You Can’t Read That!

You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring banned book reviews and news.

YCRT! updates from Tucson, Arizona, where 80 textbooks, along with the entire Mexican-American Studies program, were banned from local high schools in 2012:

• The House on Mango Street goes to trial: Maya vrs. Arizona
• Tucson schools superintendent defies Arizona law by reintroducing banned Mexican-American and African-American studies and textbooks
• More on the reintroduction of banned textbooks in Tucson schools
• Ousted Arizona superintendent of public education John Huppenthal, the man who imposed the 2012 ban, says Tucson schools, in reintroducing banned books and ethnic studies programs, “illegally promote ethnic solidarity and the overthrow of the U.S. government by teaching Mexican history, Rage Against the Machine lyrics and an explanation of hip hop by rapper KRS-One.”

YCRT! updates from Dallas, Texas, where we’ve been following an ongoing battle over books assigned to students at Highland Park High School (this is the school district where the superintendent at one time advocated red-flagging any book appearing on the American Library Association’s banned book list):

• Conservative media rejoicing over the resumption of parental challenges to Highland Park High School books
• Highland Park officials kick the can down the road, delay a decision on implementing the new book review policy they devised after the last round of parental challenges
• Parents challenge the teaching of The Working Poor: Invisible in America, want to replace it in Highland Park classrooms with the novels of Ayn Rand

YCRT! banned book & censorship news:

• You can help the American Library Association by forwarding news of book challenges and banning attempts in your communities
• The Guardian tries to justify piggish self-censorship
• The European Union responds to the Charlie Hebdo killings by imposing new restrictions on freedom of speech
• This is why our kids can’t have nice Bibles
• A brief history of art censorship from 1508 to 2014 (NSFW)
• A growing and worrisome problem: the censorship imposed on military members and government employees