Book Riot reports on the history of book banning and censorship in relation to Marjane Satrapi’s influential graphic novel, Persepolis. Its legacy continues in an upcoming graphic nonfiction work called Wake Now In the Fire, written by Jarrett Dapier and illustrated by AJ Dungo. “In 2013, library science graduate student Jarrett Dapier filed a Freedom of Information Act request that made public the Chicago Public School district’s attempt to quietly remove Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi from school libraries and classrooms. […] News of the banning caused a public outcry, especially after Dapier brought his finding to the news and the ALA. Now, Dapier is turning this story into its own graphic nonfiction work called Wake Now In The Fire. It’s illustrated by AJ Dungo and follows a group of Chicago high school students who fight back against the attempts at censorship in their own school.”
The Banning of ‘Persepolis’ Spawns a New Legacy
Books of a Southern Capital
As part of their efforts to explore new literary locales, the bloggers at Ploughshares took on Richmond, perhaps the only city to claim Edgar Allan Poe, Tom Wolfe, and GWAR.
Chicken Soup for the Stall
As literary genres go, bathroom graffiti ranks somewhere between obscenities carved into desks and poorly spelled comments in terms of respectability. Yet it’s still a form that could reveal interesting things, which is why a group of researchers took a series of fact-finding trips to public stalls across America. Their takeaway? “The mere fact of being in a public bathroom could be skewing how people choose to present themselves when they uncap that Sharpie.” Related: Buzz Poole on The History of American Graffiti.
Do Libraries Really Destroy Books?
“6 Reasons We’re In Another ‘Book-Burning’ Period In History” is not about the destruction of books based on content or community objections; it’s about the destruction of books because libraries (and sometimes bookstores) don’t know what to do with them. We also had a little something to say about the topic.
“Save Us From Novelists”
“God save us from novelists who want to create role models.” Time Out New York has published a new interview with Eimear McBride, whose award-winning A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing was reviewed by our own Hannah Gersen for The Millions.
The Millennial Resurgence of Eve Babitz
For Buzzfeed Rachel Vorona Cote explores Eve Babitz and the white literary It Girl. “Readers, particularly literary women in their twenties and thirties, seem to be entranced by this child of Hollywood, who unabashedly relished her LA milieu and both chronicled and defended its paradoxes. But it’s still a milieu that flattens the city into one that is homogenous, wealthy, and white.” Pair with this essay about her novel Sex and Rage.