Penguin Random House | New York, 09/28/2023

Read Banned Books

Subject: Society
Country: USA
Category: Project

“Banned Books Week” will once again be held in the United States from October 1 to 7 this year, featuring many activities and campaigns for freedom of expression and against the removal of controversial books from school libraries. One such action is a Penguin Random House bookmobile packed with banned books that will tour the southern states of the U.S. to distribute the books there.

“Read Banned Books” is writ large – literally – on the side of a bookmobile that will set off next Sunday on a tour of the southern United States, specifically to communities where a particularly large number of books are being removed from public libraries as undesirable or offensive, i.e. banned. The bookmobile is packed with “banned books” that will then be distributed free of charge to children and their families on site. The event, called the “Banned Wagon Tour of the South,” will take place from October 1 to 7 and is part of “Banned Books Week,” which draws attention throughout the U.S. to the problem of ever-increasing censorship of books. Increasingly, works on topics such as racism, gender, and sexual orientation, often by People of Color and LGBTQ+ authors, are being removed from school libraries.

The “Banned Wagon Tour of the South” is a campaign by Penguin Random House in cooperation with the Freedom to Read Foundation, the writers’ association PEN America, and the reading initiative Little Free Library. Starting this Sunday, the bookmobile will travel from Atlanta, Georgia, to Nashville, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Houston, Texas. The team is working with local bookstores to distribute free banned books and merchandise provided by the Penguin Random House subsidiary Out of Print. In addition, author events will be hosted, e.g. with Nic Stone in Atlanta and Ani DiFranco, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, and Jumata Emill in New Orleans. Along the way, the “Banned Wagon” will also stock Little Free Library’s book swap boxes, set up in many locations, with banned books.