In Orange County, a commission removed 673 books this year on the grounds that they violated laws that restrict content containing “sexual references” in classrooms. Among the banned titles are classics of our time, Nobel Prize winners and contemporary hits. You can see the full list here.
It’s a debate that has agitated American public opinion for a long time: the veto that many books are subject to due to sexual references or references to LGBTQ themes, especially those intended for education in schools.
In many states, a handful of texts are considered to violate existing laws and are unsuitable for minors. They have been left out of educational programs, usually personal libraries that teachers present in class.
Isabel Allende banned in the United States: enters the “black list” of books banned in Florida county
At least that’s what’s happening in Florida, where the Orlando Sentinel, Central Florida’s leading newspaper based in Orlando, published a lengthy two-page list last week listing the 673 books that have been removed of Orange County classrooms in 2023. .
It is the fifth most populous county in the state of Florida.
The reason: The copies were removed from schools out of fear they might violate state laws that restrict any materials with “sexual references” or LGBTQ content in education.
The school district has ordered teachers who have any of the 673 books on their classroom shelves to remove them. In addition, Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) staff will re-examine the list of rejected books, with the aim of reinforcing the ban or, on the contrary, so that some of them can return to schools.
According to another newspaper, The Hill , the list stems from two Florida laws signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. They require a commission of specialists to review books in libraries and classrooms, and exclude books containing sexually obscene content or pornography. The legislation also aims to give parents a greater opportunity to raise objections to their children’s education.
Of course, the banned books are those found in teachers’ classrooms, not school libraries. Furthermore, not all books were necessarily part of the required teaching, but they were available to students if they wished to read them.
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The books mentioned cover a wide historical arc, ranging from all-time classics to contemporary novels. For example, there are works by Jack Kerouac (On the way); Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner); Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary); Federico Garcia Lorca ((Bernarda Alba’s house); Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the shore)Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale), George R.R. Martin (Game Of Thrones), Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth), Laura Esquivel (Like water for chocolate), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the time of cholera, Chronicle of a death foretold), Dan Brown (Angels and Demons), Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha) and Ian McEwan (Amsterdam).
There is also Viet Thanh Nguyen, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman and Chuck Palahniuk, among others.
On the Chilean side, the successful author Isabel Allende appears, with two of her flagship works: her debut, The House of Spirits (1982) and the most recent Beyond winter (2017).
You can read here the complete list.
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Source: Latercera
I’m Rose Brown , a journalist and writer with over 10 years of experience in the news industry. I specialize in covering tennis-related news for Athletistic, a leading sports media website. My writing is highly regarded for its quick turnaround and accuracy, as well as my ability to tell compelling stories about the sport.
