Right to Read Celebration Champions Fight Against Book Banning

The Pérez Art Museum will host a special event this Saturday, June 8, to celebrate the freedom to read. The event is part of a concerted effort among local and national activists to fight the banning of books in schools in Florida and across the United States.

Organized by the New Republic magazine in partnership with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Library Association (ALA), Books & Books Literary Foundation, Alfred A. Knopf, MacMillan Publishers, St. Martin's Press and PEN America, the aptly titled Right to Read Celebration will feature panel discussions and book readings by authors whose work has been targeted, as well as activists who have participated in the fight against classroom censorship. These include fellow writers, teachers, students, librarians, and booksellers. The event will culminate with the presentation of the Toni Morrison Award for Courage to five distinguished guests for their advocacy.

"TNR is enormously proud to be involved in this event for many reasons — it celebrates a fundamental right in this country, the right to read what we wish to read, which the New Republic has defended vigorously for 110 years," says Michael Tomasky, editor of the New Republic. "It's going to be a great night."

Book bans continue to be a pervasive issue in the United States, not least of all in Florida, which accounted for 72 percent of the more than 4,000 book bannings across the country during the 2023-2024 academic year. These directives were bolstered by Gov. Ron DeSantis' signing of House Bill 1467 back in 2022, along with other laws seeking to limit classroom discussions of social issues such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. The controversial action, which mandates elementary schools to furnish a searchable list of available books in libraries or classrooms and grants parents of students the ability to contest the materials made available to them, has been proclaimed by the governor to ensure that "inappropriate" content be removed from schools under the guise of protecting children. In practice, however, the law mostly serves to challenge books containing LGBTQ content deemed profane by conservative organizers, as well as classic texts by BIPOC authors.

"These books are being pulled for a variety of reasons. Many of them are an attempt to either whitewash history or target the most vulnerable groups among us," says Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books. "It's usually done under the rubric of parental choice — that parents have a choice over what their kids read — but the argument doesn't hold water because the way that those are written, one parent can make a choice that will affect parents who want their kids to have access to these tools."

The governor has since backtracked on the law, signing a new bill that limits the ability of Floridians who are not the parents of students in a particular school district to object to its books. Rather than blaming conservative organizations, such as the right-wing Moms for Liberty group, whose lobbying is responsible for most book removals from classrooms and school libraries, he blamed liberal activist and South Florida resident Chaz Stevens, who lampooned HB 1467 by objecting to the use of bibles, dictionaries, and thesauruses in dozens of school districts.

"It's good to see that your governor recently signed a law that rolled back to some extent the draconian law he supported and signed back in 2022," says Tomasky. "It's also good that his presidential ambitions fizzled because if they hadn't, it's pretty unlikely he would have signed the new bill. But the situation in Florida is still dire and has to be watched."

Among the banned writers scheduled to speak at the event are Lauren Groff, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Ellen Hopkins, George M. Johnson, Ashley Hope Perez, Jodi Picoult, and Jacqueline Woodson. A conversation between Groff, Hopkins, Johnson, and Woodson will be moderated by Miami teacher and activist Renee O'Connor. Katie Phang, the host of MSNBC's The Katie Phang Show, is also set to deliver opening remarks and moderate a panel discussion about the state of book bans across the nation between PEN America Florida director Katie Blankenship, former ALA president Lessa Pelayo-Lozada, and AFT secretary-treasurer Fed Ingram.

Both Tomasky and Kaplan emphasize the event's aim to recognize the work of authors and activists active in the fight against book bans.

"The Right to Read Celebration is basically another opportunity to highlight in a national, international way the fact that the fight against book banning must continue not only in Florida," Kaplan says.

Tomasky concurs.

"The list of banned books throughout American history makes us shake our heads and laugh today: Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer, The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Handmaid's Tale, and many, many more," he tells New Times. "Today, controversies over those books seem silly, and today's controversies will seem silly in the future. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take them seriously now. We must."

Right to Read Celebration. 6:30 to 8 p.m. Saturday, June 8, at Pérez Art Museum Miami, 103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Admission is free with RSVP via eventbrite.com.