As of an April 2022 report from PEN America, Florida had the third largest number of bans at 204, following Texas and Pennsylvania at 713 and 456, respectively. The organization found that a total of 26 states had bans across 86 different school districts. Although book bans in the United States are less extreme than other global or historical examples, the effects can still be detrimental to student’s mental health.ĭuring the 2021-2022 school year, PEN America conducted its first formal count of banned books across the United States. Across the state, many counties are scrambling to figure out what is and isn’t allowed in school media centers.īook bans are not a unique issue to FloridiansĪccording to PEN America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the freedom of speech and expression, book bans have a long global history and have been associated in the past with authoritarian governments. I found people who were using different pronouns and didn’t identify as just a man or a woman.”īooks on LGBTQ+ topics, like the ones Bustamante were seeking out, are currently being restricted in schools across Florida due to proposed legislation. “At the young age of 13, I realized I related to a lot of them and that some of those labels may apply to me. “Seeing my favorite online artists talk about their own experiences made me resonate with them,” said Bustamante. She says reading books and graphic novels that featured queer characters was essential to discovering their gender identity.
“I wasn’t into ‘girly’ things at that age, and sometimes I didn’t even like being called a girl,” said Bustamante.Īlthough she feels confident in her gender identity now, Bustamante remembers how isolating it felt to be a queer student in high school. It wasn’t until they were educated on different gender identities that they felt seen. The book featured characters that not only looked like them, but also echoed the emotions and feelings Bustamante felt on the inside. As a senior at Florida Gulf Coast University Jules Bustamante uses she/they pronouns, but Bustamante remembers a time when they were 13-years-old, standing in their media center in search of one book: “Simon vs.
0 kommentar(er)
