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Margaret Atwood tried burning the new, fireproof version of her novelThe Handmaid's Talewith a flamethrower. Courtesy Rethink / Penguin Random House

First released in 1985, Margaret Atwoods The Handmaid's Tale is a longtime bestseller and a longtime object of censorship. The futuristic, dystopian novel about patriarchy run wild has long been one of the United States most-banned booksfodder for those who would censor or even burn its searing words.

Now, Atwood has partnered up with her publisher, Penguin Random House, to create a version of the book thats impossible to ignite anything other than heated debate. Its fireproof.

On Thursday, auction house Sothebys sold the unburnable book for $130,000. Proceeds will go to PEN America to support its advocacy for free expression and fight against book banning.

According to the group, The Handmaids Tale is a favorite scapegoat for those who would forbid books, and is often targeted for its sexual and health-related content.

The Handmaid's Tale has been banned many timessometimes by whole countries, such as Portugal and Spain in the days of Salazar and the Francoists, sometimes by school boards, sometimes by libraries, the Canadian author said in a statement.

In its recent report Banned in the USA, PEN documents 1,586 cases of a variety of reported book bans in the United States in 2021, spanning 26 states and 86 school districts. According to the report, a disproportionate number of bans target stories about people of color or LGBTQ+ people.

Out of all the bans listed, 98 percent deviated from reconsideration guidelines recommended by the American Library Association and the National Coalition Against Censorship, per PEN.

It is not just the number of books removed that is disturbing, but the processesor lack thereofthrough which such removals are being carried out that is cause for alarm, the group writes. The state with the greatest amount of book bans last year was Texas, with 713 prohibited books per the report, followed by Pennsylvania, Florida and Oklahoma. In 2021, Texas governor Greg Abbott requested school boards to discard books he referred to as "pornography," Sharif Paget and Nicole Chavez report for CNN.

Though Atwoods novel has often faced bans itself, the group says its symbolic of an entire modern-day movement to stifle literary expression.

In the face of a determined effort to censor and silence, this unburnable book is an emblem of our collective resolve to protect books, stories and ideas from those who fear and revile them, PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement.

The Handmaids Tale debuted to mixed reviews. But over the years, it has become a classic, touted by some as a frighteningly prescient prediction about the trajectory of American society. It depicts life in the Republic of Gilead, the repressive, totalitarian religious state that replaced the U.S. in a fictitious future, putting men in charge and relegating women to lives of subservience as sexually subjugated handmaids.

The books main character, wrote author Mary McCarthy in a 1986 review in the New York Times, has an unwillingness to stick her neck out, and perhaps we are meant to conclude that such unwillingness, multiplied, may be fatal to a free society. Since its publication, the book has been translated into over 40 languages, per a 2017 essay by Atwood in the Times.

Although it might look like an ordinary 384-page book, the fireproof edition is mostly made from Cinefoil, a specially treated aluminum foil, and contains other products such as fire-resistant inks and nickel wire. The technologywhich protects the book even when heated to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheitwas designed by the creative agency Rethink and the graphic arts studio The Gas Company, Inc.

The 82-year-old author has published her works in more than 45 countries and has written over 50 books. Now, The Handmaids Tale is an award-winning TV series that can be streamed on Hulu.

In her 2017 essay in the Times, Atwood wrote that she is often asked if her bleak book is a prediction about where American society is headed. Lets say its an antiprediction: If this future can be described in detail, maybe it wont happen, she wrote. But such wishful thinking cannot be depended on either.

I stopped writing [the novel] several times, because I considered it too far-fetched," she wrote for theAtlanticlast month.Silly me. Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past: There are a number of them on the planet today. What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?

In a launch video presenting the fireproof book, Atwood tries and fails to burn a prototype with a flamethrower. And she is just as evasive about the future of literary censorship.

Let's hope we don't reach the stage of wholesale book burnings, as in Fahrenheit 451, Atwood said in a statement referencing the classic Ray Bradbury novel. But if we do, let's hope some books will prove unburnablethat they will travel underground, as prohibited books did in the Soviet Union.

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Read more from the original source:
Margaret Atwood Triedand Failedto Burn a Copy of 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Here's Why - Smithsonian Magazine

Ashland library board challenged on books about sexuality

Community members present a statement regarding the display of books they contend are inappropriate for children in the library.

Tom E. Puskar, Ashland Times Gazette

ASHLAND Whether or not nudity should be allowedin children's books was debatedThursday among some patronsand board members ofthe Ashland Public Library.

The five books in question are still in circulation and willstay there,Heather Miller, the library's director, assured everyone during theregular libraryboard meeting.

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And the four Ashland County residents who visited the meeting made it clearthey considerthe books to be pornographic in nature, and that their presence in the library stacks createsan unsafe environment for children.

Thursday's discussion was the third to be held about the five new books,Sandra Hedlund Tunnell, president of the library's Board of Directors, explained.

Among the titles are "Own Your Period: A Fact-filled Guide to Period Positivity" by Chella Quint and "MakingA Baby" by Rachel Greener.

The books started causing a ruckus at the start of the year when they reached the new arrival shelf of the children's section. Since they are now six months old, the titles have recently been moved from that display and placed onto the shelves with all of the other books.

As far as Tunnell can remember, it'sthe first batch of books to trouble some local residents.

"I appreciate their concerns," Tunnell said. "I think censorship is a slippery slope. I don't want to start going down the road where we start just picking books off the shelf willy-nilly because a couple of people have complained out of the thousands and thousands and thousands of people who use our library."

The charge to have the books removed is being led by two pastors and a set of parents.

The first to speak was Laura Brenning, a mother of two who was accompanied by her husband, Jeremy.

"It makes me sad because this is the first year we have not been able to do the summer reading program," Brenning said. "I don't feel safe letting them peruse the children's section."

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After evaluating the content ofthe five new books, she's concerned what materialmight be in other books she has yet to screen.

Brenning said one book had"many pictures of genitals and also discusses masturbation." Another "shows a couple in the act of having sex," and the others contained nudity, profanity"and other adult themes."

She said the books were labeled as being recommended for children as young as 5.

The Rev. John Bouquet, pastor ofBethel Baptist Church, told the library's leaders thathe is"beyond shocked to find the following materials in our public library in a children's section."

He asked that the books be removed, or at least taken out of the children's section.

"Parents are entrusted with the right to teach their children about sexuality and gender, not the library and not our public schools," Bouquet said. "Protect their innocence."

He said the adult section of the library would be the appropriate place to store reference material that might contain "adult-level content."

"Making babies is the title, but the pictures in the book are pornographic and obscene," Bouquet said. "To display naked men with childrenin a shower exposing body parts is just plain wrong and should not be done for children ages 5through 9."

The concerned residents' evaluation of the books doesnot accurately depict their content,Mike Zickefoose, secretary of the library board, maintains.

He examinedthe five titles,initially concernedthere might be a photo of a nude man instead, he found an educational illustration.

"It's not a sexual depiction of a man," Zickefoose said. "It's a reference book. It's science. These books are talking about puberty and what people go through."

Zickefoose urged those concernedto read the text around the images and consider the educational content being illustrated.

Bouquet argued most young children would not be reading the books, they would be flipping through them looking at pictures.

"They're not drawn to the words first, and you know that. They're drawn to the pictures," he said. "There is a definite societal fallout to this."

Professionals evaluate new materials to ensure they are accurate and provide education to the public, the board president explained.

"If the parents don't want their children to read them or to touch them, that's up to them," Tunnell said.

She said the library's job is not to protect, but to makeinformation readily available to everyone.

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"We have children in our community who do not have parents available to talk to them about things like puberty," Tunnell said.

Of the more than 90,000 books in the library's circulation, she said, she isn't worried that only five might offend someone, and that the books willremain.

"That's the first step toward censorship," Tunnell said. "You talk about freedom and liberty, but I don't think censorship and freedom can coexist."

Reach Zach at 419-564-3508 or ztuggle@gannett.com

On Twitter: @zachtuggle

Read more from the original source:
'Censorship is a slippery slope.' Ashland library rejects call to remove five books - Wooster Daily Record

Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants his office to help defend Llano County officials being sued for restricting and banning books from their public library system.

In a court filing Wednesday, Paxton asked Austin-based federal district court Judge Robert Pitman to let the state intervene in the lawsuit, which was filed by seven Llano County residents in April.

If Pitman grants the motion, Paxtons office could aid the county judge, county commissioners and library director in fighting the lawsuit.

In this weeks filing, Paxton notes that the plaintiffs are represented by nine lawyers, six of whom work for San Francisco-based law firm BraunHagey and Borden LLP. On the other hand, the Llano County Attorneys Office has only two lawyers.

With such a small number of lawyers, Llano County might not have the resources to handle daily legal obligations plus stand against lawyers whom Paxton describes as oriented toward systemic change rather than the resolution of a single lawsuit, according to his offices filing. However, the resources Paxton would bring from the Office of the Attorney General would be sufficient to ensure that the plaintiffs claims are fully and fairly explored and presented to the court, his office argues.

According to the lawsuit, Llano County officials removed several books from shelves, suspended access to digital library books, replaced the library board members with people who favor book bans, halted new book orders and allowed the board to close its meetings to the public in a coordinated censorship campaign that violates the First and 14th Amendments.

At the time, the plaintiffs said their constitutional rights were violated when public officials censored books based on content and failed to provide proper notice or an avenue for community comment, according to previous reporting by The Texas Tribune.

Attorneys for the residents either could not be reached or were unavailable to comment. Paxtons office could not immediately be reached for comment.

Books removed from the library include Maurice Sendaks In the Night Kitchen, Susan Campbell Bartolettis They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group and Jazz Jennings Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen.

Since last year, Texas Republican officials and grassroots conservatives have waged a battle against what they portray as indoctrination and obscenity in school and public libraries. Last fall, one state lawmaker compiled a list of some 850 books about race and sexuality that he sent to school districts, asking how many are available on their campuses.

This came after the Texas Legislature passed a law limiting how race, slavery and current events are taught in schools. They dubbed it the critical race theory bill, even though the legislation never mentioned the term. Critical race theory is a university-level concept that examines how racism shapes laws and policies. Public education experts, along with school administrators and teachers, say the theory is not taught in public schools.

Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have made parental rights a priority as they both seek reelection in November. Patrick has also vowed to push for a Dont Say Gay bill in Texas, mirroring Floridas conservative push to limit classroom discussions about LGBTQ people.

Join us Sept. 22-24 in person in downtown Austin for The Texas Tribune Festival and experience 100+ conversation events featuring big names you know and others you should from the worlds of politics, public policy, the media and tech all curated by The Texas Tribunes award-winning journalists. Buy tickets.

Read more here:
Ken Paxton wants Texas to help defend Llano County officials being sued for banning books - The Texas Tribune

I dont tweet. I probably never will. As a former English professor, I am too steeped in the idea that you must provide well-reasoned support for your assertionsnot just blurt them out rapid-fire with as many typos as you can manage.

Despite my lack of interest in the venue, however, I have noticed the recent uproar surrounding Elon Musks takeover of Twitter. The left is furious because it appears that Musk will disallow the censorship of which they had grown so fond. No more can they rest easy in the knowledge that their poorly formed ideas and false narratives will be unequivocally protected from dissidents by thought-police algorithms and official banishments.

Meanwhile, the right, being the hand most often slapped by the corporate dictatorship that was Twitter, is eating its popcorn now and watching with glee the recent turn of events in Dystopia. It is cheering Musk on and preparing all its pent-up one-liners for the new free-speech-friendly virtual world.

I admit there is satisfaction in seeing the smug enraged, but that is a base, sectarian satisfaction, which probably misses the forest for the trees. Free speech is a double-edged axe, as is censorship. Unbridled free speech is an open marketplace for ideas, not all of which are good for people and some of which are downright dangerous for both body and soul. Sure, you can say, as the free-market economists do about corporations, that the bad will be defeated by their betters in the free market of discourse, but this is nave. In a very truly well-educated society, the best ideas may prevail, for the citizens of that land have the tools to evaluate arguments on their merits. But we do not live in a well-educated society, not by a long shot, and the peddlers of bad ideas are often expert propagandists. They need not defeat their opponents (those with good ideas) in open debateindeed, they are incapable of winning on those grounds. They need only control positions of power: in the media, including social media and entertainment, in education, medicine, agriculture, politics, and so on.

With a poorly educated, highly indoctrinated society such as we have, it is not the better ideas that will prevail in a free-speech environment; it is the more pervasive propaganda. Admittedly, censorship offers no better an alternative. As we have seen with Twitter and other big-tech entities during the so-called pandemic and 2020 elections, censorship is executed by the powerful, not the wise.

In the hands of a wise parent, however, censorship of what comes into the home and into the minds of the children is not just a useful tool; it is essential for the familys healthmental, physical, and spiritual alike. So too with a wise government, with wise teachers, with wise editors of media outlets, with a wise religious authorityall potentially disseminators of truth and protectors of persons. In their hands, strict limitations on the flow of harmful ideas into society can only serve to limit the damage and carnage on a fallen, and therefore vulnerable, race.

The problem, of course, is that we do not have many wise people in government, in education, in media, or in religious authority at present, and, in fact, a great many of them are actively engaged in the destruction of the moral and political orders. Therefore, the censorship they impose is exactly the wrong kind: they cancel truth rather than lies.

Which brings us back to Twitter: a dictatorially leftist organization controlling the lions share of bellicose one-liner communications. Not only does the platform itself inhibit real debate, but its owners could not resist flexing the muscle of their market domination, and they started openly banning users who did not align with their weak-minded politics. To focus on their acts of censorship, though, and to cheer Musks alleged intention of bringing free speech back to the playing field is to miss the point of the problem.

The real offense of Twitter is not censorship. It never was a kindly, public-service endeavor meant beneficently to allow folks everywhere to speak their minds and be heard. It was about money and political power, and the owners of political power do not typically give equal time to their opponentsnot in their own backyard. And if you think about it, why should they?

The trouble with Twitter is not censorship but false advertising, a bait-and-switch scam. Come on in, everyone! The water is fine, and the speech is free. You can make a splash and spar with anyone about anything you like. There is the appearance of no vested interest behind the offering.

That Elon Musk just paid $44 billion dollars for it should shatter that illusion.

Michael Larson

Top image by Mohamed Hassan, Pixabay

Read this article:
The Trouble with Twitter - Chronicles - A Magazine of American Culture

Earlier this month, thousands of software developers in China woke up to find that their open-source code hosted on Gitee, a state-backed Chinese competitor to the international code repository platform GitHub, had been locked and hidden from public view.

Gitee released a statement later that day explaining that the locked code was being manually reviewed, as all open-source code would need to be before being published from then on. The company didnt have a choice, it wrote. Gitee didnt respond to MIT Technology Review, but it is widely assumed that the Chinese government had imposed yet another bit of heavy-handed censorship.

For the open-source software community in China, which celebrates transparency and global collaboration, the move has come as a shock. Code was supposed to be apolitical. Ultimately, these developers fear it could discourage people from contributing to open-source projects, and Chinas software industry will suffer as a result.Read the full story.

Zeyi Yang

The must-reads

Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Americas children are more anxious than everAnd it runs deeper than the pandemic. (NYT $)+ The relentless stream of bad news is making us all feel bad. (Wired $)+ How to mend your broken pandemic brain. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Digital surveillance programs make immigrants feel like prisonersTheyre touted as a more humane alternative to detention, but ankle tags carry stigma and stoke anxiety. (Coda Story)+ The CIA and US military are spending huge amounts of money on metaverse projects. (The Intercept)

3 The Wikipedia editor exposing the predatory world of cryptomaniaThat doesnt mean shes reveling in its current implosion. (WP $)+ Six months into the crypto crash, investors are making the same mistakes. (Motherboard)+ Fraudsters are using a deepfake of Elon Musk to steal crypto. (Motherboard) + This crypto reality dating show sounds like a parody of itself. (Input Mag)

4 A new ancestry-predicting DNA tool is solving missing-people mysteries But experts are wary that DNA phenotyping could further fuel racial discrimination in policing. (NYT $)+ Our museums are a treasure trove of genomic data. (Ars Technica)

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The Download: Open source censorship in China, and US kids are more anxious than ever - MIT Technology Review