Authors I know and adore have had their books banned, challenged, and issued warning labels.
I've spoken before about how of course every book is not for every reader, and yes I agree that there are books that contain harmful ideas that should not go unchallenged. (The ideas that is.)
I want people to be able to find books about people like them and people not like them. I have read books this year that made me furious, but I assume someone else found something great in them.
Certainly books that contain bad facts are not necessary to make widely available, just like one assumes kids today have a more recent science book than I did, because we keep learning new things.
I read Akwaeke Emezi's Bitter this weekend, and it's story about a teen who has spent so much of her life just trying to survive and recognizing that this imperfect world is going to need so much work to fix and couldn't she just stay in her room, was just what I needed after a wild news week that included an author and a man who founded a group to protect authors being attacked on stage. Emezi did an interview with We Need Diverse Books about Bitter, that I found interesting.
*The title is referencing Ralph Henry Reese's quoting poet Toi Dericotte in the Guardian article.
