Books and Magazines News

A museum of forbidden literature has opened in the Old Town of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The aim of the museum is to present banned, burned or censored books to the general public from different parts of the world.

The museum explained in a statement:

In the museum, books from different parts of the world will be exhibited to tell their stories and discuss issues related to the free expression of ideas.

The aim is to conduct initial research on the history of censorship in Estonia, focussing on the period of Soviet occupation. In the museum, visitors can read books, touch them, read them and buy most of them.

Books are categorised by country -- forbidden sections can be found from the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, but also from the US. There is also a section of books that have been burned for various reasons throughout history.

The museum is open every Friday and Saturday from 11 AM to 6 PM.

Several Penguin Random House Canada employees confronted management about the company's decision to publish a new book by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and about 70 more have filed anonymous complaints, according to four workers who spoke to VICE World News.

Penguin Random House is publishing Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson in March 2021. The book will be published by Portfolio in the US and Penguin Press in the UK.

Company executives defended the publishing decision in a staff meeting whilst woke employees called for the book to be banned. Eg a junior employee said:

He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he's an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I'm not proud to work for a company that publishes him

Another employee claimed people were crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives. They said one co-worker discussed how Peterson had radicalized their father and another talked about how publishing the book will negatively affect their non-binary friend.

In an email statement, Penguin Random House Canada said it is open to its employees' feedback:

We announced yesterday that we will publish Jordan Peterson's new book Beyond Order this coming March. Immediately following the announcement, we held a forum and provided a space for our employees to express their views and offer feedback. Our employees have started an anonymous feedback channel, which we fully support. We are open to hearing our employees' feedback and answering all of their questions. We remain committed to publishing a range of voices and viewpoints

Dragonfly Eyes is a novel written by Cao Wenxuan, a well-known Chinese author of children's and young adult books. The book was licensed for translation into German, but the original Chinese publisher was not happy with the translation and is demanding small cuts and edits to show Chinese characters in the book in a better light.

The Chinese publisher told Nora Frisch, the German publisher of the translation, to take the book off the market pending edits.

Dragonfly Eyes tells the story of a French woman married to a Shanghai entrepreneur. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, the woman - by then a grandmother -- is accused of being a spy. She is captured by the Red Guards paramilitary movement, who shave off her hair and parade her through the streets. When infighting breaks out between various factions, she is able to escape.

The corrections which the Chinese publisher demanded from Frisch concerned a few passages in the last chapter. In the original version, the French woman asks one of the Red Guards, an 18-year-old girl, to lend her a scarf so she can cover her head. In the revised version, it's the girl who offers the scarf to the old woman.

As Chinese authorities have begun paying more attention to how China is perceived abroad in recent years, censorship has increased. President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed that he expects Chinese media and publishers to contribute to the country's soft power by telling China's story well.

The impact of this policy recently became apparent in Germany, when Thalia, a large chain of bookstores, suddenly designated an unusual amount of shelf space to Chinese literature in some of its stores. Clients quickly noticed that the shelves lacked any literature critical of the Communist Party. Instead, speeches by Xi Jinping were front and center.

Thalia later admitted that the display had been curated by China Book Trading, a German subsidiary of China International Publishing Group, which is owned by the ruling Communist Party.

The great-grandson of the British novelist Agatha Christie, James Pritchard, has belatedly decided to change the French title of the book 'Ten Little Niggers'. An initiative taken many years ago in the English speaking world. Since the 1980s the book has been titled 'And Then There Were None'.

Now the book, which was originally published in 1939, has just been retitled in France from 'Dix petits nègres' to 'Ils étaient dix'  (They Were Ten).

Pritchard commented:

This story is based on a popular nursery rhyme that is not signed by Agatha Christie. I'm pretty sure the original title was never used in the US. In the UK it was changed in the 1980s and today we change it everywhere.

Agatha Christie was above all there to entertain and she would not have liked the idea of someone being hurt by one of her turns of phrase (...) If only one person felt this, it would already be too much! We must no longer use terms that could hurt: this is the behavior to adopt in 2020. "

In addition to the title an island in the book, called the Île du Nègre is also changing its name. The word "negro" appears 74 times in the text and all of these have been revised.

Sales of a French feminist book entitled I Hate Men have gone through the roof after a government official tried to have the work banned for inciting gender hatred.

Pauline Harmange's essay Moi les hommes, je les déteste explores whether women have good reason to hate men, arguing that this type of anger could actually be a joyful and liberating path, if it is allowed to be expressed.

While the work was expected to generate modest sales of a few hundred copies, its first three print runs were quickly snapped up after an adviser to France's gender equality ministry threatened the small publishing house Monstrograph with legal action if it didn't remove the offending material from shelves.

Presumably in response to the publicity, the ministry has now distanced itself from the matter, saying that the adviser was speaking in a personal capacity.

The book's publisher responded:

This book is not at all an incitement to hatred ... The title is provocative, but the subject matter is measured. It's an invitation not to force oneself to date or deal with men. At no time does the author incite violence.

A best selling economics book by the French economist Thomas Piketty appears unlikely to be sold in mainland China after he refused requests to censor it.

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has expressed admiration for Piketty's work, but Capital and Ideology , which was published last year, has not made it to the mainland China market due to sections on inequality in the country.

Piketty told the Guardian the Chinese publisher Citic Press had sent his French publisher a list of 10 pages of requested cuts in June from the French edition of the book, and a further list in August related to the English edition. He said:

I refused these conditions and told them that I would only accept a translation with no cut of any sort. They basically wanted to cut almost all parts referring to contemporary China, and in particular to inequality and opacity in China.

The passages highlighted by the Chinese publishers as requiring censorship  include one referring to the post-communism societies of regions including China becoming hypercapitalism's staunchest allies, as a direct consequence of the disasters of Stalinism and Maoism. Other sections reference the opacity of Chinese income and wealth data, capital flight and corruption.

The Kuwait News Agency reports that the country's parliament approved an amendment to publishing censorship laws on August 19 that removes the need for regulatory approval for books before they enter the Kuwaiti market.

With the amendment now in place, book importers and international publishers just have to provide book titles and author lists to the Ministry of Information, with the understanding that they bear legal responsibility if a book's subject matter contravenes Kuwaiti law.

Legal action against a particular book will now only be triggered by an official complaint from the public. Furthermore, a book ban can only be given by the courts, as opposed to the Ministry of Information.

The move has been hailed by Kuwaiti writers, and international and regional literary bodies.

Update: 5000 censored books

26th August 2020. See article from indianexpress.com

And just to emphasise the significance of the change, the Guardian reports that the Kuwait book censors had banned 5000 books in the 7 years prior to this change. These banned books included One Hundred Years of Solitude and Hunchback of Notre Dame .

the Australian Censorship Board has banned 2 books from the No Game, No Life series of novels to the surprise of readers.

The national censor board has made it illegal to import or sell volumes one, two, and nine of No Game, No Life. This is because the novels were said to violate a classification clause concerning the depiction of minors. The censors explained:

The publication is classified RC in accordance with the National Classification Code, Publications Table, 1. (b) as publications that describe or depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not).

Australia's decision to come down on No Game, No Life came after several politicians called for the classification board to re-examine manga and light novels.

One grey morning in October 1970, in a crowded, tizzy-pink courtroom on the corner of Melbourne's Russell and La Trobe Streets, crown prosecutor Leonard Flanagan began denouncing a novel in terms that were strident and ringing.

When taken as a whole, it is lewd, he declared. As to a large part of it, it is absolutely disgusting both in the sexual and other sense; and the content of the book as a whole offends against the ordinary standards of the average person in the community today -- the ordinary, average person's standard of decency. Scribe

The object of Flanagan's ire that day was the Penguin Books Australia edition of Portnoy's Complaint . Frank, funny, and profane, Philip Roth's novel -- about a young man torn between the duties of his Jewish heritage and the autonomy of his sexual desires -- had been a sensation the world over when it was published in February 1969.

Greeted with sweeping critical acclaim, it was advertised as the funniest novel ever written about sex and called the autobiography of America in the Village Voice. In the United States, it sold more than 400,000 copies in hardcover in a single year -- more, even, than Mario Puzo's The Godfather -- and in the United Kingdom it was published to equal fervour and acclaim.

But in Australia, Portnoy's Complaint had been banned.

Politicians, bureaucrats, police, and judges had for years worked to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under a system of censorship that pre-dated federation, works that might damage the morals of the Australian public were banned, seized, and burned. Bookstores were raided. Publishers were policed and fined. Writers had been charged, fined and even jailed.

Seminal novels and political tracts from overseas had been kept out of the country. Where objectionable works emerged from Australian writers, they were rooted out like weeds. Under the censorship system, Boccacio's Decameron had been banned. Nabokov's Lolita had been banned. Joyce's Ulysses had been banned. Even James Bond had been banned.

There had been opposition to this censorship for years, though it had become especially notable in the past decade. Criticism of the bans on J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and Norman Lindsay's Redheap had prompted an almost complete revision of the banned list in 1958.

The repeated prosecutions of the Oz magazine team in 1963 and 1964 had attracted enormous attention and controversy.

Outcry over the bans on Mary McCarthy's The Group and D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover had been loud and pronounced, and three intrepid Sydney activists had exposed the federal government to ridicule when they published a domestic edition of The Trial of Lady Chatterley , an edited transcript of the failed court proceedings against Penguin Books UK for the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in Britain in 1960.

Penguin Books Australia had been prompted to join the fight against censorship by the three idealistic and ambitious men at its helm: managing director John Michie, finance director Peter Froelich, and editor John Hooker.

In five years, the three men had overhauled the publisher, improving its distribution machinery and logistics and reinvigorating its publishing list. They believed Penguin could shape Australian life and culture by publishing interesting and vibrant books by Australian authors.

They wanted Penguin's books to engage with the political and cultural shifts that the country was undergoing, to expose old canards, question the orthodox, and pose alternatives.

Censorship was no small topic in all this. Those at Penguin saw censorship as an inhibition on these ambitions. We'd had issues with it before, in minor ways, Peter Froelich recalled, and we'd have drinks we'd say, 'It's wrong! How can we fix it? What can we do? How do we bring it to people's attention, so that it can be changed?'

The answer emerged when they heard of the ban placed on Portnoy's Complaint. Justifiably famous, a bestseller the world over, of well-discussed literary merit, it stood out immediately as a work with which to challenge the censorship system, just as its British parent company had a decade earlier.

Why not obtain the rights to an Australian edition, print it in secret, and publish it in one fell swoop? As Hooker -- who had the idea -- put it to Michie, Jack, we ought to really publish Portnoy's Complaint and give them one in the eye.

The risks were considerable. There was sure to be a backlash from police and politicians. Criminal charges against Penguin and its three leaders were almost certain. Financial losses thanks to seized stock and fines would be considerable. The legal fees incurred in fighting charges would be enormous. Booksellers who stocked the book would also be put on trial. But Penguin was determined.

John Michie was resolute. John offered to smash the whole thing down, Hooker said, later. When he was told what was about to happen, federal minister for customs Don Chipp swore that Michie would pay: I'll see you in jail for this. But Michie was not to be dissuaded. 'People who took exception to it at the time are mostly dead,' Roth said, some 40 years and 30 books after Portnoy's Complaint was published. A stampede

In July 1970, Penguin arranged to have three copies of Portnoy smuggled into Australia. In considerable secrecy, they used them to print 75,000 copies in Sydney and shipped them to wholesalers and bookstores around the country. It was an operation carried out with a precision that Hooker later likened to the German invasion of Poland.

The book was unveiled on August 31 1970. Michie held a press conference in his Mont Albert home, saying Portnoy's Complaint was a masterpiece and should be available to read in Australia. Neither he nor Penguin were afraid of the prosecutions: We are prepared to take the matter to the High Court.

The next morning, as the trucks bearing copies began to arrive, bookstores everywhere were rushed. At one Melbourne bookstore, the assistant manager was knocked down and trampled by a crowd eager to buy the book and support Penguin. It was a stampede, he said later. A bookstore manager in Sydney was amazed when the 500 copies his store took sold out in two-and-a-half hours.

All too soon, it was sold out. And with politicians making loud promises of retribution, the police descended.

Bookstores were raided. Unsold copies were seized. Court summons were delivered to Penguin, to Michie, and to booksellers the whole country over. A long list of court trials over the publication of Portnoy's Complaint and its sale were in the offing. A stellar line-up

So the trial that opened on the grey morning of October 19 1970, in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, was only the first in what promised to be a long battle.

Neither Michie nor his colleagues were daunted. They had prepared a defence based around literary merit and the good that might come from reading the book. They had retained expert lawyers and marshalled the cream of Australia's literary and academic elite to come to their aid.

Patrick White would appear as a witness for the defence. So too would academic John McLaren, The Age newspaper editor Graham Perkin, the critic A.A. Phillips, the historian Manning Clark, the poet Vincent Buckley, and many more. They were unconcerned by Flanagan's furious denunciations, by his shudders of disgust, and by his caustic indictments of Penguin and its leaders.

They were confident in their cause. As one telegram to Michie said:

ALL BEST WISHES FOR A RESOUNDING VICTORY FOR LITERATURE AND LIBERTY.

A book that recounts life in the Chinese city of Wuhan while under a strict coronavirus lockdown has been effectively banned in China, its author said in a recent written interview with Kyodo News.

Chinese critics have been trying to thwart publication of the book titled Wuhan Diary , whose English version has received international recognition, although the country's authorities have not officially prohibited it, said the novelist known as Fang Fang.

The book is a collection of 60 posts from her account on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, regarding daily life during the so-called world's harshest coronavirus lockdown as well as, what she described as, the dark side of the authorities.

A publisher had prepared to distribute the book domestically but shied away from doing so out of fear of getting pressure from critics, she said.

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion204which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won't defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn't expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

See signatures from harpers.org which include JK Rowling and Salman Rushdie

Offsite Comment: The spectre of censorship and intolerance stalks today's left

12th July 2020. See article from theguardian.com   by Nick Cohen

The attacks on the signatories of a letter fearing the future of free speech proved the letter's point

Books written by prominent Hong Kong democracy activists have started to disappear from the city's libraries after Beijing imposed a repressive new national security law.

Among the authors whose titles are no longer available are Joshua Wong, one of the city's most prominent young activists, and Tanya Chan, a well known pro-democracy lawmaker.

Wong said he believed the removal of the books was sparked by the security law. He wrote on Facebook:

White terror continues to spread, the national security law is fundamentally a tool to incriminate speech, using a phrase that refers to political persecution.

Searches on the public library website showed at least three titles by Wong, Chan and local scholar Chin Wan are no longer available for lending at any of dozens of outlets across the city.

Chinese printers have banned an Australian book by Miro Bilbrough because it contained the phrase 'Tibetan Buddhism'.

Miro Bilbrough had to change printers after the Chinese censor attempted to removed the phrase Tibetan Buddhism from her manuscript. Bilbrough's upcoming memoir, I n the Time of the Manaroans , due to be printed in China before the words Tibetan Buddhism, were requested to be removed from the manuscript.

Bilbrough, who grew up in New Zealand, said leaving the words in the book was non-negotiable. She said China had overt, geo-political views about Tibet, by not recognising it as a country. She added:

That is what censorship is, they are symbolically erasing Tibet. I did feel quite sick when I read the email.

She was pleased publisher Victoria University Press was on the same page as her, saying:

I'm really happy that Victoria University Press is taking the book elsewhere -- and not pandering to this very overt censorship.

The use of the phrase Tibetan Buddhism, related to a discussion of the concept of karma, and the book itself was not about Tibetan sovereignty, but about the experience of being a child of hippies in 1970s New Zealand.

The American Library Association condemns censorship and works to ensure free access to information. Every year, the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) compiles a list of the Top 10 Most Challenged Books in order to inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools. The lists are based on information from media stories and voluntary reports sent to OIF from communities across the U.S.

As per previous years, the list is dominated by children's books intending to normalise LGBT relationships. The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 377 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2019. Of the 566 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged:

• George by Alex Gino
  Reasons: challenged, banned, restricted, and hidden to avoid controversy; for LGBTQIA+ content and a transgender character; because schools and libraries should not "put books in a child's hand that require discussion"; for sexual references; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint and "traditional family structure"
• Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin
  Reasons: challenged for LGBTQIA+ content, for "its effect on any young people who would read it," and for concerns that it was sexually explicit and biased
• A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller
  Reasons: Challenged and vandalized for LGBTQIA+ content and political viewpoints, for concerns that it is "designed to pollute the morals of its readers," and for not including a content warning
• Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg, illustrated by Fiona Smyth
  Reasons: Challenged, banned, and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content; for discussing gender identity and sex education; and for concerns that the title and illustrations were "inappropriate"
• Prince & Knight by Daniel Haack, illustrated by Stevie Lewis
  Reasons: Challenged and restricted for featuring a gay marriage and LGBTQIA+ content; for being "a deliberate attempt to indoctrinate young children" with the potential to cause confusion, curiosity, and gender dysphoria; and for conflicting with a religious viewpoint
• I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, illustrated by Shelagh McNicholas
  Reasons: Challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content, for a transgender character, and for confronting a topic that is "sensitive, controversial, and politically charged"
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity and for "vulgarity and sexual overtones"
• Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier
  Reasons: Challenged for LGBTQIA+ content and for concerns that it goes against "family values/morals"
• Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
  Reasons: Banned and forbidden from discussion for referring to magic and witchcraft, for containing actual curses and spells, and for characters that use "nefarious means" to attain goals
• And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson illustrated by Henry Cole
  Reason: Challenged and relocated for LGBTQIA+ content

There's been a push to censor smoking in media recently, with games like Gears 5 censoring any depiction to smoking, and Netflix banning smoking in anything that isn't rated TV-14 or higher. Marvel is also jumping on board by retroactively censoring cigars and cigarettes in older X-Men comics that are being reprinted.

KotakuInAction 2 spotted a Twitter thread where people were posting images of the reprints of X-Men issues where Logan, better known as Wolverine, no longer has a cigar in his mouth or hands.

The retroactive censorship also affected a recent reprint some of DC's Superman comics featuring Michael Turner's artwork, where the female thighs and butts were further covered up and censored .

The literary character Shane 'Blackie' O'Neill, from Co. Kerry, is a popular one, created by novelist Barbara Taylor Bradford. But his name has meant that the proposed title of her latest book Blackie and Emma has now had to be changed.

The prequel to the highly successful A Woman of Substance was due for imminent release. But at the last minute her publishers feared that the title Blackie and Emma might offend political correctness and asked her to come up with an alternative.

A quote used in the promotional material rather demonstrates how key the nickname is:

I am that, to be sure. Shane O'Neill's the name, but the whole world calls me Blackie.

The author spoke about the last minute change in the title saying that the book will now be called Shane O'Neill and Emma Harte .

  Amazon UK has banned the sale of most editions of Hitler's Mein Kampf and other Nazi propaganda books from its store following campaigning by Jewish groups.

Booksellers were informed in recent days that they would no longer be allowed to sell a number of Nazi-authored books on the website.

In one email seen by the Guardian individuals selling secondhand copies of Mein Kampf on the service have been told by Amazon that they can no longer offer this book as it breaks the website's code of conduct. The ban impacts the main editions of Mein Kampf produced by mainstream publishers such as London-based Random House and India's Jaico, for whom it has become an unlikely bestseller .

Other Nazi publications including the children's book The Poisonous Mushroom written by Nazi publisher Julius Streicher, who was later executed for crimes against humanity.

Amazon would not comment on what had prompted it to change its mind on the issue but a recent intervention to remove the books by the London-based Holocaust Educational Trust received the backing of leading British politicians.

 Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, was acquired last week by the publisher Hachette in the US.

The move was quickly condemned by the author's daughter Dylan Farrow, who has alleged that Allen sexually abused her as a child, allegations that Allen has denied. These allegations have twice been investigated by the authorities but have not led to arrest, charge or prosecution.

Allen's son Ronan Farrow, whose book Catch and Kill --also published by Hachette -- details his investigations into institutional sexual abuse in the media and Hollywood, also blasted the decision and announced he would no longer work with Hachette.

The Hachette censorship was  initiated by Hachette staff in the US who staged a walkout at its New York offices over the memoir. The publisher then pulled the book, claming that the decision was a difficult one.

Woody Allen's memoir will still be published in France despite its US publisher dropping it, with his French publisher saying that the film director is not Roman Polanski and that the American situation is not ours.

 

Offsite Comment: This is the behaviour of censors, not publishers

9th March 2020. See article from theguardian.com   by Jo Glanville of English Pen

I do not want to read books that are good for me or that are written by people whose views I always agree with or admire. I am always afraid when a mob, however small and well read, exercises power without any accountability, process or redress. That frightens me much more than the prospect of Woody Allen's autobiography hitting the bookstores.

...Read the full article from theguardian.com

Barnes & Noble has shelved their plans to release a collection of classic books with new culturally diverse covers following an internet backlash.

Penguin Random House and Barnes & Noble Fifth Avenue had given twelve classic young adult novels new covers, known as Diverse Editions. The books were meant hit the shelves on Feb. 5, and the books were to be on display in their massive storefront throughout the month of February.

Each title had five culturally diverse custom covers designed to ensure the recognition, representation, and inclusion of various multiethnic backgrounds reflected across the country.

Following the news of the new covers, many Twitter users expressed their anger and disappointment over the situation. Example tweets were:

Jesus. Slapping cartoon POC on books by white folks when the words within those books don't promote anything but the white narrative isn't diversity. Diversity is giving POC equal opportunity to be published in a predominately white marketplace. Do better.

slapping Brown faces onto white stories is insulting. if #barnesandnoble wants to promote diversity, why not just promote classics written by diverse authors? they exist!

Barnes & Noble released a statement on Twitter acknowledging the concerns of the public and ultimately cancelling the release event at the store.

We acknowledge the voices who have expressed concerns about the Diverse Editions project at our Barnes & Noble Fifth Avenue store and have decided to suspend the initiative.

Diverse Editions presented new covers of classic hooks through a series of limited-edition jackets, designed by artists hailing from different ethnicities and backgrounds. The covers are not a substitute for black voices or writers of color, whose work and voices deserve to be heard.

The booksellers who championed this initiative did so convinced it would help drive engagement with these classic titles. It was a project inspired by our work with schools and was created in part to raise awareness and discussion during Black History Month, in which Barnes & Noble stores nationally will continue to highlight a wide selection of books to celebrate black history and great literature from writers of color.

The publisher of Jeanine Cummins' new novel American Dirt has cancelled the remainder of her promotional tour as a result of a politically correct backlash.

The novel about a Mexican mother and her young son fleeing to the US border had been praised widely before its 21 January release and was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club.

But PC bullies who think they have the right to tell others what stories they can write have campaigned against the book for wrong think. Mexican American writers have claimed that the book contains  stereotypical depictions of Mexicans.

Julissa Arce Raya, the author of My (Underground) American Dream, argued American Dirt was not representative of her experience as an undocumented immigrant in America. Author Celeste Ng shared a review calling Cummins' depictions of Mexico laughably inaccurate. Roxane Gay deplored Oprah's decision to elevate the novel.

Bob Miller, president of the book's publisher, Flatiron Books commented:

Jeanine Cummins spent five years of her life writing this book with the intent to shine a spotlight on tragedies facing immigrants. We are saddened that a work of fiction that was well-intentioned has led to such vitriolic rancor.

Unfortunately, our concerns about safety have led us to the difficult decision to cancel the book tour.

Flatiron now plans to send Cummins to town-hall style events, where the author will be joined by some of the groups who have raised objections to the book.

 

Offsite Comment: The offencerati just got a book tour cancelled

2nd February 2020. See article from spiked-online.com

Librarians and free speech advocates are fighting back against a proposal in the Missouri House of Representatives that would ban certain books from the state's libraries with the threat of a misdemeanor charges meaning the possibility of jail for librarians.

Missouri House Representative Ben Baker introduced the bill, dubbed the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act , in January that calls for the creation of a panel made up of non-library workers who will determine the removal of age-inappropriate sexual material, from their local branch.

Libraries that don't comply will lose their funding. Library employees providing material deemed inappropriate would be hit with a misdemeanor charge and liable for a $500 fine or a maximum jail sentence of a year, according to the bill's current language.

The bill is targeted at protecting minors but the impracticality of age verification and making adults only spaces would probably mean that the censored books would end up being banned for everyone.

Cynthia Dudenhoffer, the president of the Missouri Library Association, said she was shocked when she first heard about the bill and said it was unnecessary. Each of the state's library systems, which account for a total of 365 branches, already have their own protocols in place to determine which materials are allowed for their younger members.

An anti-jewish book of historical interest has caused a bit of a stir in Australia after it was found to be available for sale on Amazon.

New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Vic Alhadeff wrote to Amazon Australia last week after seeing a number of controversial titles for sale, including one titled Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Alhadeff wrote:

By providing a platform for individuals to buy and sell such flawed and racist texts, Amazon is in fact contributing to the deeply concerning global increase in antisemitic incidents which we are currently witnessing.

Amazon has posted an explanation of why the book is for sale on the website:

Amazon does not endorse The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This book is one of the most infamous, and tragically influential, examples of racist propaganda ever written. It may be useful to some as a tool in the teaching of the history of anti-Semitism, but it's unquestionably propaganda.

Does Amazon sell this book? We do, along with millions of other titles. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is classified under controversial knowledge in our store, along with books about UFOs, demonic possession, and all manner of conspiracy theories. You can also find books in other sections of Amazon's online bookstore that analyze The Protocols' fraudulent origins and its tragic historical role in promoting anti-Semitism and Jewish persecution, including A Lie and a Libel: The History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As a bookseller, Amazon strongly believes that providing open access to written speech, no matter how hateful or ugly, is one of the most important things we do. And because we think the best remedy for offensive speech is more speech, we also make available to readers the ability to make their own voices heard and express their views about this and all our titles in reviews and ratings.

Update: Fine words from Amazon...but...

6th February 2020. See article from thejc.com

Amazon has removed two two books from sale by an author whose works accuse Jews of having played an exceptionally active role in promoting and inciting war and Hitler.

The latest book by Thomas Dalton PhD -- Eternal Strangers: Critical Views of Jews and Judaism Through the Ages -- was released last week and follows The Jewish Hand in the World Wars.

Both were available to buy through the online retailer, listed as dispatched from and sold by Amazon, until antisemitism campaigners complained.