RoughNightForLulu

Arizona Schools Banning Books

I got this e-mail from my former department, addressed to us lovers of education and culture, and while the news is infuriating, sadly there also is nothing unbelievable about it. Arizona attacks its own citizens. Now it is doing so on multiple fronts. They have begun to patrol literature and history with the same arrogance, closed-mindedness, and fear with which they guard their borders and patrol their streets, detaining anyone who looks like they may not be Caucasian, assuming they have come to Arizona illegally and do not rightfully belong…and it follows that scouring and ejecting books is just the next step of this bleaching revisionism and entitlement. This is wrong, outrageous, shameful, and flat-out frightening behavior.  This is not what our nation stands for.

Let freedom [read].

(FWD FROM: Aboriginal Health Interest Group at McGill
<aboriginalhealth@googlegroups.com>)

Tucson schools bans books by Chicano and Native American authors

[...]
 Posted by Brenda Norrell - January 14, 2012 at 11:53 pm


TUCSON -- Outrage was the response to the news that Tucson schools has
banned books, including "Rethinking Columbus," with an essay by award-
winning Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko, who lives in Tucson, and
works by Buffy Sainte Marie, Winona LaDuke, Leonard Peltier and
Rigoberta Menchu.

The decision to ban books follows the 4 to 1 vote on Tuesday by the
Tucson Unified School District board to succumb to the State of
Arizona, and forbid Mexican American Studies, rather than fight the
state decision.

Students said the banned books were seized from their classrooms and
out of their hands, after Tucson schools banned Mexican American
Studies, including a book of photos of Mexico. Crying, students said
it was like Nazi Germany, and they were unable to sleep since it
happened.

The banned book, "Rethinking Columbus," includes work by many Native
Americans, as Debbie Reese reports, the book includes:

Suzan Shown Harjo's "We Have No Reason to Celebrate"
Buffy Sainte-Marie's "My Country, 'Tis of Thy People You're Dying"
Joseph Bruchac's "A Friend of the Indians"
Cornel Pewewardy's "A Barbie-Doll Pocahontas"
N. Scott Momaday's "The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee"
Michael Dorris's "Why I'm Not Thankful for Thanksgiving"
Leslie Marmon's "Ceremony"
Wendy Rose's "Three Thousand Dollar Death Song"
Winona LaDuke's "To the Women of the World: Our Future, Our
Responsibility"

The now banned reading list of the Tucson schools' Mexican American
Studies includes two books by Native American author Sherman Alexie
and a book of poetry by O'odham poet Ofelia Zepeda.

Jeff Biggers writes in Salon:

The list of removed books includes the 20-year-old textbook
“Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years,” which features an essay by
Tucson author Leslie Silko. Recipient of a Native Writers’ Circle of
the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur Foundation
genius grant, Silko has been an outspoken supporter of the ethnic
studies program.

Biggers said Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest," was also banned during
the meeting this week. Administrators told Mexican-American studies
teachers to stay away from any class units where “race, ethnicity and
oppression are central themes."

Other banned books include “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” by famed
Brazilian educator Paolo Freire and “Occupied America: A History of
Chicanos” by Rodolfo Acuña, two books often singled out by Arizona
state superintendent of public instruction John Huppenthal, who
campaigned in 2010 on the promise to “stop la raza.” Huppenthal, who
once lectured state educators that he based his own school principles
for children on corporate management schemes of the Fortune 500,
compared Mexican-American studies to Hitler Jugend indoctrination last
fall.

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/13/whos_afraid_of_the_tempest/singleton/

Bill Bigelow, co-author of Rethinking Columbus, writes:
Imagine our surprise.
Rethinking Schools learned today that for the first time in its more-
than-20-year history, our book Rethinking Columbus was banned by a
school district: Tucson, Arizona ...

As I mentioned to Biggers when we spoke, the last time a book of mine
was outlawed was during the state of emergency in apartheid South
Africa in 1986, when the regime there banned the curriculum I’d
written, Strangers in Their Own Country, likely because it included
excerpts from a speech by then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Confronting
massive opposition at home and abroad, the white minority government
feared for its life in 1986. It’s worth asking what the school
authorities in Arizona fear today.
http://rethinkingschoolsblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/rethinking-columbus-banned-in-tucson

Roberto Rodriguez, professor at University of Arizona, is also among
the nation's top Chicano and Latino authors on the Mexican American
Studies reading list. Rodriguez' column about this week's school board
decision, posted at Censored News, is titled: "Tucson school officials
caught on tape 'urinating' on Mexican students."http://
drcintli.blogspot.com/

Rodriguez responded to Narco New about the ban on Sunday.
 "The attacks in Arizona are mind-boggling. To ban the teaching of a
discipline is draconian in and of itself. However, there is also now a
banned books list that accompanies the ban. I believe 2 of my books
are on the list, which includes: Justice: A Question of Race and The X
in La Raza. Two others may also be on the list," Rodriguez said.

"That in itself is jarring, but we need to remember the proper
context. This is not simply a book-banning; according to Tom Horne,
the former state scools' superintendent who designed HB 2281, this is
part of a civilizational war. He determined that Mexican American
Studies is not based on Greco-Roman knowledge and thus, lies outside
of Western Civilization.

"In a sense, he is correct. The philosophical foundation for MAS is a
maiz-based philosophy that is both, thousands of years old and
Indigenous to this continent. What has just happened is akin to an
Auto de Fe -- akin to the 1562 book-burning of Maya books in 1562 at
Mani, Yucatan. At TUSD, the list of banned books will total perhaps 50
books, including artwork and posters.

"For us here in Tucson, this is not over. If anything, the banning of
books will let the world know precisely what kind of mindset is
operating here; in that previous era, this would be referred to as a
reduccion (cultural genocide) of all things Indigenous. In this era,
it can too also be see as a reduccion."

The reading list includes world acclaimed Chicano and Latino authors,
along with Native American authors. The list includes books by Corky
Gonzales, along with Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street;”
Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Black Mesa Poems,“ and L.A. Urreas’ “The
Devil’s Highway.“ The authors include Henry David Thoreau and the
popular book “Like Water for Chocolate.”

On the reading list are Native American author Sherman Alexie's books,
“Ten Little Indians,“ and “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in
Heaven.“ O’odham poet and professor Ofelia Zepeda’s “Ocean Power,
Poems from the Desert” is also on the list.

DA Morales writes in Three Sonorans, at Tucson Citizen, about the role
of state schools chief John Huppenthal. "Big Brother Huppenthal has
taken his TEA Party vows to take back Arizona… take it back a few
centuries with official book bans that include Shakespeare!"

Updates at www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com