Next books - doubleheader for March 12

Selected from the American Library Association's most challenged books for 2022: Gender Queer, a graphic novel by Maia Kebab, and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.  Meeting set for March 12, a Tuesday. 

1. Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Number of challenges: 151

Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually 

3. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Number of challenges: 73

Challenged for: depiction of sexual abuse, EDI content, claimed to be sexually explicit

ABOUT "GENDER QUEER:" 

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

Here's a link to an NPR interview with Kebab. https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146866267/banned-books-maia-kobabe-explores-gender-identity-in-gender-queer

And a NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/01/books/maia-kobabe-gender-queer-book-ban.html

ABOUT "THE BLUEST EYE:"

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways. 

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.

Here's a story from PBS about why a teacher uses "The Bluest Eye" in the classroom: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/banned-bluest-eye/

An interview with Toni Morrison about the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0JkI3F6z-Y