Banned Books discussion

Hello and welcome to the Great PEN America Buddy Read, a chronological read-through of every book ever to be recorded on any PEN America spreadsheet. (Q, you said I was crazy for wanting to do this, but when I asked around, two people actually said yes!)
Starting date: January 2025 [at least for me]
Schedule: Hakuna matata [you set your own pace]

Crazy? Not the worst thing I've been called! ;)

I'll jump in when I can!

I might join in with some of the books, but I have way too little time, way too many responsibilities regarding being a monitor and hosting the Fiction Club in the Children's Literature Group and also way too many books on my to read list that have not been banned and are not on the ALA's radar for me to devote all that much time for reading such huge lists chronologically.

First book-Your choice between Ace of Spades and The Poet X . You may come back for the one you missed later, or you may completely skip it.

Ace of Spades works for me. I'm excited to start and I'm glad we're waiting until after the holidays. :)

I'll grab the AOS audiobook then. I have 5 audio versions of TPX already.

As a fluent Spanish speaker [self-taught, not my mother tongue or heritage language], I frequently listen to a Spanish audiobook just for the heck of it. It's also my way of assessing my ability to mentally translate. I have decided to do this with Ace of Spades, or, more accurately, As de picas.

True to my word, I started Ace of Spades at the stroke of midnight. Welcome to 2025...and 2021 [the year on the spreadsheet].

Wow you're good! I checked it out from the library at least. :)

Serena wrote: "As a fluent Spanish speaker [self-taught, not my mother tongue or heritage language], I frequently listen to a Spanish audiobook just for the heck of it. It's also my way of assessing my ability to..."

If I did this with French, everyone would be unhappy. Especially moi.

Kelly (Maybedog) wrote: "Wow you're good! I checked it out from the library at least. :)"

Lol, I checked out The Poet X the other day... it's still in my library bag!

Great! I have both audiobooks (Ace of Spades and The Poet X) and both are marked as ''Currently Reading'' on my GR.

I have the audiobook of Ace of Spades, too. I am in a phase where I have trouble concentrating on reading. Hopefully I can do this. :)

I'm learning Spanish through Duolingo. I've advanced but don't think I've learned anything significant. :)

I read a few pages of Poet X, not sure how I missed that the MC would be Hispanic... lol!

I speak Spanish, as I said, so just ask if you need anything she says translated or clarified.

Thanks. I took a lot of Spanish in my school years, and though I haven't used it since, some of it still lives in the recesses of my brain. But if I come across something I can't reason out, I'll come ask! :)

I taught myself. I can't write, and my scribes at school were all Hispanic. None of them spoke English well, so I had to find a way to dictate to them and be understood.

General Note: I do not mark a book I am buddy-reading as finished until all involved people are finished and we have discussed it.

I fiinished Ace of Spades as an individual on 1/3.

Decided I was fed up and disgusted with the sh*t of the world and picked up The Poet X again and knocked out 50 pages. So far, nothing spectacular, but it's entertaining.

Also decided I couldn't wait for spring training and am watching baseball games from last year. So if you need me, this is where I'll be! :)

I read the first 50 pages as well. It's cool that it's a story made of poems. I've honestly never read one before. What do you think of X as a person so far? I think her mom is a bit too strict.

Here's to completing this project and finding books we love.

Serena wrote: "I read the first 50 pages as well. It's cool that it's a story made of poems. I've honestly never read one before. What do you think of X as a person so far? I think her mom is a bit too strict.

..."

Her family is definitely too strict!! But I personally found it problematic that she with justification has issues with women being objectified (and turned into sex objects) but then does the same with the teenage boys she notices. Maybe I am being a bit too one-sided here, but I find this a bit hypocritical and a dual standard.

So I did not love The Poet X and found some of the attitudes uncomfortable for me, but to be honest, there is absolutely nothing in The Poet X that should get the book censored or banned in any way.

I love novels in verse. Ellen Hopkins writes all of hers that way, and she has quite a few banned books on the list.

Yes, I think her mom is too strict, but it doesn't surprise me. With her mom being very religious, it goes with the territory.

Manybooks, I hadn't thought about that. I guess there is a bit of a double standard there. But (at least in the first 50 pages), she's just looking, she describes being grabbed, touched, and verbally assailed.

Jennifer W wrote: "I love novels in verse. Ellen Hopkins writes all of hers that way, and she has quite a few banned books on the list.

Yes, I think her mom is too strict, but it doesn't surprise m..."

I do feel a bit weird considering her a hypocrite, but that is how I was feeling. Still think that there is nothing in this book that warrants banning or censorship.

Finally finished The Poet X. 3 stars. Entertaining, but nothing earth-shattering for me.

Was it just me, or was February a (reading) slog for anyone else? It seemed like the month flew by, but I just didn't have the oomph to read.

I wasn't crazy about TPX, either. At least we checked it off the list. Where to next?

For Jennifer
Next 3 (You Choose):
Clap When You Land
Call Me By Your Name
My Name Is María Isabel

I'll go with Call Me By Your Name. I need a break from Acevedo. The only copy of My Name is Maria Isabel that my entire library system has is in braille! Cool, but I can't read it!

I can send you a Maria Isabel audiobook when you need it.

My library doesn't have Call Me By Your Name.

I'm going to Maria Isabel.

Here's the PEN list:

https://pen.org/book-bans/banned-book...

I think it's handy to have here in case someone new is interested.

https://pen.org/book-bans/banned-book...

I started Ace of Spades and I like it OK but I just have so little time to read whatever I want because I'm part of several team challenges. I might be able to get to it next week, though. I'll have about a week when I have more freedom since I'll only be doing one challenge.

I put a hold on the audiobook of How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater. If it comes soon, I'll switch to that one. It looks hilarious.

Kelly,
Welcome back to my forum. Here's to 2021. See you then.

Jennifer W wrote: "I'll go with Call Me By Your Name. I need a break from Acevedo. The only copy of My Name is Maria Isabel that my entire library system has is in braille! Cool, but I can't read it!"

I just finished My Name is Maria Isabel and loved it. Highly recommended. Here's the audiobook I used.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3AYl...
It's only 1 hr 15 min long. Hope you enjoy.

My Name Is María Isabel
While I don't understand why the teacher couldn't just call her María Isabel or Isabel in the first place, the story does a good job of explaining how it feels to have your name changed against your will and being too shy/limited in language skills to speak up. María Isabel loves her name. She was named after ancestors she never met and her grandmother in Puerto Rico who works hard so María Isabel doesn't have to spend her life in the kitchen the way her abuela does. That's a really sweet connection to have and I can see why she loves her name. Her parents make sure she feels connected to her roots and her family. The teacher should have ASKED before changing a child's name.

The illustrations look contemporary to the time the book was written but it could be the early 1920s and my great-aunt from Italy being renamed Mary instead of Maria or the late 1920s and coworkers renaming my grandmother Fannie because her given name was too hard to say. I never ASKED how they felt about that! I regret that now after reading this book. The story could also be relevant now with silly new rules over what names kids can go by in school. Ironically, her full name is approved and calling her Mary is not so approved.

Q,
Reading My Name is Maria Isabel has made me wish I could tell someone something. The someone is Fatima [this is the Arabic name I gave to Kathryn-from-the-Picture-Book-Club, of which she wholeheartedly approves]. Fatima sometimes calls me Farah, but not always. The times she doesn't call me Farah are usually when I have made a valuable comtribution to a PBC forum and she is thanking me or directing others to see my comment in said forum. I realize this is because my GR name is my birth name, but still...

Farah is the Arabic name given to me by my late and dearly beloved godfather, a man taken from us too soon. In preferring it, I keep his memory alive.

My greatest wish is to be always called Farah by everyone I interact with everywhere on GR.

So you want us to call you Farah? Can you change your username?

Okay, I've started reading How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater. There really isn't any question of why this was banned. It's right in the title. It could also be because it isn't PC which is because it takes place in 1983 and the terminology is accurate for the era.

I'm about a third of the way in and here are my observations so far:

I love this quote that he remembers his mother saying:

"If you want to be a garbage man, be a garbage man but be the best garbage man you can be.”

So often in books we put down people with blue collar jobs like they’re not good enough but I think there are more blue collar jobs in the US than white collar. They’re the backbone of this country.

Another interesting quote regarding Oedipus Rex:

“If it had been written last year, the school board would be burning it on the front lawn but since it’s two thousand years old it’s deemed acceptable for your impressionable little brainlets."

He describes everyone to death and about their bodies themselves and in a sexual sort of way. He comes across as an intelligent sexually-motivated late teen that he is. But his whole life sounds like he is in college. His jobs, he experimenting, his behavior, how his time is spent, etc. He doesn't sound like a younger more insecure seventeen-year-old who is worried about things like school in general and getting into the college he wants (he acts like he's already there even though he has to audition and his teacher is worried about it). He's just so self-assured and his angst doesn't come until he learns he has no way to pay for school. (Which is really accurate. Back then, kids couldn't just borrow money, their parents income had to be looked at ant the college board's idea of what a family could pay was way out of synch with reality.)

I was seventeen about the same time and it’s memory row reading this.

Another great quote that I wish all parents like his father could internalize:

“The value of a liberal arts education…is not the specific knowledge one learns but that one actually learns to think for oneself.”

In general I'm enjoying it but it's a lot to take in at once so the book-a-day I usually do is too much for this. I need to read it in multiple sittings.

Kelly (Maybedog) wrote: "So you want us to call you Farah? Can you change your username?"

Yes, but I mostly prefer to ''come out'' to individuals separately.

PS. I never ever use the phrasal verb ''come out'' to refer to announcing that one belongs to the rainbow movement [which I don't believe in, btw]. I always use it to mean revealing a non-rainbow part of your identity that others did not know you had. Eg. telling someone I identify sociolinguistically as ASOS [Arabic Speaker or Student].

OK, I'll try to remember. It's hard when I see your name here differently and I have so many Facebook people I interact with, but I will try really hard. Please point it out to me if I mess up.

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean that you don't believe in "the rainbow movement"? What specifically do you object to? Or don't believe in?

I believe in heterosexual marriage, binary gender, and the inability to change that.

You can be a girl who likes to play with toy cars, but it doesn't make you a boy. It makes you you.

I can be [and am] an ASOS Christian who deeply studies Islam and celebrates Ramadan, but that doesn't make me a Muslimah. It makes me a Christian who loves and deeply honors her Muslim relatives. It makes me a messenger of peace.

Serena wrote: "I believe in heterosexual marriage, binary gender, and the inability to change that.

You can be a girl who likes to play with toy cars, but it doesn't make you a boy. It makes you you.

I can be [..."
Sure but there's way more to being transgender than that! It's not about the toys you play with or hobbies. It's a feeling that something's wrong, your body doesn't fit you and who everyone thinks you are is not who you really are. It causes extreme emotional distress when people don't listen and understand. I highly recommend starting your PEN America reading list with the picture book section!

[book:Being You: A First Conversation About Gender|58577983]

Q,
I plan to continue with Pen America in ABC order, as well as Essential Voices in ''graduation order''.

QNPoohBear wrote: "Serena wrote: "I believe in heterosexual marriage, binary gender, and the inability to change that.

You can be a girl who likes to play with toy cars, but it doesn't make you a boy. It makes you y..."

And fact is, if Donald Trump and his supporters have their way, people who are intersex, who have both male and female sexual organs would be considered "evil" and satanic in some way (even though being intersex is just how your body is).

I also wonder if you think that God created everyone, would people who are hermaphrodites or who have hormonal imbalances not also be part of creation?

Manybooks wrote: "I also wonder if you think that God created everyone, would people who are hermaphrodites or who have hormonal imbalances not also be part of creation?"

The current term is "intersex" but same conversation applies. Many people are born with extra chromosomes and parts of chromosomes missing and many people don't fit a binary mold which is simply a social construct pushed on us by people who like to make up dumb stuff. Gender is no different from race.

Again I shall recommend Being You: A First Conversation About Gender

and
Together: A First Conversation About Love


This whole series is amazing and informative.
and
Bye Bye, Binary

I have Me and My Dysphoria Monster: An Empowering Story to Help Children Cope with Gender Dysphoria waiting for me at the library but I couldn't carry ALL my books home so I left it there until next week.

There are some great picture books out there that explain things better than I can as someone not from the community.

Thank you Q.

QNPoohBear wrote: "Manybooks wrote: "I also wonder if you think that God created everyone, would people who are hermaphrodites or who have hormonal imbalances not also be part of creation?"

The current term is "inte..."

I mean the idea of harassing (or worse) people for their actual biology is not only ignorant but evil.

Thank you, Farah, for telling us your beliefs and in a positive way. I don't agree but I really do respect your beliefs. Having different views is one of the things that makes the world great and yet another reason why banning books is so ridiculous.

Kelly (Maybedog) wrote: "Thank you, Farah, for telling us your beliefs and in a positive way. I don't agree but I really do respect your beliefs. Having different views is one of the things that makes the world great and y..."

Kelly,
That's why I created this project, why I love sprocuments [I turn PEN America SPReadsheets into Word dOCUMENTS], and why I fully intend to read EVERY forbidden book in America, even if this takes the rest of my life and/or I am driven wild trying to keep up with all of the new data added to Dr. Magnusson's Censorship Attacks dossier.

I am so committed that I actually listened to The Poet X 4 consecutive times [as it appears four consecutive times on the 2021 sprocument]