Tag Archives: Book Banning

It Just Got Hotter in Texas

Being a reputable media outlet, this journal frequently focuses on news that’s intended to make readers angry. Hey, whatever it takes to get those precious clicks. Well, not today – because we’re bringing you a feel-good story where common sense prevails.

On June 12, 2023, Texas passed the READER Act, which stands for Restricting Explicit and Adult-Designed Educational Resources. It requires book vendors selling to Texas public schools to rate books based on sexual content. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/04/business/texas-sexually-explicit-books-law/index. Now it will be much easier to find sexually explicit material in school books. I must confess: This news gave me a joy boner.

Per the law vendors must first determine whether a book has sexual content. Easy peasy. If so, they must then label that content as either “patently offensive” (aka the good stuff) or just “sexually relevant” (aka missionary position). Simple pimple, because everyone knows what “patently offensive” means. Is it offensive? Do you have a patent for it?

But how will I know how hot the “patently offensive” stuff is? I don’t want to waste my money here. Not to worry. Texas thought of that too. A committee will assign anywhere from 1 (that’s different) to 4 (need a new pair of underwear) erect eggplant emojis to books with patently offensive material. It will assign 1 (after school TV special) to 4 (is that your grandfather?) withered eggplant emojis to books with boring sexually relevant material.

All I can say is: Thank you, Texas. Now, if only Goodreads would do the same.

Tengo Leche, Patently Offensive Editor

Ban My Book, Please

In a desperate attempt to achieve my twin goals of becoming obscenely rich and obnoxiously famous, I became a poet.  It didn’t work.  But I was reading Luisa Zambrotta’s Words and Music and Stories yesterday, and she had a post about James Cabell and how he rose from obscurity overnight all because he wrote a book the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (Oxymoron Alert) achieved in getting banned. (http://wordsmusicandstories.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/fantasy-optimism).  Perversely, writers become rich and instant celebrities whenever people try to ban their books.  It makes me wonder why folks would want to ban anything they don’t like.  If “offensive” books were only ignored (like any other book), those writers would remain impoverished and die alone.

My second thought was that’s brilliant!  I’m going to do that.  I started thinking of all the obscene topics that would get a book banned:  war, cruelty, rape, adult diapers, hatred, and Coldplay.  But when I went to various media outlets to conduct research, I found everyone was talking about these issues. The people in favor of obscenity (whatever that is) weren’t banned, and neither were the people who opposed it. Instead each side was treated with the same amount of contempt.

So now I’m bereft.  If those topics won’t get my book banned, what will?  Writing about people who want to be treated with dignity?  About people who want to love each other without being assaulted?  You can see how desperate I’ve become.  Why would anyone ban a book for those reasons?

Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief.