In Virginia’s governor’s race last year, one of the candidates embraced a parents attempt to ban “Beloved” from classroom curricula – never mind that it’s lyrical and devastating portrait of the legacy of slavery helped earn its author, Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Last year, a state representative attracted national attention when he released a list of 850 books that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” We find the books that meet that description are usually the ones that give visibility to people of color and LGBTQ+ people, both in fiction and nonfiction. In Texas, school libraries are reporting a record number of requests to remove books. Sadly, efforts to ban books are trending. Together, we are working to create a Banned Book section in every public library in El Paso so that everyone can access books that represent them – and so that everyone has the chance to learn about people, communities, and experiences different from their own. Now a joint project between YWCA El Paso del Norte Region and the City of El Paso is embracing and elevating the stories that others want to silence. They are on the list of books that have been banned from schools and pulled from library shelves in the misguided hope that not talking about uncomfortable subjects will make them go away. Sereka Barlow Alexsandra Annelloīut these books, and dozens more, share a darker kinship as well. Maybe they were assigned reading for you in school. That they were all written by award winning authors. If we were to ask you what these books have in common, you might say they all have been beloved by generations of readers. “Beloved.” “Huckleberry Finn.” “The Color Purple.” “Brave New World.” “Maus.” “Are you there God?” “It’s me, Margaret.”

Processing… By Sereka Barlow/Alexsandra Annello

Brave books el paso