at your favorite bookseller. Get to know more about the incredible people whose lives these books illuminate, and how they helped shape our world.

#banned biographies       #banned books

Endnotes:

[1] “biography.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre

[2] “Western Literature: Antiquity.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre/Historical-development

[3] “Augustine Writes the Second Western Autobiography.” HistoryofInformation.com https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=2120

[4] White, L. Michael. “Josephus, Our Primary Source.” PBS.org
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/josephus.html#:
~:text=Josephus%20wrote%20mostly%20at%20the,profound%20changes%20were%20taking%20place.

[5] “National Biographer’s Day Timeline.” National Today. https://nationaltoday.com/national-biographers-day/

[6] Einhard. “Preface.” The Life of Charlemagne. Translated by Samuel Epes Turner (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880). Fordham.edu https://origin-rh.web.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/einhard.asp
“Western Literature: Antiquity.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre/Historical-development

[7] “Western Literature: Middle Ages.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre/Historical-development

[8] The Book of Margery Kempe. Editor W. Butler-Bowdon. Oxford: Alden Press, 1940)

[9] “’The Book of Margery Kempe,’ The First Autobiography Written in English.” HistoryofInformation.com
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=4842

[10] “biography.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre

[11] “National Biographer’s Day.” NationalToday.com  https://nationaltoday.com/national-biographers-day/

“Put pen to paper for National Biographers Day!” Yarra Plenty Regional Library.
https://www.yprl.vic.gov.au/blogs/put-pen-to-paper-for-national-biographers-day/#:~:text=That’s%20how%20National%20Biographer’s%20Day,editor%20and%20
lexicographer%2C%20Samuel%20Johnson.

[12] “Western Literature: 19^th century.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre/19th-century

[13] “Finding Benjamin Franklin: A Resource Guide.” Library of Congress.
https://guides.loc.gov/finding-benjamin-franklin/autobiography#:~:text=Benjamin%20
Franklin’s%20Autobiography%20is%20both,of%20the%20genre%20ever%20written.

“Banned Books Awareness: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.” World.edu  https://world.edu/banned-books-awareness-autobiography-benjamin-franklin/#:~:text=Regularly%20banned%20for%20being%20“socially,refused%20to%20print%20it%20altogether.

[14] Western Literature: Biographical literature today.” Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/biography-narrative-genre/Biographical-literature-today

[15] Kate Griffiths and Alexa Bu. “Banned books to read over winter break.” ThreePennyPress.org   https://threepennypress.org/ae/2021/12/23/banned-books-to-read-over-winter-break/

[16] “The Media’s Role in the Era of Book Bans.” PEN America.https://pen.org/event/black-book-bans/

[17] Linly, Zack. “Texas Mom Wants To Ban Michelle Obama Book Because It Depicts Donald Trump As A Bully.” February 4, 2022. Newsone. https://newsone.com/4285729/michelle-obama-book-ban-texas/

[18] Pernell PI Order. American Civil Liberties Union.
https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/plugins/pdfjs-viewer-shortcode/pdfjs/web/viewer.php?file=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/legal-documents/Pernell_PI_Order.pdf&attachment_id=0&dButton=true
&pButton=true&oButton=false&sButton=true

[19] Meltzer, Brad. “My book was banned. Here’s how we fought back.” March 7, 2022. CNN.com  https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/07/opinions/books-ban-in-the-us-meltzer/index.html

[20] “This Day in  History.” History.com https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x-is-published

Study.com https://homework.study.com/explanation/when-was-the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x-banned.html

Shane Austrie, John Lyons, Anthony Chawki. “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” November 15, 2016. TheCensorshipFiles.com  https://thecensorshipfiles.wordpress.com/the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x/ 

Images:

Even Biographies Get Banned: Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash  Cropped.

The Book of Margery Kempe: British Library MS 61823, dated c. 1440. The only known copy of the mystic, Margery Kempe’s autobiography. f. 1r.

Modern Biographies: Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash  Cropped.

FYI:

This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

T
here are 2,185 independent bookselling companies running 2,599 stores in the U.S. at last count. And, happily, that’s nearly 100 more bookstores than the previous year.[1]

As Amanda Gorman – the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history – reminds us, “Independent bookstores are vital hubs of creativity and community.” [2] Not to mention the fact that independent booksellers continue to be a significant force in the battle against book banning.

So, join in the nation-wide celebration at your local indie bookstore… but, not just today. Make a visit to your local independent bookstore part of your usual routine. All your favorite classics will be there, as well as contemporary books by authors like those in our Power of Books Author Series.

To help you engage with your local indie bookstore, here’s a list independent booksellers across the United States:

Alaska

• Fireside Books in Palmer, Alaska

Arizona

• Bookmans in Tucson, Mesa, Phoenix and Flagstaff

California

• Bart’s Books in Ojai
• Bodhi Tree Bookstore† in Los Angeles (eventually West Hollywood)
• The Book Shop in Hayward
• Book Soup in West Hollywood
• Booksmith in San Francisco
• Borderlands Books in San Francisco
• Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore in San Francisco
• City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco
• Copperfield’s Books in Napa
• The Castro (San Francisco)
• Burbank
• Green Apple Books & Music in Richmond District (San Francisco)
• Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park
• The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles
• Libélula Books & Co. in Barrio Logan, San Diego
• Marcus Books in San Francisco and Oakland
• Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego and Redondo Beach
• The Other Change of Hobbit in Berkeley
• Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar (Los Angeles)
• Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena

Colorado

• Tattered Cover in Denver
• The Book Stop in Wheat Ridge, Colorado | Wheat Ridge]]

Connecticut

• J. Julia Booksellers in Madison

District of Columbia

• Busboys and Poets
• Kramers (bookstore)
• MahoganyBooks
• Politics and Prose
• World Bank Infoshop

Florida

• Haslam’s Bookstore in St. Petersburg
• Open Books & Records† in Miami Beach

Georgia

• Charis Books & More in Decatur
• For Keeps (bookstore) in Atlanta

Illinois

• Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago
• Seminary Co-op in Chicago
• Unabridged Bookstore in Chicago
• Women & Children First in Chicago

Indiana

• Better World Books in Goshen and Mishawaka
• Boxcar Books in Bloomington

Iowa

• ACME Comics & Collectibles in Sioux City
• Prairie Lights in Iowa City

Kansas

• Eighth Day Books in Wichita
• Rainy Day Books in Fairway

Kentucky

• Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington

Louisiana

• Iron Rail Book Collective in New Orleans

Maine

• Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shops (nine locations)
• Weiser Antiquarian Books in York

Maryland

• Daedalus Books in Columbia
• Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse in Baltimore

Massachusetts

• The Bookmill in Montague
• Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge
• Harvard Book Store in Cambridge
• Lucy Parsons Center in Boston
• The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley
• Schoenhof’s Foreign Books in Cambridge
• That’s Entertainment in Worcester

Michigan

• John K. King Books in Detroit
• Schuler Books & Music in Grand Rapids

Minnesota

• Amazon Bookstore Cooperative† in Minneapolis
• Birchbark Books in Minneapolis
• Common Good Books in Saint Paul
• DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis
• Mayday Books in Minneapolis
• SubText: a Bookstore in Saint Paul
• Mager’s & Quinn in Minneapolis

Mississippi

• Square Books in Oxford

Missouri

• Left Bank Books in St. Louis

Nevada

• Gambler’s Book Shop in Las Vegas
• The Writer’s Block in Las Vegas

New York

• Albertine Books in Manhattan
• Bluestockings in Manhattan (1999–)
• Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn
• A Different Light† in Manhattan
• Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in Manhattan
• Levine Books and Judaica in Manhattan
• The Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan
• Pomander Book Shop in Manhattan
• Printed Matter, Inc in Manhattan
• Mark’s Bookshop in Manhattan
• Strand Bookstore in Manhattan (1927–)
• Unnameable Books in Brooklyn

North Carolina

• Firestorm Cafe & Books in Asheville
• Internationalist Books in Chapel Hill

Ohio

• The Book Loft of German Village in Columbus
• Two Dollar Radio Headquarters in Columbus

Oregon

• The Duck Store in Eugene
• Powell’s Books in Portland
• Rose City Book Pub

Pennsylvania

• City Books in Pittsburgh
• Giovanni’s Room Bookstore in Philadelphia
• Moravian Book Shop in Bethlehem
• Wooden Shoe Books and Records in Philadelphia

South Carolina

• Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg

Texas

• BookPeople in Austin

Washington

• Chin Music Press in Pike Place Market, Seattle
• Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle
• Third Place Books in 3 locations Lake Forest Park, Northeast Seattle, & South Seattle
• Left Bank Books in Pike Place Market, Seattle

West Virginia

• Taylor Books in Charleston, West Virginia

Wisconsin

• Renaissance Books in Milwaukee
• A Room of One’s Own in Madison
• Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee  [3]

#independent bookseller day       #Power of Books Author Series

Endnotes:

[1] Statista.com  https://www.statista.com/statistics/282808/number-of-independent-bookstores-in-the-us/

[2] IndieBound.org https://www.indiebound.org/independent-bookstore-day

[3] “List of independent bookstores in the United States.” Wikipedia.org   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_independent_bookstores_in_the_United_States

.

Images:

Power of Books. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash    Edited: Added Power of Books Author Series text.

Independent booksellers.  Photo by Leyre Labarga on Unsplash

FYI:

This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

I
n this edition, we chat with Edward Underhill, author of Always The Almost and This Day Changes Everything. We talk about the importance of LGBTQIA representation in books and media, and joy as a form of resistance.

Our freedom to read has been under assault for what seems like an eternity. And, the books being banned are consistently those of marginalized voices. Books with diverse characters, primarily characters of color and LGBTQA+ characters were overwhelmingly targeted. And continue to be.

And, the books being banned are consistently those of marginalized voices. Books with diverse characters, primarily characters of color and LGBTQA+ characters were overwhelmingly targeted.[1] And continue to be.

Throughout this collection of conversations with authors, we talk about the power of books, and the question of why it’s important for stories containing characters that have diverse backgrounds and life experience to be told.

In considering this vital question, we also touch on the dangers of restricting or erasing these narratives – what damage is being done when books about diversity are banned and reading is restricted?

Needless to say, each of the authors in this series brings s different perspective and life experience to the conversation, adding nuance and depth to the combined answer of why it’s important for stories about diverse lives to be told… as well as the dangers that arise when they’re expunged from our national discourse.

Edward Underhill (he/him) is a queer trans man who grew up in Wisconsin, studied music in Ohio, and spent several years in NYC. He currently lives in California with his partner, where he writes music and stories. As a queer trans man, he is passionate about representation both on the screen and on the page.

He is the author of the young adult novels Always the Almost — which released in 2023, was an Indie Next pick, a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick, and earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. His second novel, This Day Changes Everything, has earned starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and the Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books. His adult fiction debut, The In-Between Bookstore, is forthcoming from Harper Collins in early 2025.

.
Trans and queer folks deal with plenty of Not Joy in real life: the recent slew of anti-trans legislation, an ever-growing pile of banned books, online trolls, op-eds that question whether our identity is just a trendy fad (*insert facepalm here*).  So, I wanted to write a story with a happily-ever-after. I wanted to write a story about all the other stuff that’s part of being trans and queer. The fun stuff, like finding your first suit, or looking in the mirror and seeing yourself. And the stuff that’s just about being a human in the world…”  —  Edward Underhill

.
I know you have a lot going on, with the run-up to the release of your second book This Day Changes Everything and all. So, thank you for taking time to talk to me.

Given that my website is about pushing back against the book banning we’re seeing so much of these days, my questions will be primarily through that filter. I’m sure you’ve probably been asked some of them before. But, some issues are so important that they simply can’t be addressed too often, or from too many different perspectives. And, the skyrocketing number of books being banned is one of them.

Why do you think it’s so important for books like the ones you write to be out there and accessible, books that speak to the topics you address?

.
I think about this through a very personal lens –  because growing up where I did and when I did, in Wisconsin, I still remember the first time I found a queer book in an independent bookstore. I had never seen a book like this in the library. I had never come across one in a bookstore before either. There just wasn’t that much out, since the queer book boom has really only been post-2015 or so in the younger space.

It was a book about a gay boy and it took place in the Midwest. And I was not a gay boy. I did not realize I was trans at that point, but seeing something queer, I connected to it without necessarily understanding why.

It was set in Minnesota, and I grew up in Wisconsin. The fact that it took place somewhere that was immediately recognizable to me, and was basically saying, “oh yeah, these people exist here too” was huge. I literally had no language to understand why I felt wrong the way I felt wrong. I was lucky to go to a college where I met people who were able to give me more books, and help me figure out more things.

Whenever I see people trying to take books away from young people – whether they’re by BIPOC authors or queer authors — that’s always the first place my brain goes. Because, we really lose something when we’re not giving young people a frame of reference to understand themselves through fiction. Which is what a lot of us do with fiction, whether we’re from a marginalized group or not. We’re looking for some kind of lens to better understand our world through fiction.

And when a lot of the media you see isn’t representing your own experience, the only message you get is that you fundamentally don’t belong in this world. So, just remembering the difference it made to find this book that at least exhibited some kind of queer identity allowed me to say, “no, actually there is a place for you to exist. And not just in the wider world, but in the kind of place you’re growing up in.” I think that’s really important.

.
Absolutely. And, thank you for writing the books you do. Not only because they’re fabulous stories, but also because it carries more weight coming from someone who has lived your experience than if I speak to such issues. I may be able to understand intellectually, but there are nuances I will never see. And as a result, I’ll never be able to do the topic justice. So, thank you for taking the time to talk with me about this very important subject.

.
One of the first things I remember doing after I came out as trans, was to Google for trans adults having careers and living their lives. I wanted to know that there was a quote-unquote “normal” existence out there that was available to me. I want to be able to show through fiction that, yes, you can exist as a trans or queer young person and be just fine. But it also matters to me that I’m out there doing this — to show that you can be an adult as a queer and trans person, and be fine, and figure things out.

. 

So, thank you for communicating a message that I am simply not equipped to convey. Which is why I ask all the authors in this series the question about why it’s important for books like the ones they write to be out there and accessible — because it’s the question.

Flipping that question on its head is equally important. So… what are the dangers of squashing that availability?

.
The most depressing answer to that question is that already in the world — I can’t remember the exact statistics, but already for queer youth, and especially for trans youth, there’s a very, very high risk of suicide. So, to me, that already comes from feeling like there must be something fundamentally wrong with you, and that there isn’t a space for you to exist in this society. That is one of the dangers when you take away books that convey a positive image of queer and trans youth.

This goes hand in hand with all sorts of attacks we’ve seen on queer rights. That it’s not just about book banning, it’s also about things like the “don’t say gay bill.” It’s all related because it’s all trying to take away language. And, language is how we make sense of the world and make sense of ourselves. So, when you don’t have language to understand who you are and how you can fit in with the humans around you, that’s a huge loss.

Before I was able to find that language, I was incredibly depressed. I just felt like there’s something going on with me that no one else around me seems to be dealing with. But, by and large, that’s actually not true. I think there are probably a lot more queer people around me than I realized. But, when you have that environment of trying to take away that language, you’re trying to ban these books, you’re basically trying to fundamentally make it unsafe to exist in an out way.

Because you’re communicating to kids that this is bad. This stuff is dirty, we don’t talk about this stuff at most. Maybe you can learn about it when you’re a grownup, but there’s something wrong with it that we need to keep from you. And that message is continuing to make sure we Other a specific group of people.

And, if all you are absorbing as a young person growing up is that you are one of those Other people, you are undesirable in some way, then you basically have nothing but terrible choices. You can either try to ignore this fundamental part of you in the hopes of fitting in with what society has deemed an acceptable way to be a human. Or you don’t. And then, you feel like there isn’t room for you.

You feel like you’re never going to fit-in in the way you should. I realize that’s a rambling answer, but I really do feel like it’s all related. And that, every harm that’s done by a piece of it is all the same harm. That’s the flip side. This stuff is so bad because it’s all coming from the same message of, “this isn’t the right way to be a human. And you will face consequences if you’re not doing what we’ve decided is the right way to be a human.”

.
Well, it’s a complicated question. So it deserves a thoughtful, in-depth answer, which is really what I’m looking for. Because that’s where the nuance, details, and experience you bring to the subject come in.

.
This stuff is complicated. And it is nuanced. I’ve been doing my own learning, in seeing all this stuff start to happen more. Being a published author, and so much more aware of it from that perspective, I see all these little things happening. It took me a while to put together for myself the ways in which they’re all related and all communicating the same message.

 .
Right, and that’s the thing. They are related. But if they’re presented as being separate – which they have been –  it’s easy to disregard them. Once again, that’s why these questions can’t be asked too often. Because the book banning over here, and the squashing of diversity programs over there, are related. There is a disturbing thread that runs through all of it, the results of which are indeed bleak and depressing.

Which brings me to a point you made at an earlier event about joy being a form of resistance… unpack that, what do you mean by that?

.
I’ve been writing for a long time, but I think something fundamentally changed about the way that I approached it after 2016. It was partly that I was working in a very different career at the time. I was working in music. And I was by and large around fairly liberal folks, but it was a very white male dominated industry. It was a lot of people who didn’t know I was trans, and sort of thought they didn’t have to worry about these issues because they didn’t know anybody who was affected by them. So, I started coming out a lot more at work. And, in doing that, I decided I wanted to get back to writing and try again to publish a book.

I sort of wrote “Always The Almost” out of spite – which is a funny way to say that I wrote a joy book. But, I just wanted to be like, “no, you don’t get to take this part of myself away from me.” And it’s the part that’s not just about how I exist within or in opposition to cis society, but how the way I exist is a whole identity in and of itself.

And it doesn’t need to be set up in comparison to this other thing. It matters. It is full of so much nuance and joy by itself. So a big part of writing “Always The Almost” was trying to think about these aspects of both being a trans person, and also just being human that are really joyful and fulfilling. Outlooks that are not set up as – and I don’t like putting it as – “we can be happy anyway.”

We can be happy. And it’s the cisgender society that, you know, is causing all of this trouble for us – it’s their problems. Of course we have to deal with that. Of course we have to try to find various ways to fight back. But the idea that societal expectations dictate every way I have to emotionally react to things, I just don’t go for it.

So to me, that that’s where joy as a form of resistance comes in. I think the first thing people who are banning books, the people who are trying to legislate trans existence, the first thing they want to do is make it hard to be a whole person existing in public life this way. That, to me, is basically saying, “I want to take your joy away. I want to make this hard, and uncomfortable, and difficult for you.” So to me, a very important form of resistance is saying, “no, you don’t get to do that.” I maintain my right to have this joy, even if I also have all these terrible feelings about what’s going on in the world.

Then when I wrote “This Day Changes Everything” I wanted to focus that book much more on all the little ways the world kind of comes at you for being a trans or a queer person in the places like Leo and Abby exist most of their lives, which are in small towns. And then, the two of them together in New York City, which is a place that gives them room to be as queer as they want. They are basically able to create a bubble, just the two of them being able to be their whole, nuanced, complicated, and joyful selves without worrying about what the wider world thinks of that.

I also, in a very simple way, wanted to write that because being a trans and queer person is hard enough on a day-to-day level. I don’t want to read about how hard it is. It’s a personal preference. It’s important to have the trauma books out there… it really is. But I also wanted to write a story for the young people who may be in some of those places like where I grew up. An escape that isn’t ignoring how hard reality is, but is saying you get to be a whole joyful, interesting human in spite of all of that goes with living your own life.

.
The two books seem to bookend each other. You said with Always The Almost you wanted to point out that trans and queer people don’t only live in big cities. And with This Day Changes Everything, that the big city then allows this couple of kids to just be for a minute. So, they’re a nice pair.

During a panel on African American authors at a conference I attended, one gentleman noted that he frequently hears lamentable sentiments like, “I know slavery was terrible and racism continues to exist, but we’re so tired of it being dredged up.” And, that this kind of trauma exhaustion starts to work against the cause of justice and equality. So, he did the same thing. He wrote a children’s book about civil rights leaders that focuses on the inspirational. With stories and poems about who they were, and their diverse and equitable vision for the world. So yes, joy is absolutely a form of resistance.

.
And especially for queer narratives. Up until recently, it was basically expected they would end in tragedy. If you wanted to write about a queer person, for example, or you want to write about a queer couple, it was ultimately going to be an unhappy ending. And, I definitely didn’t want to go there. I want to give you the happy ending.

Because, even though those narratives are important and that is sometimes reality, it’s also like what this person was saying on that panel. You run the risk of that being the only narrative out there. Then you’re accidentally communicating something really damaging to young people – which is, that your whole existence is going to be a fight and it’s probably going to end up unhappy.

And, at least for me personally, I cannot keep going if that’s the only narrative I have in my head. I need the other narrative. Which is, that there are ways to expand and take up your community, and also find your joy. That these two things can exist simultaneously.

.
I also really appreciated what a significant role the arts play in your books. Specifically, music of course, but also Eric’s drawing – because the arts are taking a hit these days too. And I love that it’s the music teacher who drops all the life-changing wisdom. Can you talk about your decision to do that?

.
I don’t like saying that anybody in my books is based on a real person, because they aren’t really. They absolutely become whole characters of their own. But, a lot of the things Stefania says did originally come from my cello teacher in high school. Not so much the stuff about identity, but some of the things she says about the ways people are always going to judge – say a small woman – differently than a tall dude playing the piano. I was a cellist, so she was talking about my cello, but she said that and I think it was completely true. And then, the thing Stefania says to Miles near the end… that this could be the best time you ever play it. As if to say, “why are you putting narratives in your own head about how things are going to go wrong? This could be the best time you ever play it.”

She literally said that to me before a concert. And, of course, in that moment she was just talking about that particular narrative – about how I’m going to mess up this piece of music. It felt really important to put that in the book because it’s about that moment before the concert Miles has to play.

And it can easily be applied elsewhere, you have this internal narrative that things are going to go wrong, I’m going to mess up. But, what if you exchange it for a different narrative – because you have more control than you think you do. You can change things, and write your own narrative. Which is what Miles is doing. So, a lot of the things Stefania says were just like the truth bombs my cello teacher dropped, and I felt very, very grateful for them.

.
And I found it interesting that, as much as everyone else around Miles tried, it was the artist who opened all those life-changing, life-affirming doors. So that jumped out at me, because the importance of humanities is my proverbial soapbox most broadly, though I’m coming at it by way of pushing back against book banning.

.
Yeah. There’s this argument that we need to preserve music education in schools because if you study music, you’re more likely to do better on these standardized tests. And it drives me nuts. Because to me, you study music or the arts because that’s how you make sense of your world. It’s how you express yourself.

I think part of why I really wanted to make this book about artists and musicians was because, certainly for me as a young person, that’s how I expressed all this stuff  I did not have language for at the time, and I did not know what to do with.  But this was a way I could just exist, and feel like I was enough. I was exerting some control in a world that didn’t feel totally in my control at that time. So, I love being able to portray the arts just for their own sake. And, for everything you can express and learn about yourself as a human through them, and not so much about whether it’s going to make sure you get into a good college with a good SAT score.

.
School is about more than just getting a job, but sadly, it’s been boiled down to that. Recently, the response to Humanities degrees has become “what are you going to do with that?” My answer to that question is “learn to be a decent human being, and better citizen of the world.”

There’s also the huge role Humanities play in learning to think critically. Because when you think critically, you’re not manipulated and fooled as easily. You’re not frightened into doing things like banning books that address diversity and social issues in order to “protect the children.”

When you learn to think critically, difference and diversity are no longer frightening. So, your life is going to be easier. It isn’t just marginalized groups who benefit from empathy and understanding. Everybody wins.

.
The other thing that drives me up the wall with the whole “think of the children” argument is that…  as somebody who’s now met a fair number of young people because of writing this book, they are so much smarter than people think they are. They know exactly what’s going on. They see right through this B.S. And, they know exactly what they’re losing when this stuff happens. So, my response to this argument is “the kids know way more than you think they do.”

 .
They do. And, they’re dealing with all of these sensitive topics. Don’t pretend they’re still playing with alphabet blocks – because they’re living these issues. One more question to wrap up our conversation on a joyous note. It’s another one I’m certain you’ve been asked before. But, again, it’s important enough to be repeated. Do you have any advice for trans kids?

.
Oh gosh. I don’t even know if there’s a way to give advice that isn’t going to sound pat, because I really don’t want to downplay just how hard and horrible things are. I had no language to understand who I was, because this identity wasn’t as known and in the mainstream as much as it is now. I also didn’t have the New York Times writing op-eds about my identity every single week. So, I can’t imagine how much harder it’s gotten.

But the thing I just keep thinking is “keep existing” whatever that looks like for you. If that’s “you can’t be out yet, and maybe you’ll get to be out in a few years”…  It sucks. But, do that. If it’s, “I’m sort of going stealth.” If it’s, “I can be out around some friends and not others.”  If it’s, “no, fuck it, I’m going to be out” – excuse my language – “I’m going to be out loud and proud and everyone around me just has to deal with me.” Or, if it’s, “I live in a community that makes room for this, so I’m going to take up that room,” it’s all valid.

The most important thing is to keep existing. Because the thing I’ve been working on communicating to some of my cis friends ever since the wake of the 2016 election is, “you guys have no idea how much different that moment looked for cis communities than it did for trans communities.”

In that moment, trans communities saw a lot of what was coming and were freaking out about it. We were offering each other bits of advice about how to get your documents, and how to get everything in order as much as possible, to try to be safe.

I feel like the good thing is that there are more of us than I was certainly aware of when I was in high school. And by more of us, I mean folks who are in their twenties, thirties, forties. The good part about that is there are so many more people here ready to do the hard stuff. So, if you are a trans young person, you don’t have to do the hard stuff. You just have to do the existing part until you can get to whatever you need, to be more okay. But the rest of us got you. And, we’re working to do the hard stuff, so hopefully by the time you get to where you need to be, it’ll look a lot better than it is now.

.
Well, thank you for being so open with your answers. We talked about some pretty deep questions, but that’s rather the point. Because the more positive information we get out there the better.

.
Yeah, it’s all good stuff to talk about. One of the wonderful things about publishing these books that I never expected is just how many people haven’t cared at all that I’m trans. I was absolutely expecting to get some backlash, like “you’re a groomer, what are you doing to kids?” All that bad stuff.

But the joyful flip side was the number of people who have been huge allies, the number of kids who have just loved this book. I’ve gotten things from kids like, “my friend is trans. So I wanted to read this book for them.” It’s amazing to see that kind of empathy. And it’s been a nice reminder that I’m not by myself doing this.

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Yeah. There are lots of allies out there. Sometimes it’s hard to know that. The adversaries are so loud, and take up so much oxygen, it’s difficult to remember. It makes my head explode on all kinds of levels. Which is why I’m taking on book banning. It’s something I can do to push back.

.
Yeah. It was amazing to be at the YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) Symposium, and see all of the people doing this work. I have so much respect for it. I appreciate it so much. It means a lot.

Thanks for the work you’re doing as well. And for taking the time to talk with me. And, needless to say, congratulations on YALSA listing Always The Almost among the best fiction for young adults in 2024. As well as the recent release of This Day Changes Everything.

Be sure to see what the other authors in our Power of Books Series
have to say about the importance of books: 

Federico Erebia,
author of Pedro & Daniel

Dr. Michael Datcher,
author of Harlem at Four

Jamie Jo Hoang,
author of My Father the Panda Killer

Ryan Estrada,
co-author of Banned Book Club,
and Occulted

.

And for all you educators, download these discussion guides for
Always The Almost, and This Day Changes Everything.

#Power of Books Author Series     #Pride Month        #LGBTQ+ authors
#Benefits of the Humanities    #The Art of Reading

Endnotes:

[1] Bruinius, Harry. “Banning Books: Protecting kids or erasing humanity?” October 6, 2023. The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2023/1006/Banning-books-Protecting-kids-or-erasing-humanity

Rado, Diane. “In 2024, more censorship and bans: FL, TX removing large batches of books in public schools.” December 21, 2023. News From The States. https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/2024-more-censorship-and-bans-fl-tx-removing-large-batches-books-public-schools

Unite Against Banned Books 2023 Censorship Numbers.

Images:

Power of Books: Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash    Edited: Added Power of Books Author Series text.

Edward Underhill:  https://www.edward-underhill.com/about

Cover of Always The Almost, and This Day Changes Everything

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D
escribing The Color Purple as a womanist work is like saying the Iliad is a heroic poem. It isn’t merely an example – it’s the defining text of that genre.[1]

Womanism emerged from the work of African-American author Alice Walker. And the term isn’t just a new label for Black feminism. While womanism does have an important relationship to feminism, it’s broader in scope than the earlier women’s movement. Okay. But that still doesn’t tell us what womanism actually is.

Strictly speaking, Walker doesn’t offer a definition of womanism itself. In true writerly (and, quite frankly, womanist) fashion, she shows her reader what a womanist is, leading them to an understanding of it.

Within the collection of her essays titled In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Walker explains the origins of the term womanism. She paints a picture of who a womanist is – what kind of moral, mental, and emotional qualities encompass a womanist’s character. She reveals the types of things a womanist loves. Using metaphor, she imparts that womanism is more robust and nurturing than simple feminism. What Walker doesn’t do, however, is provide a strict formalization of womanism.

But, as academics are wont to do, Women’s Studies scholar Layli Phillips has developed the following definition of the movement born of Alice Walker’s work:

A social change perspective rooted in Black women’s and other women of color’s everyday experiences and everyday methods of problem solving in everyday spaces, extended to the problem of ending all forms of oppression for all people, restoring the balance between people and the environment/nature, and reconciling human life with the spiritual dimension.[2]

In the same way Walker leads us to an understanding of womanism rather than defining it, she acquaints us with what The Color Purple is intended to do without putting a label on the genre she has created. And, as Alice Walker herself phrases it… the book’s intent is:

To explore the difficult path of someone who starts out in life already a spiritual captive, but who, through her own courage and the help of others, breaks free into the realization that she, like Nature itself, is a radiant expression of the heretofore perceived as quite distant Divine.[3]

 Therefore, The Color Purple is absolutely a genre-defining womanist novel.

Why Was The Color Purple Banned?

The Color Purple is simultaneously one of the most acclaimed and most banned books in history. Among other accolades, it won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1983, and made Alice Walker the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Yet, it remains among the most banned books in the United States.[4]

Walker’s work was first banned in 1984 Oakland schools. Donna Green, mother of one of the students there, complained about “explicit language,” saying she was “offended by the book’s subject matter and graphic material.”[5]

The complaints levied against The Color Purple in Oakland have set the timbre for the myriad of challenges ever since.

 Alice Walker had a thing or two to say about the Oakland banning at the National Writers Union and the Black Women’s Forum that same year:

Mrs. Green had not actually read the book, according to the papers; she’d “flipped” through it, scanned at least five pages, photocopied those five, and passed them out to the members of the Oakland school board…

 I feel I know what Mrs. Green was objecting to. When I learned she’d copied and distributed to the school board five pages from the book, I knew which five pages they were…  They are the pages that describe brutal sexual violence done to a nearly illiterate black womanchild, who then proceeds to write down what has happened to her in her own language, from her own point of view. She does not find rape thrilling; she thinks the rapist looks like a frog with a snake between his legs. How could this not be upsetting? Shocking? …

Even I found it almost impossible to let her say what had happened to her as she perceived it without euphemizing it a little. And why? Because once you strip away the lie that rape is pleasant, that rapists have anything at all attractive about them, that children are not permanently damaged by sexual pain, that violence done to them is washed away by fear, silence, and time, you are left with the positive horror of the lives of thousands of children (and who knows how many adults).[6]

As Walker further states, she could have written about Celie’s rape in such “pretty, distancing language that many people would have accepted it as normal” – the way a good number of romance novels do, a genre chockfull of scenarios revolving around “strong,” animalistic male characters, who are also handsome and somehow…  charming.[7] 

Mrs. Green also made it apparent that she “thought sex should be only heterosexual, and not pleasurable or God-inspired.”  Ultimately, as Walker observes, what probably upset Mrs. Green most was “the discovery that there [was] definitely a world view different from her own.”[8]

Most recently – December 2023 – The Color Purple was removed from schools in Orange County, Florida.[9]

What Makes The Color Purple an Important Book?

Alice Walker speaks to the contribution her book makes during a 2012 interview:

Great Literature is help for humans. It is medicine of the highest order. In a more aware culture, writers would be considered priests. And, in fact, I have approached writing in a distinctly priestess frame of mind. I know what The Color Purple can mean to people, women and men, who have no voice. Who believe they have few choices in life. It can open to them, to their view, the full abundance of this amazing journey we are all on. It can lift them into a new realization of their own power, beauty, love, courage. It is a book that unites the present with the past, therefore giving people a sense of history and of timelessness they might never achieve otherwise. And even were it not “great” literature, it has the best interests of all of us humans at heart. That we grow, change, challenge, encourage, love fiercely in the awareness that real love can never be incorrect.[10]

Oprah Winfrey was one of the victimized children Walker alluded to when addressing her choice to use direct, unvarnished language about the sexual violence visited upon Celie. Winfrey first read The Color Purple when she was cast as Sofia in the 1984 film. Telling the story of this experience, Winfrey declared:

The Color Purple changed my life forever. From the moment I read the book—that was my story. Celie’s story was my story. When Celie is writing the letter—‘Dear God, I’m 14 years old, please explain what’s happening to me?’—that was my story.

 Winfrey has revealed that she “was raped at 9 years old by a cousin, then again by another family member, and another family member. [11]

I couldn’t believe that Alice Walker had actually penned a story about a girl who was going through the same thing that I was going through in my life. Somebody else knew how I felt. I related so much to Celie’s story and found hope. [12]

 Winfrey’s response to The Color Purple exemplifies one of the chief reasons why stories like this need to be told. Girls like Celie and Oprah, those who have experienced sexual abuse, need to know they’re not alone. More importantly, they need to realize that what happened to them was not their fault – that they did nothing to deserve it.

But, it isn’t just girls who benefit from reading books like The Color Purple. It’s crucial that young men cultivate empathy. That they recognize women are not a commodity at their disposal. And understand how devastating actions like those described in Walker’s work are.

Young men also benefit from realizing that the hierarchical dynamic at play in The Color Purple, one that facilitates women being dominated and abused by men, is just as harmful to them as it is to the women being abused. And that point is missed if descriptions of difficult events are sugar-coated.

Those who grew up/are growing up on the other side of the proverbial tracks from the characters portrayed in Walker’s work also benefit from reading it. Her book shines a light on unexamined gender, class, and racial strife. It lays bare realities of history that many are trying to erase.

The Color Purple exposes members of majority culture to situations they’ve likely never had to deal with. It’s a window into the daily difficulties associated with being on the receiving end of racism. And, what it’s like to be at the mercy of a court system steeped in racial disparity.

Reading this epistolary novel helps them realize that many of the notions they’ve absorbed about Black history and African-Americans are one-dimensional and myopic –something Walker’s work simply does not allow.[13]

What’s the Difference Between Womanism and Feminism?

In a 1 984 interview, Walker said she chose the term Womanism because:

… it is better than feminism, I chose it because I prefer the sound, the feel, the fit of it; because I cherish the spirit of the women and because I share the old ethnic-American habit of offering society a new word when the old word it is using fails to describe the behavior Only a new word can help it more fully see.[14]

Historically, many first-wave feminists (from the mid-19^th to the mid-20^th century) quite simply ignored the concerns of women of color. These issues were considered questions of race, and consequently a distraction from the fight for the legal rights of women.

During and following the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, second-wave feminism emphasized “sisterhood,” insisting on mutual solidarity to achieve its goals. Though this emphasis appears to be “color-blind,” it effectively isolated feminists of color.

The third wave of feminism (beginning in the mid-1990s) consciously addressed issues of social justice, including racism and classism, in addition to sexism. Despite this expanded perspective and more inclusive activism, it still appeared that feminism did not fully appreciate the importance of intersectionality. And, that the feminist movement remained focused on the experiences of white middle-class (or non-working class) women.[15]

Womanism, on the other hand, situates the Black woman in history and [their development in a cultural context] – in opposition to negative and inaccurate stereotypes common within American society. It also frames the context of her survival within that of the larger community, where the fate of women and that of men are linked.[16]

Her characterization of womanism famously states, “womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender.”[17] This distinction suggests that womanism constitutes a broader movement, one capable of encompassing the wider array of experiences of women of color. And, as such, addresses the complexities of intersectional systems of oppression.[18]

What Are The Attributes of a Womanist?

As noted above, Alice Walker delineates the attributes of a womanist in her collection of essays In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. The term itself stems from the Southern black folk expression of mothers to their female children, “You acting womanish.” In other words, like a woman. Womanish girls behave in “outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful ways.”

Womanish girls want to “know more and in greater depth” than is considered good for them. They’re “interested in doing grown-up things. Acting grown-up. Being grown up.”

Walker notes that the term is “interchangeable with another black folk expression: ‘You trying to be grown. Responsible. In charge. Serious.”

She further states that a womanist is:

A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally a universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Ans. “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

A womanist also:

Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.

And finally, as mentioned above, “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.”[19]

What is the Significance of Purple?

Purple is the color of the Women’s Liberation Movement, and has historically been associated with efforts to achieve gender equality.

In 1908, the color purple represented justice and dignity. Purple also symbolizes visionary thinking, and support for people who broke down career barriers making it possible for women to work in industries traditionally denied to them.

The significance of this color to the women’s movement of the 1930s was crystallized in Alice Walker’s work of the same name. [20]

And, here’s an interesting thing about the color purple, one that reflects the womanism it has come to represent… as a color on the light spectrum, it can’t exist on its own. And in color theory, purple appears as a line on the edge of the spectrum where the other colors are most saturated, stretching from one endpoint to the other.

It’s the color of relationship, touching all the other colors at the point when they are most fully themselves.[21]

Womanism Within The Color Purple

Alice Walker describes The Color Purple as a historical novel. Not one that starts with “the taking of lands, or the births, battles, and deaths of Great Men,” however. But, diverting from the typical patriarchal concerns, a history that starts “with one woman asking another for her underwear.”[22] Bearing this description in mind, The Color Purple is clearly about the bonding of women.

Walker’s protagonist Celie, whose evolution is depicted over the course of the book, is a product of the intersectional systems of oppression addressed by womanism. And there’s Sofia, who exemplifies defiance, whether against the gender oppression embodied in a husband who tries to make his wife “mind,” or racial oppression from the community’s social order.

Though Mary Agnes is a minor player, what she characterizes is significant. Which is, as her nickname Squeak

indicates, the societal expectation that women are meek and ineffectual, especially around men.

Shug Avery completes the sisterhood, personifying womanism itself. Not only with her audacious, personality, but womanism’s sexual and emotional aspects as well. Being a singer, she clearly loves music, as well as dancing to the blues songs she sings. And her extremely successful career proves she’s more than capable.

Shug also sees God as the spirit connecting us to all of nature. And gives voice to the idea that this spirit made the color purple just to please us, in order to get our attention.

As the face of womanism, she functions as the catalyst for Celie’s development. But as Walker explicitly states, she isn’t writing strictly for women any more than Tolstoy only wrote for Russians.[23]

As noted above, Walker’s work “explores the difficult path of someone who starts out in life as a spiritual captive.” And The Color Purple is indeed Celie’s story. However, in keeping with womanism’s commitment to “survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female,” it also reveals that patriarchy is damaging to men as well.

In Keeping With Womanism, Celie is Situated in History.

The Color Purple opens with a warning from Celie’s stepfather, who had just raped her. “You better never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.”[24] So, that’s exactly what Celie did – wrote a letter to God about what she has been enduring. Celie keeps writing letters to God, and the structure of Walker’s book is born.

According to Walker, she chose the epistolary structure because “it had a lot to do with understanding the character of Celie.”[25] Someone in Celie’s position would have no one else to tell. And, consistent with womanism, it situates Celie in history. Her position is similar to enslaved African American women, who would have no one to tell but God when something like this happened to them. Walker specifically states, “Celie is very much in this tradition.”[26]

Like enslaved African American women before her, Celie’s babies are taken from her. And, she has no idea where they are, what has happened to them, or even if they are still alive.[27]

.
When Mr         asks for Celie’s sister Nettie’s hand in marriage, their stepfather insists he take Celie instead – a deal that is arranged without Celie’s consent, or even knowledge. This forced marriage parallels the exploitation of enslaved African American women. And the scenario looks for all the world like a slave auction:

Mr.            come finally one day looking all drug out. The woman he had helping him done quit. His mammy done said No more.

 He say, Let me see her again.

 Pa call me. Celie, he say. Like it wasn’t nothing. Mr.             want to take a look at you.

 I go stand in the door. The sun shine in my e yes. He’s still up on his horse. He look me up and down.

Pa rattle his newspaper. Move up, he won’t bite, he say… Turn round, Pa say.

I turn round…

 Mr. say, That cow still coming? [28]

Walker Situates Celie in a Cultural Context As Well

Walker also situates Celie in the patriarchal culture that overlaps African American history. Like so many women before her, this male-dominated culture forces Celie into a position of powerlessness, without the ability to shape an identity. Celie’s lack of identity is confirmed by the fact that her letters to God go unsigned.

Mr.            repeatedly poisons Celie’s sense of self by taunting her, “Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman… you nothing at all.” [29] The pervasive and generational nature of this culture becomes evident in the following passage, when Harpo asks his father why he beats Celie:

Mr. say. Cause she my wife. Plus, she stubborn. All women good for— he don’t finish. He just tuck his chin over the paper like he do. Remind me of Pa.

Harpo ast me. How come you stubborn? He don’t ast How come you his wife? Nobody ast that. [30]

 The passage above isn’t just about Mr.            and his abusive nature. Celie has been at the receiving end of this abusive attitude from the other male authority in her life as well. And, though Harpo does talk to Celie about the conversation mentioned above, his response is to put the onus on Celie rather than consider the question that would acknowledge her personhood.

These tactics clearly work. Celie has been rendered incapable of fighting back, a reality she confesses to Sofia after being called out for telling Harpo he should beat her:

I say it cause I’m a fool, I say. I say it cause I’m jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can’t. What that? she say.

Fight. I say. [31]

 In an exchange with Mr            ’s sister about standing up to her brother, a defeated and dejected Celie responds with “What good it do? I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive.” [32] And to add insult to literal injury, Celie is economically dependent on Mr. . Which is precisely the state of voicelessness and negative self-perception this male dominated culture generates.

Shug is Portrayed in the Tradition of Great Blues Women

.
As alluded to above, Walker created the Shug Avery character in the tradition of the great female blues singers of the early 20th century. Mr  brought Shug into his house at a time when she was very ill and no one else would take her in… not even her own mother. Celie, of course, had not been consulted or even alerted to the fact that Shug would be staying with them. But Celie’s reaction is:

Come on in, I want to cry. To shout. Come on in. With God help, Celie going to make you well. But I don’t say nothing. It not my house. [33]

And, as Celie nurses Shug back to physical health, Shug helps Celie heal psychologically. She teaches Celie to love herself, introduces her to a more inclusive form of spirituality, and shows her how to be self-sufficient.

Celie is smitten with Shug. And through the intimate relationship that develops between them, she learns to see her body as something other than the location of her abuse and pain. She also begins to see herself as being worthy of love.

Shug also helps Celie make contact with her sister Nettie, who was driven away by Mr         for refusing to succumb to his advances. Directing his anger at Celie, Mr                                                   hid the countless letters Nettie had written to her over a number of years, leaving Celie feeling more isolated than ever.

When Shug realizes the “letters with a lot of funny looking stamps” she’d seen in Mr            ’s mailbox were probably from Nettie, she hatches a plan to get them to their intended receiver… Celie. [34]

This is the point when Celie finally lets herself feel her anger rather than shutting down:

I watch him so close, I begin to feel a lightening in the head…

All day long I act just like Sofia. I stutter. I mutter to myself. I stumble bout the house crazy for Mr. blood. In my mind, he falling dead every which a way. [35]

 But Shug keeps Celie from doing anything stupid in a fit of rage, and soothes her through the night, helping Celie redirect her anger.

Shug Helps Celie Reconcile with Spiritual Life

Now that she no longer sees her situation as normal or something she has brought on herself, Celie begins to question the patriarchal God she has been raised with. The one she’s been trying to please, seemingly to no avail. The one that informs the societal structures so damaging to her.

Celie tells Nettie in a letter that she doesn’t write to God anymore, and Shug asks why that is:

What God do for me? I ast…

… he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mamma, a lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know…

If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you. [36]

 So, Shug introduces Celie to the inclusive, womanistic view of a spirituality where God is in the world around them:

God ain’t a he or a she, but a It. But what do it look like? I ast.

Don’t look like nothing, she say. It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It.

Shug relates that her first step away from the patriarchal religion she and Celie were both raised in “was trees”:

Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it. [37]

 Elaborating, Shug goes on to say that this concept of God is “always trying to please us back… making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect it” – the color purple, for example. [38]

Their conversation about God made Celie realize she had never truly noticed the beauty around her. More importantly, this understanding of God helped to diminish the debilitating sense of victimhood that had defined her identity since she was fourteen years old:

Next to any little scrub of a bush in my yard, Mr.’s evil sort of shrink. But not altogether. Still, it like Shug say, You have to git man off your eyeball, before you can see anything a ‘tall. [39]

It’s interesting to note that at this point Celie begins closing her letters to Nettie with “Amen,” something she never did when her concept of God was patriarchal and judgmental in nature.

Ultimately, Celie did write to God again. As The Color Purple opens with a letter to God, so it closes with one. But this time, Celie’s salutation reflects the inclusive womanist spirituality Shug has opened her eyes to: “Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God.” [40]

Celie’s Financial Independence By Way of Folkspants Unlimited

 Celie acts on her burgeoning sense of self during a dinner when Shug announces she’ll be returning to Memphis, that Celie will be going with her. As usual, Mr             directs his anger toward Celie.

Mr_____ start up from his seat, look at Shug, plop back down again. He look over at me. I thought you was finally happy, he say. What wrong now?

 You a lowdown dog is what’s wrong, I say. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation. [41]

Celie’s response is pivotal. Not only because she’s standing up to Mr            , but because the image of entering into the Creation signifies her transformation into someone new. As the Memphis-bound group is about to drive away, Celie spits the words she’s heard so often back in Mr ____’s face, “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook,” finishing with “But I’m here.” Her sense of self has crystallized.

At one point, Mr_____ attacks Celie with the only thing he has left to hold over her head – financial dependence:

You not gitting a penny of my money, Mr. say to me. Not one thin dime. [42]

 Not surprisingly, a lack of Mr            ’s money doesn’t prove to be a problem. Celie is more than capable of supporting herself, when she turns the (significantly unisex) pants she has designed and starts making for friends and family into a full-blown business. And once again it’s Shug, the face of womanism, who aids in Celie’s development. Not only by pointing her an entrepreneurial direction, but supporting and encouraging her along the way.

It’s also noteworthy that Squeak – rather, Mary Agnes – goes to Memphis with them. Her doing so, touches on the importance of having a sense of purpose, financial independence aside:

You going What? say Harpo. He so surprise. He begin to sputter, sputter, just like his daddy. Sound like I don’t know what.

 I want to sing, say Squeak. Sing! say Harpo.

Yeah, say Squeak. Sing. I ain’t sung in public since Jolentha was born. Her name Jolentha. They call her Suzie Q.

You ain’t had to sing in public since Jolentha was born. Everything you need I done provided for. I need to sing, say Squeak.

Listen Squeak, say Harpo. You can’t go to Memphis. That’s all there is to it. Mary Agnes, say Squeak.

Squeak, Mary Agnes, what difference do it make?

It make a lot, say Squeak. When I was Mary Agnes I could sing in public. [43]

 It’s at this point in the story that Celie tells Nettie:

I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time. And you alive and be home soon. With our children. [44]

Her life and sense of self reflects the fundamental aspects of womanism. Celie’s evolution, and the sisterhood that developed along the way, is now complete.

Womanism Takes the Well-Being of Men Into Account Too

Let’s not forget, womanism also includes the well-being of men. And, that (ironically) patriarchal systems are damaging to men as well as women.

The most obvious example of the detrimental effects male dominant social structures have on men, is the way it destroys Harpo’s relationship with Sofia. Her strong personality was always front and center. And they were very much in love.

But after they married, Mr_____  insinuated Harpo was less than a man because he was lending a hand with their baby. Shortly thereafter, Harpo began trying to “make [Sofia] mind.” [45] Mr_____ advised Harpo to beat Sofia:

Well, how you spect to make her mind? Wives is like children. You have to let ‘em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating. [46]

It gets to the point where Sofia has finally had enough of having to fight her own husband, so she leaves him. And Harpo is devastated. Not only does he actually love her, unlike the relationship between Mr_____ and Celie, the cultural requirement for a man to dominate his wife leaves him feeling inadequate.

The effect of patriarchy on Mr             is even sadder still. It’s important to note that Celie doesn’t even know his given name, that she refers to her husband by the title Mr                   for the majority of the book. As Celie’s unsigned letters to God indicates she lacks a sense of self, Mr_____ missing a name signifies an absence of personhood. He fulfills the patriarchal expectations of his title, but as the literary device suggests Mr_____  is only the shell of a man, one who is the bitter, vicious, and abusive.

Shug, however, calls Mr             by his given name – Albert. She knows the kind of man he used to be, and could still be if not for patriarchal hierarchy. He was once a vibrant and happy man who was funny and loved to dance, who loved Shug and loves her still.

But, his father didn’t approve of Shug. And, as Albert himself states, “I wanted Shug. But my daddy was the boss. He gave me the wife he wanted me to have.” [47]

Albert buckled under patriarchal pressure. He wound up with a woman he didn’t love, with children he didn’t want, working land that wouldn’t be his until his father passed away. It “ate him alive” as the expression goes, and he passed his misery forward, including a life impaired by patriarchal hierarchy to his son Harpo.

The Larger Effects of Womanism

Ultimately, Mr_____ becomes a changed man. He’s no longer quick to judge. He starts working hard, and even cooks and cleans “just like a woman.” He also learns to appreciate “some of the things God was playful enough to make.” [48] And finally, he and Celie form a genuine bond of friendship. She even starts referring to him as Albert, symbolizing his return to wholeness.

Celie’s departing curse, “until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble,” clearly had an effect. [49] That, combined with Shug severing relations because he was mistreating someone she loves.

After Celie and Shug went to Memphis, Mr_____ had a rough time of things. He shut himself up in his house. He couldn’t sleep. Harpo would find him “all cram up in a corner of the bed. Eyes clamp on different pieces of furniture, see if they move in his direction.” [50]  In true Poe-like fashion, the worst part was listening to his own heartbeat, which beat so loud at night it sounded like drums.

Harpo finally convinced his father to send Celie the rest of Nettie’s letters. Unbeknownst to him, of course, she had already read them, but he was finally doing right by her. And, it was then that he began to improve.

During Mr            ’s darkest days, Harpo frequently slept with his father to calm his fear about whatever he thought was haunting the house. And, that nurturing image of Harpo reignited Sofia’s feelings for him.

Mary Agnes realized her dream of becoming a successful singer.

And finally, Nettie returns from Africa, and Celie is reunited with her beloved sister and the children who were torn away from her all those years ago. In her final letter, this time to Dear Everything, Celie describes herself:

I feel a little peculiar round the children. For one thing, they grown. And I see they think me and Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sofia and Jack and Odessa real old and don’t know much what going on. But I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. [51]

This sentiment is more than Walker simply wrapping her work up with the proverbial Hollywood ending, however. The Color Purple closes with a womanist concept reflected in Walker’s work The Gospel According to Shug:

HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, now any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.[52]

The people Walker introduces us to in The Color Purple have indeed been helped by the womanism this genre-defining work is grounded in.

That’s my take on Alice Walker’s The Color Purple — what’s yours?

For all you educators, download this free Teachers’ Guide.

#banned books        #Published 1980s      #Women’s History Month    #womanism    #The Color Purple     #Alice Walker

Endnotes:

[1] “Do you agree that The Color Purple is a “womanist” rather than a “feminist” text?” eNotes Editorial, 29 Oct. 2022. https://www.enotes.com/topics/color-purple/questions/do-you-agree-that-the-color-purple-is-a-womanist-3086589

[2] Phillips, Layli. “Introduction. Womanism: On Its Own.” In The Womanist Reader. Edited by Layli Phillips. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. Pg xx.

[3] Walker, Alice. “Preface.” The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992.

[4] Cole, Olivia A. “The Color Purple and the Toppling of American Gods.” PEN America. September 21, 2016. https://pen.org/the-color-purple-and-the-toppling-of-american-gods/

Shaffer, Madelyn. “An Inspiration to African-American Women.” Millersville University.

[5] ‘The Color Purple,’ a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, has been…” UPI Archives. May 3, 1984.

[6] Walker, Alice. “Coming in From the Cold: Welcoming the Old, Funny-Talking Ancient Ones into the Warm Room of Present consciousness, or, Natty Dread Rides Again!” in Living by the Word. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1988. Pg 58.

[7] Walker, Alice. “Coming in From the Cold: Welcoming the Old, Funny-Talking Ancient Ones into the Warm Room of Present consciousness, or, Natty Dread Rides Again!” in Living by the Word. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1988. Pg 58.

[8] Walker, Alice. “Coming in From the Cold: Welcoming the Old, Funny-Talking Ancient Ones into the Warm Room of Present consciousness, or, Natty Dread Rides Again!” in Living by the Word. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1988. Pg 58.

[9] Briquelet, Kate. “’The Color Purple’ Removed From Schools Under New Florida Law.” Daily Beast. December 21, 2023. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-color-purple-removed-from-school-classrooms-under-new-florida-law

[10] “Alice Walker: Writing What’s Right.” Guernica/15 years of global arts & politics. October 1, 2012. https://www.guernicamag.com/alice-walker-writing-whats-right/

[11] Morris-Marr, Lucie. “Oprah Winfrey in Melbourne for Australian tour 2015 spreads a message of love, reveals lost child.” News.com.au December 3, 2015.

[12] Chi, Paul. “Oprah Comes Full Circle with The Color Purple: “That Was My Story.” Vanity Fair. December 7, 2023.

[13] King, Amy. “On Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” PEN America. October 24, 2012. https://pen.org/on-alice-walkers-the-color-purple/

[14] Bradley, David. “Novelist Alice Walker Telling the Black Woman’s Story.” The New York Times. January 8, 1984.

[15] Weida, Kaz. “Womanism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/womanism

Little, Becky. “How Early Suffragists Left Black Women Out of Their Fight.” November 8, 2017. History.com

https://www.history.com/news/suffragists-vote-black-women

[16] Shi, Long. “Womanism and The Color Purple.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research,

volume 490. Pp653-656.

^[17] Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. New York: A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc., 1983. Pg xii.

[18] Weida, Kaz. “Womanism.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/womanism

[19] Walker, Alice. In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. New York: A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc., 1983. Pg xi-xii.

[20] Hall, Stephanie. “Symbolism in the Women’s Suffrage Movement.” Library of Congress blog. August 24, 2020. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2020/08/symbolism-in-the-womens-suffrage-movement/#

“Celebrating Women’s History Month.” March 8, 2023.Rutgers University Libraries. https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/news/celebrating-womens-history-month

[21] Color Perception. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/colper.html

Reverend Doyt Conn. “The Color Purple.” https://epiphanyseattle.org/sermon/the-color-purple/

[22] Walker, Alice. “Writing The Color Purple.” In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. New York: A Harvest Book Harcourt, Inc., 1983. Pg 356.

[23] Fancher, Faith. “Men Are Not the Center of Alice Walker’s Universe.” July 3, 1985. NPR https://www.npr.org/transcripts/808305443

[24] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 1.

[25] Fancher, Faith. “Men Are Not the Center of Alice Walker’s Universe.” July 3, 1985. NPR https://www.npr.org/transcripts/808305443

[26] Fancher, Faith. “Men Are Not the Center of Alice Walker’s Universe.” July 3, 1985. NPR https://www.npr.org/transcripts/808305443

[27] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 3.

[28] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pp 10-11.

[29] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 206.

[30] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 22.

[31] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 40.

[32] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 21.

[33] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 45.

[34] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 118.

[35] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 120.

[36] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 192.

[37] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 195-6.

[38] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 196.

[39] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 197.

[40] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 285.

[41] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 199.

[42] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 201.

[43] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 203.

[44] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 215.

[45] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 35.

[46] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 35.

[47] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 270.

[48] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 222.

[49] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 206.

[50] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 224.

[51] Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1992. Pg 288.

[52] Walker, Alice. “The Gospel According to Shug.” The Temple of My Familiar. New York: Mariner Books Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1989.

Images:

 Why Was The Color Purple Banned: Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash julia-joppien–3wygakaeQc-unsplash

What Makes The Color Purple an Important Book: Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash
susan-wilkinson-EDJKEXFbzHA-unsplash

What’s the Difference Between Womanism and Feminism: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Articles_by_and_photo_of_Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman_in_1916.j pg

What are the Attributes of a Womanist: Photo by Monique Pongan on Unsplash
monique-pongan-ItzbIyqj6X4-unsplash

What is the Significance of Purple: Photo by Artiom Vallat on Unsplash
artiom-vallat-mFrLqRZMx7o-unsplash

Womanism Within The Color Purple: Photo by Leighann Blackwood on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/five-woman-sitting-on-the-ground-hx87JWG4yCI

Celie, Situated in History: American Anti-Slavery Almanac. Illustrations of the American anti-slavery almanac for New York, New York.
United States New York, 1840. New York. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2007680126/

Mary Bailey Searching for Her Children: Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery Project. Daily Dispatch. Richmond, VA. November 24, 1866. https://informationwanted.org/search?query=mary+bailey&submit_search=Search&query_type=keyword&record_types
%5B%5D=Item

Celie, Situated in Culture: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/woman-in-black-tank-top-sitting-on-black-couch-BH8-YFSNEIw

Shug is Portrayed in the Tradition of Early Blueswomen: “Mamie Smith.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/bbed05d3-d91f-4a43-e040-e00a180636e4

Shug Helps Celie Reconcile with Spiritual Life: Photo by Cadabullos Diseño Web on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/purple-petaled-flower-YPf2f95m1Uo

Celie’s Financian Independence By Way of Folkspants, Unlimited: Photo by Bozhin Karaivanov on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-red-thread-on-brown-wooden-rack-Sn_Y0jTyS94

Womanism Takes the Well-Being of Men Into Account Too: Photo by Cassandra Hamer on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/silhouette-of-man-half-face-leaning-on-wall-wOGyuqXC8Xg

The Larger Effects of Womanism:  Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash
https://unsplash.com/photos/red-string-on-clear-surface-uezt7zcwsKo

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I
n this edition we talk with Jamie Jo Hoang, author of My Father the Panda Killer. We touch on generational trauma. And, how books engender empathy and understanding, which can help break the cycle of generational trauma.

Our freedom to read has been under assault for what seems like an eternity. And, the books being banned are consistently those of marginalized voices. Books with diverse characters, primarily characters of color and LGBTQA+ characters were overwhelmingly targeted. And continue to be.

And, the books being banned are consistently those of marginalized voices. Books with diverse characters, primarily characters of color and LGBTQA+ characters were overwhelmingly targeted.[1] And continue to be.

Throughout this collection of conversations with authors, we talk about the power of books, and the question of why it’s important for stories containing characters that have diverse backgrounds and life experience to be told.

In considering this vital question, we also touch on the dangers of restricting or erasing these narratives – what damage is being done when books about diversity are banned and reading is restricted?

Needless to say, each of the authors in this series brings s different perspective and life experience to the conversation, adding nuance and depth to the combined answer of why it’s important for stories about diverse lives to be told… as well as the dangers that arise when they’re expunged from our national discourse.

Your book opens with a statement that this is not a history lesson. Obviously there’s a lot of history in there though. As you point out, most histories are basically a delineation of military conquest, that it’s about the generals and the soldiers. So, I like the quote by the musician Sun Rah, “history is only his story. You haven’t heard my story.” Your book fills out a people’s story, not a military story, and I really like that. Bearing in mind that we don’t hear people history, as it were, why do you think it’s important for stories like the one you wrote to be told?

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Honestly, when I was learning about the Vietnam War in school, I never saw my family in it. When I was looking at the images that were in our history books, and the contextual history and dates of when things happened, I didn’t see civilians. I didn’t see my parents. I didn’t see their story.

Growing up, I watched a lot of World War II movies, and I remember this one movie, Life is Beautiful. I remember watching it and thinking this film really captured the Italian essence within a war movie. Within the context of this enormous tragedy, they were able to capture the essence of a people.

And that has always been my goal, to show that there may be two sides within wars, but both sides are human beings. Behind every bomb and bullet are ramifications for what happens after the war. And that’s really important to talk about.

I really wanted to highlight that, when we talk about history and war. We so rarely include the human story, the civilian story. That’s why this book is really important to me. And it’s why I wrote it.

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It’s true. We very seldom hear about the fallout of war, you know, the after the fact. My experience in history class was the same – dates, military, what new tools we used in this war. History is a social science, but we don’t really get the social part of that science most of the time. So, thank you for that.

I like the idea of you saying you put more information in the pot of knowledge. It’s so important for us to see each other as people. Not with big holes in our knowledge. Or to stick with your metaphor, when we have a thin stew it’s easy for us to look at each other as Others, or with a lack of understanding.

And not even the way you talk about your “fobby” cousins (fresh off the boat), that’s one thing. But then there’s the extreme idea, like that mom in your Times article… “my daughter can’t have lunch with your kind.” That just, I can’t put a word on it, but that makes me crazy.

I’m obviously coming at things from a banned book perspective. Yours has not been banned, but a lot of the books being banned right now are discussing topics like the ones you write about. And bearing what we had just said in mind, what dangers do you see in banning authors of color, or anything that’s uncomfortable? What’s the danger of having that thin stew or the holes in our knowledge?

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Well, it’s a tragedy to lose every book we have that adds a piece to the puzzle. In life we never really get the full picture, but each tiny puzzle piece helps us empathize with the human condition and each other. Books about color and differences bridge the gap between us, right?

I might not be African American, but when I read about an African American story, it becomes a journey. That’s what I hope people will get from my story as well. “I understand this person so much better through this book.” When we remove these books from shelves, we take away the opportunity to connect with people in a very kind deep and visceral way. I get chills almost, because it’s painful to think that all of the information you can acquire from a book on a shelf is no longer available.

People often talk about how books are their friends. To be able to walk into a library and really learn about somebody through the course of 250-300 pages is a powerful thing. And, the removal of it is so painful because you’re really erasing people. You’re, erasing humanity by taking out the best parts of it.

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Well said. Boy, you pinpointed it. You’re erasing people when you ban books.

On a similar note, when you talk about your grandma pointing out that it isn’t government who does the cleanup after the fact, would you then say that addressing generational trauma is part of that cleanup? It isn’t just buildings and roads, it’s ordinary people, authors like you, authors addressing other similar forms of trauma. They’re the ones doing all the cleanup. Would you speak to that?

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Growing up, I don’t think I really understood what generational trauma was because my parents were so focused on survival. They were focused on creating a life for us in this new place, that everything I was taught growing up was really about how difficult their journey was and how lucky I was to not have gone through what they went through.

What was really important to me, was to show that their trauma does get passed down and they’re completely unaware of it. It makes sense. If people don’t have time to process their trauma – which I do believe is a luxury for a lot of people who endure wars – the ramifications of that become pretty clear.

 Jane’s story is really meant to highlight how one generation’s trauma gets passed on to the next generation. If we don’t bridge this gap between each other, we just continue to pass it on. There’s a moment at the end of the story where Jane slams the door on Paul’s hand, and that was very difficult for me to write because it’s such an honest moment. When you are someone who’s been abused and then you abuse someone else, you feel the power in that.

There’s a moment when you really have to make a choice and decide, am I going to continue this or am I going to make a change?  This book is really about how we make shifts. I think the way each person comes to that shift is different. So, it was really important for me to highlight that. Jane’s not perfect, and she can’t expect her parents to be perfect. But she should absolutely look at the things they’re doing that are not right and course correct. That’s how we learn. That’s how we grow. And, I think that’s how we break the cycle.

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I will say not having your life experience, reading your book really crystallized the idea of exactly what generational trauma is, and the forms it showed. It always made sense intellectually to me, but as we said earlier about reading a book and actually getting to know a person, there’s an emotional connection. Your book really made that click for me. Thank you. And I get it now beyond just intellectually. I get it empathetically, which is where change really happens. From the heart, and that’s what it takes to make the change really happen.

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Thank you for saying that.

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I really appreciate generational trauma being clarified for me. So thank you. It also me realize that it isn’t limited to individuals or families either. We can apply what you just said to our entire country. I mean the history of our country, the ramifications that we’re still dealing with as a result of slavery. So many people I know feel like that was so long ago. Just move on. But that’s not so easy.

Or, let’s call it what it is, genocide of native Americans. And yet again, those are the books that are being targeted so often because we don’t want kids to feel bad, you know? Am I wrong in drawing that parallel? Do you see that parallel as well?

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I think that’s absolutely true. It goes back to erasure. If you can pretend it didn’t happen, if it doesn’t show up in text, then it didn’t exist. That’s really the danger in having history be told by a select number of people — it’s extremely dangerous because that’s what propaganda is.

It changes what the truth is so people are not aware of what happened. It’s why people today often say things like, “slavery was so long ago, why are we still talking about it?” We’re still talking about it because, obviously generations of slavery leads to generations of trauma, and we never corrected it.

I think we’re trying, but in many ways we’re failing. There are people who are really pushing for progress, for real change. And I do think we can get there. I am a hopeful person. I definitely think like there’s a path, but we cannot get there if we erase the history.

We cannot get there if we take books off the shelves and people don’t understand why this or that is happening. Things don’t make sense without context. And, if you remove the context, it explains why we don’t understand something as basic as thinking “aren’t we all equal now?” when we’re clearly not.

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Absolutely. And what’s the line? It doesn’t take bad people doing a lot. It just takes good people to do nothing for awful things to continue… whatever awful thing you’re talking about. So, if you can make “good people” that a given injustice happened long enough ago, and we should just move on, there’s no progress. And, if they’re missing the information, they don’t understand why just moving on isn’t possible. That’s, the frustrating part about book banning.

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I also think that when you really connect with people on a human level, race doesn’t matter. When it comes down to war and we’re talking about lives on either side, people who have knowledge of the other side will empathize with these human beings. That’s how we teach ourselves war is horrible and we should not enter into it. Dehumanization of the other is how we teach people that war is okay. It’s how we rally people into doing atrocious things they would never do to their friend.

When you find a friend in a book, you cannot do these things. You just couldn’t. They become a part of you. They’re your friends. They are your neighbors. They become your companions. You would automatically think, no, I cannot. I’m not going to kill my neighbor. I’m not going to kill my friend. That’s the power of books. And, if we remove the books, we are in danger of creating larger divides. It takes us backwards, and we just can’t do that.

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That’s why I’m at least giving it a shot with This Book is Banned. I may be one tiny individual, but I can align with the American Library Association, for example, they’re big. And if you get enough of us coming together, it makes a difference. Because it’s like accretion — small particles accumulate and come together to form a larger mass. And thanks for talking to me and helping make that happen.

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I completely agree. When people feel that, as an individual they can’t make a difference, we get into trouble. Because each person really does make a big difference. It’s like Pointillism — each dot is essential to the whole picture. Without every dot, the picture doesn’t exist. Each person is a dot, and a point of view. When we collectively come together, the image is amazing. So… each point matters.

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Yes. Each point does matter. And if you talk to enough of the people at the American Library Association and other like-minded, as you said, it’s hopeful because we all know that. And that’s the work that needs to be done at the moment. Because, like you said, leaving holes in our history is just propaganda.

I don’t know whether that was intended to be an explicit message from your book, but it’s certainly one I saw how toward the end. You say this family was broken in half – in Vietnam. One part of the family listened to the propaganda of the North, other parts of the family listened to the propaganda of the South.

And look what happened to them, the country, and now the generational trauma that’s the fallout from all of that. So yeah, it’s, an alarm for current events. Is there anything I missed or did I get anything wrong on the questions? 

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I don’t think so. One thing I really try to talk about with this book – when people look at it in classroom settings or talking about it in book clubs –  something I would really love to see is a discussion about whether or not people think Jane should forgive her father.

 My point of view in the book is obviously that Jane builds this bridge of empathy. But I think a great discussion is still to be had about some people deciding that personally they can’t, that they need to sever ties. That doesn’t mean not understanding the history, but I think some people would choose to protect themselves and choose differently than Jane.

And that’s okay too. That’s why this book is just one book in a giant pot of books that I would love to see. Because I really believe there is no no single path to healing. I would love to see a book that takes a similar experience and handles it differently, but comes out whole and happy.  We should have open discussions about the different ways we can heal — that there really isn’t just one.

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Very true. The knee-jerk reaction for an awful lot of people is that of Jackie’s character:  “Oh, this must stop” without understanding, once again, holes in the information. A shallow level of understanding is another way to put it. Then, as with any good book, the more you think about it the more you see all the really subtle connections that you make, it’s well done.

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Thanks for noticing that.

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That’s one thing I try to do. Because… it’s true that over the last book banning has become explicitly political. But it’s easy to rope people into banning books when, I think it’s safe to say, so many people read simply for plot – at a pretty shallow level. Not because they lack the ability. But because they haven’t been taught how, and why it’s important, to read more deeply that plot.

What’s underneath the water of that proverbial iceberg is often making book banners’ point for them. You know, “there shouldn’t be such violence in the world, and children shouldn’t have to go through this.” That’s right. And, that is what’s under the surface. So, I do readings of books that’ve been banned, interpretations that address what’s under the surface. 

Needless to say, I don’t want to any of your works on a banned books list. But, I’ll choose a book, talk about why it was challenged, and address those very issues in the reading.

Take Salinger’s classic, The Catcher in the Rye, for example. “Teenagers shouldn’t act like that and engage in these types of behaviors,” is frequently cited as a reason to remove this book from shelves. And I agree, Holden Caulfield’s behavior is problematic. But writing about a particular behavior, doesn’t mean the author is endorsing it.

The questions that don’t get asked in book banning situations is: Why does this character engage in this unacceptable behavior? And, what point is the author actually making? But in order to consider these questions, you have to understand that there’s more to a book than it’s plot. And, again… this scenario isn’t due to a lack of ability. It’s because, by and large, we aren’t taught how to read beyond simple narrative.

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Yeah. Books are very personal. So, what connects with one person might not connect with someone else. This is why we should read widely, because so many books cover similar topics. It may just take finding the right author who, for whatever reason, you really connect with. One who allows you to fully understand the same point another author might have made, but you didn’t connect with in the same way.

Having a mass of information allows you to find books and authors you connect with, those that give you the framework for understanding things, points you might not understand if they were presented in a way you don’t connect with. That’s why removing any book from the shelf is so frustrating.

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Right. To your point, Sandra Cisneros describes books as prescriptions. As with medicine, not every prescription is for every person. So if this is not your prescription, put it back on the shelf for someone else and find the one that is your prescription. 

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Yes. Can I ask you… how did you get to this point? What led you into creating this whole career for yourself?

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I was working on my Doctor of Liberal Arts degree, and began to see the implications and significance of literature – and how important it is to really learn to read it. So, for the reasons we talked about a minute ago, I decided to address book banning.

And, I could do it in a way that supplies resources for middle-school and high school students. Teachers are absolutely heroes. But, they’re hamstrung by state achievement tests and a focus on comprehension, grammar, and spelling… all of which are important, of course. But reading for what’s in the bottom of the literary iceberg gets limited because of testing requirements, as well as the multiple-choice way these tests are structured.

I also want to keep This Book is Banned, and the resources on it free. Because lack of funding is another way teachers are hamstrung. So, that’s where I ended up, and I’m really pleased that you’re helping me move that ball forward.

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Well, thank you. And thank you for the work you do. Your work is really important. I think it’s vital and I am so appreciative.

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I know you’ve got a busy day today getting your next book going. Is it your third book?  Any projections on when that might happen?

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We’re talking about the spring of 2025.

I’ll definitely keep my eyes open for it. And thank you again for making time to chat about books, and why they’re so important.

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Endnotes:

[1] Bruinius, Harry. “Banning Books: Protecting kids or erasing humanity?” October 6, 2023. The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2023/1006/Banning-books-Protecting-kids-or-erasing-humanity

Rado, Diane. “In 2024, more censorship and bans: FL, TX removing large batches of books in public schools.” December 21, 2023. News From The States. https://www.newsfromthestates.com/article/2024-more-censorship-and-bans-fl-tx-removing-large-batches-books-public-schools

Unite Against Banned Books 2023 Censorship Numbers.

Images:

Power of Books: Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash    Edited: Added Power of Books Author Series text.

Jamie Jo Hoang:  Dust jacket of My Father the Panda Killer.

Cover of My Father the Panda Killer.

FYI:

This Book is Banned participates in the Amazon.com affiliate program, where we earn a small commission by linking to books (but the price remains the same to you).  This allows us to remain free, and ad free. [Our privacy policy]

L
ast year Unite Against Book Bans issued a call to action for readers, library lovers, and advocates everywhere to stand up to censorship as part of a national day of action. It was called Right to Read Day, and thousands answered the call.

Let’s do it again!
Because the book banners are definitely still at it.

In 2023, a record-breaking 4,240 unique book titles were targeted for censorship. That’s a whopping 65% increase over the 2,571 unique titles targeted in 2022. And, a staggering 128% increase over 2021 numbers.

This surge was driven by groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often hundreds at a time. Such multi-title challenges comprised about 89% of all book challenges in public libraries in 2023. In comparison multi-title challenges only made up 5% of book challenges in 2019.

Organized pressure groups have utilized their power—and exhaustive lists of titles—to wage an aggressive campaign to empty library shelves of all books they deem inappropriate, rather than allowing people to decide for themselves what they and their children read.

And there’s clearly an effort to squash diversity and inclusiveness. Because 47% of books targeted were titles representing the voices and lived experiences of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ individuals.

As challenges to books in school libraries rose dramatically in recent years, would-be censors frequently insisted they weren’t banning books because students would have full access to them at their public library. But…   the number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% in 2023.[1]

What can we do about it?

• Check out a library book that’s at risk of being banned. Yes, it really does help. Doing so proves the book in question is useful to and used by the community your public library is intended to serve.
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• Share statistics about book banning on your social networks. Here are some graphics to help drive the information home.
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• Let your voice be heard at a meeting of your library board, school board, or other local officials. Here’s a handy guide to help you get organized.
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• Organize your community against censorship, and to defend the freedom to read. Here’s a toolkit to get you started.
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• Report censorship to the Office for Intellectual Freedom.

But don’t limit your actions to Right to Read Day. Keep your activism against censorship going beyond April 8^th. Continue to counter the small but vocal group of voices driving the current wave of book bans in schools and public libraries.

Let’s put the kibosh on this alarming effort to restrict our right to read!

#Right to Read Day    #banned books     #on censorship       #celebrations

Endnotes:

[1] UniteAgainstBookBans.org https://uniteagainstbookbans.org/2023-book-bans/