Now, members of Miami's literary community are doing something about it.
This evening, Books & Books will distribute free copies of titles removed from schools in Miami-Dade County. A total of 1,200 books will be given away as part of a "celebration" at Coral Gables Congregational Church. According to Books & Books founder Mitch Kaplan, the event is being held in response to an incident last week at the K-8 Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, where a committee removed five titles from the school library in response to one parent's objections.
"There needed to be some way to show the absurdity of what happened," Kaplan says.
One of the banned books was The Hill We Climb by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, which the writer performed at President Biden's inauguration in 2021. Gorman criticized the school's decision in a statement posted to Instagram last week. She announced in that statement that her publisher, Penguin Random House, is joining the nonprofit PEN America in a federal lawsuit against the Escambia County School Board, which has committed similar book removals based on race and LGBTQ-related content.
The other two books being given away are a pair of picture books, Love to Langston by Tony Medina and R. Gregory Christie and The ABCs of Black History by Rio Cortez and Lauren Semmer. Kaplan believes the targeting of the books, which feature Black subject matter, as well as the work of Gorman, who is Black, is explicitly racist."There is literally nothing objectionable in these three books unless you object to Black authors and Black history."
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"There is literally nothing objectionable in these three books unless you object to Black authors and Black history," he says.
The event will include readings by a trio of eminent literary figures. Miami-Dade County poet-laureate Richard Blanco, a fellow inaugural poet himself, will read Gorman's poem, while local author Edwidge Danicat will read Love to Langston, and Dr. Marvin Dunn, a Black historian and professor emeritus at Florida International University who has heavily criticized DeSantis and the Stop WOKE Act, will read The ABCs of Black History. A recent visit by Dunn, founder of the Miami Center for Racial Justice, at New College in Sarasota resulted in retaliation by the school's DeSantis-appointed board of trustees, which fired the professor that invited him.
Representatives from a handful of literary and advocacy organizations, including the ACLU of Florida, the National Coalition Against Censorship, United Teachers of Dade, Florida Freedom to Read, and PEN America, will join students, teachers, and parents in speaking out against the removals.
Miami-Dade County Schools said in a statement that the books were only removed from the school library's elementary section and remain available in the middle school section.
According to the Miami Herald's report on the ban, the parent that objected to the books initially sought the removal of five titles: Gorman's book, the two Black history picture books, and two titles on Cuba. Four were selected by the school's committee for removal, while one remains in place. According to records obtained by the Herald, the parent believed the books included "indoctrination" messages.
Banned Book Giveaway. 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 6, at the Sanctuary for Banned Books at Coral Gables Congregational Church, 3010 De Soto Blvd., Coral Gables.
