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I Read Banned Books

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  I sat through a loooong school board meeting last week because a few angry parents had called for a book to be banned. The book in question was written by a transgender author, and the protagonist was an eleven-year-old trans character. I mention this only because 41% of the more than 1600 books that were banned in the U.S. last year involved LGBTQ+ authors, protagonists, or main characters, and because the PVPUSD board room was packed with LGBTQ+ community and allies. The call to ban the book was not an agenda item, and the district had publicly said they were not considering banning that or any book, so the 50+ speakers and more than a hundred other allies were there to send a clear message to the district. We value diversity in our books, we need representation of the LGBTQ+ community not only for the people who identify as such but for everyone, and perhaps most importantly, the message was clearly delivered that a few loud, angry people do not have the right to dictate wha...
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An Award for Romance

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I came from the film industry, so I was raised on a steady diet of the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards. Those awards are supposed to represent the best of the best – the top performances, the best writing and directing, and all the other wonderful moving parts that go into making an excellent movie. Those awards come with seals of approval, marks of prestige, a title that says you did a thing that people found to be great, perhaps even the greatest of that year. All of these awards are subjective, of course, and all of them have had problems, have been called out for inequity, a lack of diversity or inclusion, even inaccessibility. The good ones, the relevant ones with reputations for excellence keep moving forward, making strides to be different, to grow and change as people’s minds open to all the myriad ways hurt, harm, and exclusion have been perpetuated by the systems in place, and as such, they remain a hallmark of something special. The book world has its own set of ...
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A Human Queen - Conflicted Feelings About Elizabeth II

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  With the September 8th, 2022 death of Queen Elizabeth II, newsfeeds around the world were full of iconic images of Britain's longest-reigning monarch. Gorgeous glamour shots of the young queen, stately photos of the older woman, and even kindly grandmother pictures that wouldn't look out of place on someone's mantle. Another side of my social media feed was filled with angry posts about the monarchy's history of racist empire-building, of problematic choices by Elizabeth II personally, and the role of the crown in questionable policies. And a third subset of social media posters, especially among Americans, seem to consider the news of the queen's death unremarkable or unrelatable. I posted this photo that I took in May during a trip to York, UK, because somehow, this representation speaks to my own conflicted feelings about her iconic status. Unlike rock stars, media personalities, and politicians, Elizabeth Windsor didn't choose her fame, she was born to her...
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