A reader holds "Blue Eyes," by Toni Morrison, on a pile of books that usually fatten the list of the most banned in the United States.Rick Bowmer (AP)
The book censorship fury of the authorities of the School District of Escambia County, in Florida, has originated a lawsuit filed on Wednesday by the organization of writers in defense of freedom of expression PEN America and the multinational publisher Penguin Random House. The plaintiffs denounce a violation of the First Amendment, which defends the autonomy of speech, by the elimination of libraries in that district in the northeast of the state, sticking with Alabama, of 10 titles with thematic sued on Wednesday a school district in Florida for the withdrawal of books on racial or LGTBI themes.
The complaint is joined by five authors of children's and young adult literature, as well as two parents whose children attend schools in Escambia, names Governor Ron DeSantis, whose conservative policies have made Florida the epicenter of the latest earthquake of book censorship in the United States. The state Congress, overwhelmingly dominated by the Republican Party, has enacted three laws that have unleashed a cleanup of problematic titles from libraries and school curricula. Everything indicates that DeSantis is about to, after months of paying that possibility, to launch his candidacy for the Republican nomination to the presidential elections of 2024. In that adventure, he plans to present as an endorsement his credentials as an applied combatant in the ideological wars around issues such as sexual orientation, gender determination or the study of racism in American society.
According to the lawsuit, the withdrawal of the 10 books from Escambia, whose most important town is coastal Pensacola, was due to the demand of a language arts teacher, to which members of the school district agreed, despite recommendations against an independent committee, which considered those titles appropriate.
In the list of those censored highlights Blue Eyes, debut novel by Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. It tells the story of a black girl who suffers a double marginalization, because of the color of her skin and her physical appearance, and is considered a classic. Other titles are The Perks of Being a Wallflower (which was translated in Spain as The advantages of being an outcast), by Stephen Chbosky, The Nowhere Girls, a youth story about the "culture of rape in high schools", by Amy Reed or Fortunada, the account as a survivor of a sexual assault of the writer Alice Sebold.
The complaint is also a denunciation of the lack of originality as a reader of the professor who requested the withdrawal: he copied the arguments and even the texts of a website specialized in denouncing "inappropriate titles".
Suzanne Nossel, executive director of PEN America, denounced in a statement an attempt by school officials to "prevent dissenting voices from being heard." In a nation built on freedom of speech, something like this cannot be sustained."
"Books have the ability to change lives for the better, and students in particular deserve fair access to a wide range of perspectives. Censorship, in the form of book bans like those enacted by Escambia County, is a direct threat to democracy and our constitutional rights," said Nihar Malaviya, CEO of Penguin Random House.
PEN America brings together some 7,500 writers. The organization regularly publishes a study titled, in a nod to Bruce Springsteen, Banned in the USA. The latest, from April, concludes that in the first half of the 2022-23 school year, 1,477 attempts to ban books were registered throughout the country, which affected 874 titles and represents an increase of 28% compared to the previous period, which was from January to June 2022. The report also states that Florida is the second state with the most vetoes, behind Texas.
On Tuesday night, the Escambia district school board agreed, by three votes to two, to fire Superintendent Tim Smith, who had confronted board members by refusing to join the book ban.
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