#PEN America

[sayruq]

PEN America has canceled its 2024 Literary Awards ceremony, which was previously scheduled to be held at the Town Hall in New York City on April 29, although some awards will still be conferred. The move follows months of steadily mounting criticism of the organization over its response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which culminated last week in 28 authors withdrawing books from consideration for the awards, including nine of the 10 authors nominated for the organization's top prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.

The $75,000 prize accompanying the PEN/Stein award will be donated, this year, to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund at the direction of the Literary Estate of Jean Stein. The late Stein "was a passionate advocate for Palestinian rights who published, supported, and celebrated Palestinian writers and visual artists," her daughters, Katrina and Wendy vanden Heuvel, and literary agent, Bill Clegg, said in a collective statement. "While she established the PEN America award in her name to bring attention to and provide meaningful support to writers of the highest literary achievement, we know she would have respected the stance and sacrifice of the writers who have withdrawn from contention this year."

The event that led to this moment

[richincolor]

On Book Bans 📚

The 2023 Banned Books Update is out from PEN America, and you should definitely check it out. One data point that leapt out to me: 

“Overwhelmingly, book banners continue to target stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. In this six-month period, 30% of the unique titles banned are books about race, racism, or feature characters of color. Meanwhile, 26% of unique titles banned have LGBTQ+ characters or themes.“

And what can you do about it? This thread from Kelly Jensen has plenty of resources. Here is a Book Riot round-up of anti-censorship groups across America, and here is a post on how to fight book bans. 

Kelly Jensen on Twitter is a great follow for anti-book-ban resources and efforts, as is Florida Freedom to Read. 

TL;DR -- the best way to help is to get involved locally: 

attend school board meetings

keep up with what your local library is up to

write to your local representatives

call out book ban attempts and hate groups

donate to groups fighting book bans

and of course, don’t forget to vote

tell others about what is happening -- don’t let this fly under the radar

[mirkobloom77]

‼️🇮🇱🇵🇸 PEN America calls off awards ceremony amid criticism over response to Gaza genocide

[existential-celestial]

in a webinar about writers in war-time Ukraine right now and Ilya Kaminsky reciting one of his poems from Deaf Republic is something terrifying and profound to experience

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the story of civil rights icon Rosa Parks was "too woke" for the Republican party during an impassioned speech from the House floor on Thursday.

The New York Democrat was speaking out against the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which House Republicans are expected to pass on Friday. The education oversight bill seeks to give parents more of a say in education, and would require public schools to make materials like curriculum and library books available online, as well as the school budget.

"But before they claim that this is not about banning books and not about harming the LGBT community, let's just look at the impacts of similar Republican legislation that has already passed on the state level. Look at these books that have already been banned due to Republican measures," Ocasio-Cortez said before holding up several books.

"'The Life of Rosa Parks' — this apparently is too woke by the Republican Party," she said, referencing a book by Kathleen Connors.

The book, which tells the story of Parks, a Black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white person, was among 176 titles banned in Florida's Duval County, according to the nonprofit PEN America. The Duval County Public Schools district at the time said the books on the list had not been banned but were under review.

In another incident, a textbook publisher used in Florida schools removed references to Parks's race in a draft lesson plan in an effort to comply with the state's Stop WOKE Act, legislation pushed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that limits instruction related to race and gender in schools. The Florida Department of Education later said the publisher was wrong to remove mention of Parks's race.

[vyorei]

Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet, has been arrested by the IOF whilst moving to southern Gaza

[plethoraworldatlas]

The prominent free expression group PEN America announced Monday that it has canceled its 2024 literary awards ceremony amid growing backlash over the organization's response to Israel's assault on Gaza and alleged attempts to suppress dissent among its employees.

The decision came after nearly half of the authors nominated for PEN America awards withdrew their names from consideration, accusing PEN America of not sufficiently speaking out against Israel's war on Gaza and the dire consequences for free expression.

The awards ceremony was scheduled to take place on April 29 in Manhattan.

In an open letter released last week, dozens of authors and translators who refused to accept any honors from the organization wrote that "PEN America has remained shamefully unwilling to speak out against the systematic nature" of Israel's "often-targeted killings of Palestinian writers, professors, and journalists and their families."

"We stand in solidarity with one another and with the people of Palestine in our refusal to lend our names and tacit approval to PEN America's disgraceful inaction," reads the open letter, which demands the resignation of PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, president Jennifer Finney Boylan, and the group's entire executive committee.

"We cannot, in good faith, align with an organization that has shown such blatant disregard of our collective values," the letter adds. "We stand in solidarity with a free Palestine. We refuse to be honored by an organization that acts as a cultural front for American imperialism. We refuse to gild the reputation of an organization that runs interference for an administration aiding and abetting genocide with our tax dollars. And we refuse to take part in anything that will serve to overshadow PEN's complicity in normalizing genocide."

[readingsquotes]

" Despite all this, PEN America has declined to join other leading human rights organizations and United Nations officials in the demands for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

This failure is particularly striking in light of the extraordinary toll this catastrophe has taken in the cultural sphere. Israel has killed, and at times deliberately targeted and assassinated journalists, poets, novelists, and writers of all kinds. It has destroyed almost all forms of cultural infrastructure that support the practice of literature, art, intellectual exchange, and free speech through the bombing and demolition of universities, cultural centers, museums, libraries, and printing presses. By disrupting access to digital communication, Israel has also been blocking Palestinians from sharing what they have witnessed and experienced and telling the truth of what is happening to them. Everyone who uses the power of the pen and free speech to appeal to the conscience of the world is at risk.

In less than five months, Israel has killed nearly one hundred journalists and media workers, more than in the two-decade war in Afghanistan, and more than in the deadliest year of the Iraq War. Israel has also killed nearly one hundred academics and writers. If organizations like PEN America cling to the illusion of political neutrality in the face of a clear effort to destroy Palestinian lives and culture, one can only wonder whether there will be any writers left in Gaza to tell the story of their apocalypse, or to trust words and speech, when the killing finally ends. Or any record left of the history they have lived.

Scholars are increasingly reaching for novel words to describe the scope of Israel’s cultural genocide. Words like “scholasticide” are invoked to describe the elimination of systems of education and “epistemicide” to describe the erasure of systems of knowledge. In contrast, PEN America, took four and half months to utter the word “ceasefire,” then only with a vague “hope” for one that is “mutually agreed,” rather than a clear call. We expect more from an organization that exists for the express purpose of protecting freedom of speech and thought, and advancing a vision of our common humanity."

Equally concerning is PEN America’s history of condemning authors who choose to honor the Palestinian call for a cultural and academic boycott of Israeli institutions complicit in their oppression, accusing them of impeding “the free flow of ideas.” It seems to us that this violates several principles at the heart of PEN’s mission. To begin with, the idea that BDS, which does not boycott individual writers or scholars, can impede the “free flow of ideas” in Israel-Palestine assumes that such a thing exists there. In fact, it is a cruel fantasy so long as Palestinians live under a rule reliant on racial segregation and the implementation of ethnic hierarchies, siege and collective punishment, the very conditions BDS seeks to end.

Second, condemning authors who choose to support BDS contradicts PEN’s own mandate to protect freedom of expression, as it contributes to a neo-McCarthyite environment in North America and Europe, in which the growing support for BDS is increasingly criminalized. Third, opposition to BDS overlooks the long and proud history of the boycott as an effective, nonviolent tool of collective liberation. Just as boycott was a principal tool used to successfully end political apartheid in South Africa, so it should be accepted that some are free to adopt it as a vital tool in the nonviolent resistance movement against Israeli impunity today."

[tomorrowusa]

The "secret shelf" of banned books at a Texas high school. Texas is like a communist country where citizens need to find covert ways to read books which the state doesn't want them to see.

In the far, far suburbs of Houston, Texas, three teenagers are talking at a coffee shop about a clandestine bookshelf in their public school classroom. It's filled with books that have been challenged or banned. "Some of the books that I've read are books like Hood Feminism, The Poet X, Gabi, A Girl in Pieces," says one of the girls. She's a 17-year-old senior with round glasses and long braids. The books, she says, sparked her feminist consciousness. "I just see, especially in my community, a lot of women being talked down upon and those books [were] really nice to read." These students live in a state that has banned more books than nearly any other, according to PEN America. The Texas State Board of Education passed a policy in late 2023 prohibiting what it calls "sexually explicit, pervasively vulgar or educationally unsuitable books in public schools." Over the past two years, Texas teachers have lost jobs or been pressured to resign after making challenged books available to students. The teacher who created this bookshelf could become a target for far right-wing groups. That's why NPR is not naming her, nor her students.

Yeah, gotta watch out for Texas brownshirts in cowboy hats who yell and threaten people at school board meetings.

"We don't want to jeopardize our teacher in any way, or the bookshelf," another teenager explains. Until recently, he says, he was not naturally inclined toward reading. But the secret bookshelf opened a world of characters and situations he immediately related to. "Just to see Latinos, like LGBTQ," he says. "That's not something you really see in our community, or it's not very well represented at all." The secret bookshelf began in late 2021, when then-state Rep. Matt Krause sent public schools a list of 850 books he wanted banned from schools. They might, he said, "make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex." That made this teacher furious. "The books that make you uncomfortable are the books that make you think," she told NPR. "Isn't that what school is supposed to do? It's supposed to make you think?" She swung into action, calling friends to support a bookshelf that would include all of the books Krause wanted banned. Then she enlisted a student to put it together. "I went through the list and found the ones that I thought were cool," he recalled to NPR over a London Fog latte. "And then she gave me her [credit] card and I bought them. It was a lot of gay books, I remember that."

That same student came out as trans to his family while in high school. "I wouldn't call them supportive, so I had to do a lot of sneaking around," he said quietly. Now 19, he's graduated and works as a host in a restaurant while deciding on his next move. "Having these books, having these stories out there meant a lot to me, because I felt seen," he said. Especially meaningful, he added, during a fraught time when Texas lawmakers banned transition-related care for teenagers. "Because of the way the laws are going for trans people especially," he said, "it could be assumed that [my teacher is] grooming kids. And that would be terrible because that's not what she's doing at all."

Kudos to the teacher and students who are maintaining this mini-library!

Because most of the HS seniors will be turning 18 this year, I hope the secret shelf adds information on voter registration. A minimum of 99% of the book banners are Republicans. And the only way to get rid of Republicans is to vote Democratic. Contrast Republican Texas with Democratic Illinois which has banned book banning.

Law prohibiting book bans in Illinois now in effect

Illinois is known as the Land of Lincoln. Abe Lincoln had less than two years of formal education but he became a voracious reader. He would be shocked and disappointed that his old party has degenerated into a mob of book banners and book burners.

[archivlibrarianist]

Help Missouri public and school libraries. Sign this petition in opposition to SB775, which has caused the removal of the following from various school and public libraries:

books concerning the art of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo

graphic novel adaptations of classics by Shakespeare and Mark Twain

The Gettysburg Address

Maus by Art Spiegelman, one of the signers of the petition

books about the Holocaust

comics about Batman, X-Men, and Watchmen

The Complete Guide to Drawing & Painting by Reader’s Digest

Women (a book of photographs by Annie Leibovitz)

The Children’s Bible (yes, really)

[msclaritea]

Benedict Cumberbatch Show 'Letters Live' is a 'Shot in the Arm'

They played Wade In The Water, at the last event, you Numpty!

[richincolor]

A must read on the state of banned books during the 2022-2023 school year. 

[laurellynnleake]

Writing While Muslim: The Freedom To Be Offended - Rafia Zakaria, 2015

When the attacks on Charlie Hebdo happened last January, I wrote an essay pointing out how more Muslim journalists had been killed in 2014 than those of any other faith, yet Muslims continued to occupy a position in the Western imaginary as haters of free speech, collectively given to riots and ruin. Greater valor is accorded Westerners dying at the hands of terrorists than, say, journalists dying in Pakistan or Iraq or Syria at the hands of the same forces while engaged in the same task. There is a particular valuation of valor inherent in this, which says simply that the war is “there” not “here,” and hence it is a greater tragedy for journalists to be killed “here” — in this particular case, lovely, romantic, sophisticated Paris — than on the streets of Karachi. ...Westerners, by and large, do not consider themselves complicit in the perpetuation of the wars that have led to the deaths of the very journalists that are buried without awards and without recognition of their courageous exercise of free speech pinned to their names.

I came across this essay (I've added spaces for readability) while refreshing my memory on the Charlie Hebdo bombings, and Neil Gaiman/Art Spiegelman/Alison Bechdel's related "Cartoonist Lives Matter" bullshit in 2015...Zakaria's essay is unfortunately still just as relevant today as liberals like Gaiman and orgs like PEN America keep both-sides-ing the genocide in Palestine.

I'd somehow forgotten that PEN America lionized the extremely racist & Islamophobic CH cartoonists with an award at a star-studded Gala. I had to re-read Neil Gaiman's weird essay where he ponders why-oh-why 6 writers refused to attend in protest. He imagines that they were merely "upset", and "only supporting the freedom of the kind of speech [they] like."

More and more I understand how deliberate this hypocrisy is, and how it works to deny the reality of Israel murdering Palestinians (including journalists, artists, and writers) in front of our eyes. "Writing While Muslim: The Freedom To Be Offended" is an excellent reminder of how people were fighting back against this bullshit in 2015 (and every year before). Give it a read!

[radiogreen]

"Authoritarian regimes, dictators, despots are often, but not always, fools. But none is foolish enough to give perceptive, dissident writers free range to publish their judgements or follow their creative instincts. They know they do so at their own peril."

"They are not stupid enough to abandon control (overt or insidious) over media. Their methods include surveillance, censorship, arrest, even slaughter of those writers informing and disturbing the public."

"Writers who are unsettling, calling into question, taking another, deeper look. Writers--journalists, essayists, bloggers, poets, playwrights--can disturb the social oppression that functions like a coma on the population, a coma despots call peace; and they stanch the blood flow of war that hawks and profiteers thrill to."

Toni Morrison, "Peril", from Burn This Book: PEN Writers Speak out on the Power of the Word, 2009

"As a PEN member, I want this organization that is supposed to be a champion of writers” rights to stand up for Palestinian writers, academics, and students who are suffering under a repressive Israeli regime that denies their right to freedom of expression. The last thing PEN should be doing is partnering with and promoting a government that denies Palestinians basic human rights.”

Alice Walker, 2016

"We demand PEN find the same zeal and passion that they have for banned books in the US to speak out about actual human beings in Palestine."

Open letter to PEN America, 2024

"PEN America mourns these professionals’ deaths and stands on the side of all journalists who have been murdered, killed in strikes, injured, arrested, taken hostage, or are missing. It is critical that both the Israeli government and Hamas adhere to their responsibility to protect reporters, whose role is to chronicle events and bring the world an understanding of their impact on the lives of Israelis and Palestinians." (emphasis added)

PEN America Calls on Israeli Government to Rescind Inflammatory Rhetoric, Threats Against Palestinian Journalists

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A Florida teacher has been fired after a video he filmed of empty school library shelves went viral amid outrage over Gov. Ron DeSantis’ alleged efforts to ban books.

Brian Covey, a parent and substitute teacher at Mandarin Middle School, filmed the video in a bid to show the consequences of Florida’s new “curriculum transparency law”. It has since racked up more than 13 million views.

Mr. Covey’s firing came days after Mr. DeSantis directly condemned the video as a “fake narrative” as he denied that books have been removed from school shelves, despite evidence from teachers and librarians revealing that they have.

On Tuesday, the Governor was asked by a reporter in Duval County about the district ordering schools to remove all books from shelves so that they can undergo a “vetting” process to ensure they comply with the law, which was passed in Florida last year.

“Actually that video, that was a fake narrative,” the Governor said in reference to Mr. Covey’s video.

“This is trying to create some narrative, as if that... They hadn’t even put the books out yet to begin with. So, there’s no need for all of that stuff. What they’re trying to do is they are trying to act like somehow, you know, we don’t want books,” the Governor said at a press conference.

Duval County Public Schools addressed Mr. Covey’s termination in a statement to First Coast News on Wednesday. It confirmed that ESS, the organisation which contracts with the district to hire substitute teachers, had “parted ways” with Mr. Covey.

“In discussion between the district and ESS regarding this individual’s misrepresentation of the books available to students in the school’s library and the disruption this misrepresentation has caused, it was determined that he had violated social media and cell phone policies of his employer. Therefore, ESS determined these policy violations made it necessary to part ways with this individual,” the statement read.

The Independent has previously reported that school teachers and librarians in Duval County, where Mr. DeSantis was visiting to speak about judicial reform, had been ordered by the school district to remove non-curriculum books from their shelves.

Many of them took to social media to share images of empty bookshelves.

The vetting was ordered by the district in response to a “curriculum transparency” law passed by Mr. DeSantis last year. That law requires schools to ensure their book selections are “free of pornography and prohibited materials harmful to minors, suited to student needs, and appropriate for the grade level and age group.”

The law has sown confusion in some schools, and the task of interpreting the guidelines has been left to “media specialists,” or librarians.

Seeking to ensure compliance with the new rules, Duval County School District sent a memo to teachers last month instructing them to “temporarily store books until they are reviewed.” The memo also notified teachers that “plays and poems” performed in class “will also need to be aligned to state statute language.”

The aim of the law, according to Mr. DeSantis’s office, is “to ensure that parents have knowledge of what is being offered to their children in the classroom.” School districts are now rushing to meet those guidelines.

But teachers and free expression advocacy groups, like PEN America, have said the “vague laws, harsh penalties and confusing directives” have left schools operating under a “cloud of fear” that is harming students’ ability to learn.

One librarian told The Independent that the library in the school where she worked had been closed to students while the vetting took place.

“The books are sitting out on tables, they’re being boxed up and discarded,” Keri Clark said. “It’s just it’s a really sad sight. A lot of the kids keep looking through the window and it’s just it’s awful that I can’t let them come in and get books.”

Mr. DeSantis said at his press conference on Tuesday that the law is aimed at stopping pornography from reaching children, but among the titles that have been removed and banned in the course of the vetting in Duval County are Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl, and a skateboarding magazine called Thrasher.

The reasons for these bans, noted in a document viewed by The Independent, are brief and vague. They include descriptions like “racial profile” [sic], "Lewd/Offensive” and “Inapp. Behavior.”

At the press conference on Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis said it was not the state’s intention to ban books.

“If there’s anything that any of these school superintendents say are 'banned,' produce that and our Department of Education will absolutely take a look at that, and I can guarantee you that unless it something that 99% of the people realise its wrong, chances are it’s not any type of issue,” he said.

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent.

Bryan Griffin, press secretary for Mr. DeSantis, said in a statement on Tuesday that the removal of books from school shelves was not ordered by the state.

“There has been no state instruction to empty libraries or cover up classroom books. However, we ARE taking a stand against pornography and sexual material in the classroom,” he said in the statement.

In a separate response to a request for comment from The Independent, he added that “the intent is not to empty libraries but ensure pornography is not provided in classrooms.”

Last month, teacher Andrea Phillips told The Independent she had removed all the books from the shelves in her classroom in response to Duval County’s vetting process.

“The autonomy that has been stolen from me. I’m a certified teacher, I’ve been doing this for more than a decade. I’ve done training after training. I’ve worked with kids for years. I know what I’m doing,” she said.

[jkr-is-not-a-bad-person]

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