Banned Book Week 2018!

Posted on September 23, 2018 by Zander Miller

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Banned Book Week

It’s Banned Book Week! This week, we celebrate our freedom to read and our freedom of speech.The University of Illinois is a champion of free speech on all issues no matter how controversial. Want to join along? The libraries will be celebrating all week with various displays, events and pictures.

Why Free Speech Matters

Where: Undergraduate Library

When: September 27th

The Undergraduate Library is celebrating Banned Books by hosting a table where you can show off why free speech matters to you. Join us on the upper level of the UGL to make a quick sign saying how free speech matters to you!

Literature and Languages Library Display

Cover to Toni Morrison's book, Beloved

Beloved, a commonly challenged or banned book

Where: The Reading Room in the Main Library building

When: September 24th and throughout the week

The Literature and Languages Library is setting up a display! Matthew Roberts, the Literature and Languages Librarian has this to say about Banned Books Week:

Championed by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community to support the freedom to seek and to express ideas. Consequently, members of the the University of Illinois’ Literatures and Languages Library created a book display, which highlights important moments in America’s history of book banning and censorship, and underscores a variety of international authors who, in more recent history, have either been imprisoned or exiled due to their literary work. While the display is in no way representative of the entire history of book banning, we hope that it represents the University of Illinois’ commitment to diversity and inclusivity, and to its mission to pioneer innovative research that addresses global problems and expands the human experience.

Some of the authors featured in the display include: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Toni Morrison, Lui Xiabo, Shahrnush Parsipur, Aslı Erdoğan, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. The display also contains an excerpt from the The United States v. One Book Called Ulysses decision, an original copy of which belongs to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.

Want to join the library in our battle against censorship? Grab your favorite banned book and use the hashtag #IlliniSpeakOut on social media!

Written and edited by Zander

She Changed Comics

Posted on April 19, 2017 by JB

Comics has a long and fraught history with censorship, which brought the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund into existence. A non-profit determined to protect the First Amendment rights of comics as a whole, their work takes them beyond the courtroom. They created She Changed Comics as a series of tumblr posts to educate people on female comic authors and artists during Women’s History Month before it became a book helmed by Betsy Gomez. It made the Amelia Bloomer Book List this year, an awards list for feminist literature.

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

The UGL is excited to host She Changed Comics panelists in the Media Commons on Monday April 24th at 4pm! Our panelists will talk about the influence women have had on comics and how they built the format into the diverse and empowering storytelling medium it is today.

Betsy Gomez will be joining cartoonist Nina Paley, comic historian Carol Tilley, and international librarian Mara Thacker on Monday to talk feminism, censorship, and intersectionality in the comic industry around the world.

Interested in reading more feminist comics before our event? The UGL’s got you covered. Not only do we have the book She Changed Comics, but we have intersectional comics to recommend!

She Changed Comics: The Untold Story of the Women Who Changed Free Expression in Comics

She Changed Comics: The Untold Story of the Women Who Changed Free Expression in Comics. Presented by Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; edited by Betsy Gomez

Undergrad: PN6710 .S34 2016

She Changed Comics celebrates the women who changed free expression in comics, with profiles of more than sixty groundbreaking female professionals and interviews with the women who are changing today’s medium, including Raina Telgemeier, Noelle Stevenson, G. Willow Wilson, and more! She Changed Comics also examines the plights of women imprisoned and threatened for making comics and explores the work of women whose work is being banned here in the United States.

Lumberjanes, Vol. 1

Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis

Undergrad: PN6720.L863 L863 2015

Friendship to the max! Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley are five best pals determined to have an awesome summer together…and they’re not gonna let any insane quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way! It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Gravity Falls and features five butt-kicking, rad teenage girls wailing on monsters and solving a mystery with the whole world at stake.

Bitch Planet, Vol 1: Extraordinary Machine

Bitch Planet, Vol 1: Extraordinary Machine by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro

Undergrad: PN6720.B5834 B5834 2015 v.1

In a future just a few years down the road in the wrong direction, a woman’s failure to comply with her patriarchal overlords will result in exile to the meanest penal planet in the galaxy. When the newest crop of fresh femmes arrive, can they work together to stay alive or will hidden agendas, crooked guards, and the deadliest sport on (or off!) Earth take them to their maker?

Monstress, Vol 1: Awakening

Monstress, Vol 1: Awakening by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Illinois Street Residence Hall: 741.5 L7405mo

Set in an alternate matriarchal 1900’s Asia, in a richly imagined world of art deco-inflected steam punk, Monstress tells the story of a teenage girl who is struggling to survive the trauma of war, and who shares a mysterious psychic link with a monster of tremendous power, a connection that will transform them both and make them the target of both human and otherworldly powers.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 1: Squirrel Power

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Vol 1: Squirrel Power by Ryan North and Erica Henderson

Undergrad: PN6720.S695 S695 2015 v.1

Doctor Doom, Deadpool, even Thanos: There’s one hero who’s beaten them all — and now she’s starring in her own series! That’s right, it’s SQUIRREL GIRL! The nuttiest and most upbeat super hero in the world is starting college! And as if meeting her new roommate and getting to class on time isn’t hard enough, now she has to deal with Kraven the Hunter, too? At least her squirrel friend Tippy-Toe is on hand to help out. But what can one girl, and one squirrel, do when a hungry Galactus heads toward Earth? You’d be surprised! With time running out and Iron Man lending a helping hand (sort of), who will win in the battle between the Power Cosmic and the Power Chestnut?

Have thoughts on She Changed Comics? Let us know on our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram pages, and don’t forget to attend the She Changed Comics panel in the Media Commons on Monday April 24th at 4pm!

Exercise your FREADom!

Posted on September 26, 2013 by CN

This year’s Banned Books Week is almost over – but there’s still time to learn about it, and to get your hands on a dangerous book. Here’s the low-down on what the week is all about, where you can find more information, and what you can do to get involved.

Artwork courtesy of American Library Association.

Banned Books Week is a 7-day event organized every year by the American Library Association to promote wider awareness of censorship and intellectual freedom. Basically, you have the right to read books of all kinds, and librarians, teachers, journalists, and other folks across the country want you to have access to those books. When schools, communities, or individuals attempt to restrict access to books by banning or censoring them, that makes us very unhappy. You might think book banning is a thing of the past, or something that only happens in dystopian novels, but people attempt to take books off shelves even now. For instance, just this month a school board in Ohio tried to remove Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye from curriculums, claiming that its content was pornographic and unsuitable for school-aged children. According to the ALA, between the years 2000 and 2009, there were a reported 5,099 challenges to books in the United States. Banning books is a very real phenomenon.

If the idea of being denied the right to choose what you read riles you up, what can you do about it? For starters, you can read our blog post from last year on the subject, or visit the official Banned Books Week website to get broader information about book challenges in the United States. If you want to know whether there have ever been book burnings at UIUC – your friendly neighborhood QB has the answer to that. You can find an event to attend, or stage your own virtual read-out where you record yourself reading aloud from a challenged book.

Possibly the most enjoyable way to celebrate Banned Books Week is to check out a banned book from the library and be happy that in most cases, attempts to remove books from shelves are unsuccessful. The ALA released a list of the 10 most challenged books of 2012 – and wouldn’t you know, all of them are available to you from your own UIUC library. Click on a link below to be taken to a book’s page in the catalog, where you can request it and then take it home with you.

The Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
50 Shades of Grey by E. L. James
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Looking for Alaska by John Green
Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Beloved by Toni Morrison

If those top 10 books don’t float your boat (or if you’ve read them all already!), you can also peruse the UGL’s banned book suggested reading list or our banned book Pinterest board. Have a favorite banned book that you don’t see on any of these lists? Mention it in the comments so others can share in the enjoyment of the free exchanged of ideas.

Banned Books Week: Just Say No to Censorship

Posted on October 1, 2012 by RAL

FORBIDDEN: theme of banned books week 2012 So, this may seem pretty obvious, but here at the UGL, we like books. Like, a lot. In fact, we like them so much, we think you should have access to any book you want—especially for educational and informational purposes. If it’s not at the UGL or one of UIUC’s other libraries, we’ll work to find it for you at another I-Share library or through Interlibrary Loan—or even the public libraries in town. Our Mission Statement (part of the Undergraduate Library Vision, Mission and Core Values) even says ,“The Undergraduate Library will encourage engagement with information and technology in its various forms…”

However, not all people agree that unlimited access to information is a good thing, especially when it comes to children, high schoolers and even some college students. For decades, parents, community groups, school advisory boards and individuals have challenged various books and their places in classrooms and libraries. Claims of exposure to inappropriate material, counter-culture ideas, anti-religious sentiments and explicit language or sexuality have all been raised as reasons to keep students from reading certain books and publications. This isn’t a thing from the past, either… Books are still routinely being challenged and banned today.

While these concerns should be listened to, the more important issue is usually not so much the content, but adults’ inability to discuss the content in an open manner with students and children, so censoring the material becomes easier. Free access to information is an essential mission of libraries, and every year, we celebrate this mission with Banned Books Week, highlighting the books (usually very popular items) that have been challenged, banned or censored throughout the country. The hope is to A) bring awareness to this situation; B) encourage people to read the entire book before they decide it needs to be censored; and C) start conversations between educators/parents and students on the controversial material and issues, rather than sweeping those things under the proverbial rug. (This year, Banned Books Week is Sept. 30-Oct. 6, but we recommend reading any of these titles year round.)

It’s not all doom and gloom, though! Banned Books Week is celebrating its 30th Birthday this year, and according to the American Library Association, it deserves a huge cake:

The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read.

Take a minute this week to reflect on some of your favorite books—from childhood, high school, college—it doesn’t matter. Then, check out some of the lists (including challenged classics, lists by decade, and challenged authors) of most commonly banned and challenged books. What you find might surprise you. How many banned books have you read? Tell us in the comments—we’d love to hear from you!

Coming Thursday: A list of the UGL graduate assistant’s favorite banned books.

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