Texas Students Fire Back After School Board Moves to Ban Books on Social Inequality
By Democracy Now
HAVANA TIMES – High school students in Granbury, Texas, are fighting back against school officials who are pushing to ban hundreds of books dealing with social inequality. This is high school senior Isabella Guzman, who joined fellow students in speaking out at a public meeting earlier this week.
Isabella Guzman: “I am queer, I am Brown, and I’m very proud of that. And I am well aware of the censorship that has happened to my people over the centuries. I am well aware of this, and I think it is horrible. And I don’t think that little children should be shocked or disgusted by our identities. … And I think it’s disgusting that even in 2022 we still have to have these discussions about censorship.”
The crackdown in Texas schools is part of a growing conservative-led trend to censor books on race, colonialism, sexual and gender identity, and other issues in schools and libraries across the U.S. Earlier this month, a Tennessee school board voted to ban “Maus,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman.