8 OctOber 26–NOvember 1, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Fahrenheit 214 Psst ... hey, kid. Wanna know what’s in all these banned books? BY DANNY GALLAGHER H ey, kid. Yeah, you. Do you like read- ing? Do you like the way books make you think and challenge conventional teaching? Of course you do. Well, there are some books that some school districts across Texas don’t want you to read. Grownups. Boy, do we suck. Texas, long the leader in the nation in book bans, was recently bumped to the No. 2 spot by Florida. By a wide margin. Accord- ing to the nonprofit free speech group PEN America, Texas school districts attempted to ban 438 books in the fall semester of 2022 in school districts such as Conroe, Texarkana, Katy, Keller and Belton. Last year, the Frisco Independent School District had the longest banned book list in the state with 315 en- tries. Earlier this month, PEN America re- leased its latest report, “Banned in the USA: The Mounting Pressure to Censor,” reveal- ing that the Lone Star State accounted for 625 book bans from July 2022 to June 2023, compared with Florida’s 1,406 bans. It’s only going to get worse in the coming semester, even as challenges to the bans make their way through the appeals court system. Kasey Meehan, the program director for PEN America’s Freedom to Read initiative, says two factors are driving this sudden and alarming rise in book bans. It starts with state legislation — in our case, Texas House Bill 900, drafted by Rep. Jared Patterson, a Re- publican from Frisco, and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott last June. The bill, known as the Restricting Explicit and Adult-Desig- nated Education Resources or (ironically) READER Act, provided broader definitions for the removal of “sexually explicit material” from public school libraries, according to state legislative archives. “School districts started responding by banning books before it was even imple- mented,” Meehan says. The other driving factor is local and na- tional advocacy groups — with names like Citi- zens Defending Freedom and Moms for Liberty — calling for bans on books. Members of these groups show up at school board meet- ings to express their disdain for books such as Milk & Honey by Rupi Kaur, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and even Henry Louis Gates’ And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK, and lobby to get them off school bookshelves. “What we’ve seen is a pattern of book challenges that are typically brought by very well-organized activist groups as part of a concerted effort to create a wedge issue with the intent of creating legislation, policies and regulatory changes to how libraries operate,” says Shirley Robinson, the executive director of the Texas Library Association. “It’s putting libraries in the middle of a culture-war issue.” Those are just the banned books we know about so far. The Grapevine-Colleyville (GCISD) school board implemented a set of guidelines in the summer of 2022 that ex- cludes books using a broader definition of what it considers to be “pornography” as well as books that discuss “critical race theory and other systemic discrimination ideologies” and “gender fluidity and gender theory,” ac- cording to school board records. Lara Trevino, a member of the Protect GCISD advocacy group and the mother of two children who attend school in the dis- trict, says she’s tried to get the district to produce a list of the books they’ve removed from library shelves and classrooms for over a year. She’s not sure such a list even exists. (Since the district won’t formally release a list of what’s banned, we’re calling books that have been discussed for removal as “likely” banned, based on advocates’ discus- sions with the district about the titles.) “They are choosing the books my kids get to read,” Trevino says. “So I if want my kids to learn about Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks, they are no longer allowed to do that.” Here are some of the naughty books these groups don’t want you to see, along with ex- cerpts from some of the “offensive” bits: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood Banned by Conroe and Keller ISDs; the graphic novel version banned by Frisco and Keller ISDs There’s a sick irony about banning The Hand- maid’s Tale. If anyone had bothered to read Margaret Atwood’s timeless novel about a dystopian world run by a white, patriarchal, totalitarian theonomy, they might have learned something about the dangers of sup- pressing thought and speech. Atwood’s most famous novel is no stranger to banned book lists. According to PEN America, 34 districts have banned At- wood’s works, making her the third-most- banned author in the nation behind Ellen Hopkins (52) and Sarah J. Mass (36). Conroe ISD simply listed the book as one that “did not meet selection criteria” and Keller ISD as one that ”does not meet content guidelines,” according to its book challenges archive. The conservative parents’ group GCISD Parents, which declined to comment for this story, cites two such passages on its website and incorrectly cites one of the descriptions as a passage portraying a house of ill repute when it’s actually describing scenes from porno- graphic movies shown to the Handmaids, fer- tile women assigned to bear children for high-ranking men, as a way to further indoc- trinate them into their dystopian regime and suppression of sexual freedom. “Men are sex machines, said Aunt Lydia, and not much more,” Atwood wrote. “They only want one thing. You must learn to ma- nipulate them, for your own good. Lead them around by the nose; that is a metaphor. It’s nature’s way. It’s God’s device. It’s the way things are.” Meehan says themes like same-sex rela- tionships and gender identity are also espe- cially prevalent in book bans ▼ Culture >> p10 T E X A S B A N N E D B O O K E D I T I O N Illustration by Jeff Hinchee
