random post is random: banned books
Jan. 22nd, 2026 02:17 pmI'm putting together a program at the public library where I work as an Acquisitions and Collection Management Librarian. It's a program about books that have been challenged or banned in the recent onslaught against the freedom to read in the U.S. Some of the reasons...I can't even! I don't know whether to engage in bitter laughter or to just plain cry...or both...yeah, both.
Just a few moments ago I encountered this one about a book I read recently: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has been banned in some parts of the U.S. because Dunbar-Ortiz puts Indigenous Native Americans at the center of her telling of U.S. history "causing the book to gain detractors who prefer that history be told from the colonizer perspective". To paraphrase Shakespeare in Hamlet: "If all history books were to be judged on preferred perspective 'who should scape whipping'."
Just a few moments ago I encountered this one about a book I read recently: An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has been banned in some parts of the U.S. because Dunbar-Ortiz puts Indigenous Native Americans at the center of her telling of U.S. history "causing the book to gain detractors who prefer that history be told from the colonizer perspective". To paraphrase Shakespeare in Hamlet: "If all history books were to be judged on preferred perspective 'who should scape whipping'."