The names of the writer Isabel Allende and the award-winning Gabriel García Márquez appear on a list of authors of 673 literary works that were removed this year from teachers’ rooms in schools in Orange County, Florida.
The decision to remove these texts from said school spaces is due to the fear of violating the law HB 1467 – approved by the Florida Congress and signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in March 2022 –, which requires restrict books that have sexual references or LGBTIQ+ content for not considering it suitable for children.
Among the books by the Chilean author that were banned included “The House of the Spirits” (1982) and “Beyond Winter” (2017). The first addresses topics such as sexuality and prostitution, while the second alludes to free sexuality.
Some of The works of the renowned author Gabriel García Márquez also joined “the cursed list”: his detective novel “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” (1981), as well as the love story between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza that is told in “Love in the Time of Cholera” (1985).
The controversial list includes other contemporary authors such as Haruki Murakami and his work “Kafka on the Shore”; Junot Díaz and his book “The Brief Marvelous Life of Óscar Wao” (2007), which was recognized with the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Novels and the National Book Critics Circle Award that same year.
In addition, other classic writers are mentioned such as Federico García Lorca and his work “La casa de Bernarda Alba”. Just like Gustave Flaubert and his novel Madame Bovary.
The Orange County school district ordered teachers who have any of those 673 books on their classroom shelves to provisionally remove them, the local newspaper reported. Orlando Sentinel.
The newspaper specified that Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) staff will review the list of rejected works once again, so it is possible that the books will finally be returned to the classroom.
The controversial law HB 1467
HB 1467, which went into effect in July 2022, requires schools in the state of Florida to ensure that books offered there are free of pornography, meet the needs of students, and are age-appropriate. .
“In Florida, parents have every right to participate in their children’s education.”DeSantis said when this rule was enacted.
“We will not allow politicians to deny parents the right to know what is taught in our schools. “I am proud to sign this legislation that ensures curriculum transparency.”
Its critics, however, assure that it is an instrument of censorship, a strategy against the so-called culture woke up (wake up), a term used in the US to refer, sometimes pejoratively, to those who have made it their duty to confront problems of inequality or discrimination, especially for reasons of race, gender or sexual orientation.
Some pedagogy experts have denounced that this measure violates not only the training that students can receive, but also affects the creation of reading habits whose benefits are enjoyed throughout life.
However, the biggest concern for educators is that if they are deemed to have provided students with material containing pornography, they face penalties. a possible withdrawal of your teaching license or even a prison sentence.
“Giving pornography to a minor is considered a third-degree felony. [castigado con hasta cinco años de cárcel]. Therefore, it is of great concern that a teacher is accused of violating this law. Not that they rape her, but even simply that they are accused of doing so,” said Pat Barber, president of the Manatee Educational Association, in an interview with BBC Mundo in February of this year.
5,894 cases of banned books
The regulations require that texts be free of pornography (understood as the representation of erotic behavior with the aim of causing sexual arousal).
But nor can they address issues of sexual orientation or gender identityin the case of students from kindergarten to third grade of primary school.
Additionally, no material is permitted that presents discrimination in such a way that “an individual by virtue of race, color, sex, or national origin is [considerado] racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Among the books that have been questioned are several biographies, including that of the Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente, that of the Cuban singer Celia Cruz, and that of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to become a judge of the US Supreme Court.
Also that of the civil rights activist Rosa Parks and that of the Dalai Lama.
“A lot of those books are about the lived experience of black and brown people. And many have LGBTQ characters or stories with LGBTQ themes, which tend to be the majority of books that are banned,” Raegan Miller, Director of Development and Finance of the organization Florida Freedom to Read Project (Fftrp), explained to BBC Mundo.
Shortly before DeSantis signed HB 1467, PEN America – the US chapter of the international writers’ association PEN – denounced what it considers an “orchestrated campaign” across the US to ban books containing “objectionable” content. something that – as they pointed out – is often limited to content that recognizes LGBTQ identities or the existence of sexism and racism.
“The objective of HB 1467 is to facilitate that campaign,” they stated.
Between July 2021 and June 2023, the Index of Book Bans in Schools prepared by PEN America registered 5,894 cases of banned works, according to information published on its website.
Florida and Texas lead the country in the number of vetoes, but the crisis has spread to 41 states.
“Literature is vital to educating young people,” Sabrina Baêta, of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said in a statement.
“Without literary works, students are left without context for their own experiences, without empathy for the experiences of others, and without a full understanding of the world we live in and the past.
“We are continually alarmed to see how the movement to ban books has intensified since 2021 and endangers the freedoms to read and learn, while threatening basic principles of education.”
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