Haunted by her memories

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This also begs the question: do people banning books even read the titles they’re challenging? For example, Matt Krause, a Republican state representative in Texas, released a list of 850 books he wanted “investigated”. “What is immediately apparent from a look at Krause’s list,” Harvey J. Graff writes for Publisher’s Weekly, “is that it is compiled from an internet search of keywords.”In this example, and others, it’s clear that politicians who’re challenging books about characters of color or queer and trans characters are pushing a political agenda. The censorship isn’t about protection, but about silencing groups of people or pushing them (and readers like them) to the margins.


Ringel perhaps puts it best, writing, “Keeping books about certain types of children out of libraries perpetuates a Middle East Phone Number List vision of a sheltered American childhood that has rarely existed.” What Are Some Commonly Banned Books? Oprah Winfrey and Kimberly Elise holding on to one another in a scene from the film adaptation of Beloved (1998). Photo Courtesy: Harpo Films/Getty ImagesADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENTBeloved by Toni MorrisonBeloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, tells the story of Sethe, a Black woman who’s living in Ohio in 1873.






Haunted by her memories, Sethe recounts her time as an enslaved person as well as the impossible choices she had to make in the face of oppression and white supremacy. ADVERTISEMENTNotably, Toni Morrison based Sethe’s story on that of a real formerly enslaved person, Margaret Garner, who made the impossible decision to kill her child to spare her from being enslaved again. “Before Morrison’s novel, narratives around slavery rarely centered on the humanity and choices of Black women,” Danielle Rollins writes.