Sept. 27, 2023 – Celebrate the Freedom to Read October 1-7 with special events at the Cedar Rapids Public Library in honor of Banned Books Week and by checking out a Banned Book!
The Cedar Rapids Public Library is partnering with Amnesty International for a Celebration of the Freedom to Read at the Downtown Library on Monday, October 2, from 6-7 pm in Beems Auditorium. This family-friendly event will offer patrons a chance to celebrate the Freedom to Read while crafting buttons, sharing stories, and creating community art.
Banned books will also be on display, including these selections suggested by Amnesty International. They worked with the Women’s Human Rights Co-group to compile a list of reading suggestions from books that are or have been banned in the past. Read one, read all, and support writers, editors, poets, publishers, and librarians. Book descriptions are from the Women's Human Rights Co-group list.
"The Handmaid’s Tale" by Margaret Atwood
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now…
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, "TheHandmaid's Tale" is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour deforce.
"Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.
Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.
"The Complete Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi
"Persepolis" is the story of Satrapi's unforgettable childhood and coming of age within a large and loving family in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution; of the contradictions between private and public life in a country plagued by political upheaval; of her high school years in Vienna facing the trials of adolescence far from her family; of her homecoming – both sweet and terrible; and, finally, of her self-imposed exile from her beloved homeland. It is the chronicle of a girlhood and adolescence at once outrageous and familiar, a young life entwined with the history of her country yet filled with the universal trials and joys of growing up.
"Sustancia de Hígado" by Michelle Recinos
Author Michelle Recinos, age 24, whose short story collection tells the story of abusive treatment by the El Salvadorian government, was scheduled for presentation at this year’s Guatemalan InternationalBook Fair. However, the Salvadoran government issued an ultimatum to the Book Fair organizers – remove her book from the program, or El Salvador would cancel its participation in the gathering.
"The Color Purple" by Alice Walker
A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, "The Color Purple" depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance, and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery, and Sofia and their experience. "The Color Purple" broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship, and growth, resilience, and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.
"Our Share of Night" by Mariana Enríquez
A woman’s mysterious death puts her husband and son on a collision course with her demonic family. A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality. For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?
Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, "Our Share of Night" is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,” says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”
"Like a Love Story" by Abdi Nazemian
It's 1989 in New York City, and for three teens, the world is changing. Reza is an Iranian boy who has just moved to the city with his mother to live with his stepfather and stepbrother. He's terrified that someone will guess the truth he can barely acknowledge about himself. Reza knows he's gay, but all he knows of gay life are the media's images of men dying of AIDS. Judy is an aspiring fashion designer who worships her uncle Stephen, a gay man with AIDS who devotes his time to activism as a member of ACT UP. Judy has never imagined finding romance ... until she falls for Reza and they start dating. Art is Judy's best friend, their school's only out and proud teen. He'll never be who his conservative parents want him to be, so he rebels by documenting the AIDS crisis through his photographs.
As Reza and Art grow closer, Reza struggles to find a way out of his deception that won't break Judy's heart--and destroy the most meaningful friendship he's ever known.
"The House of the Spirits" by Isabel Allende
In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future. "The House of the Spirits" is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.
"Kiss of the Spider Woman" by Manuel Puig
"Kiss of the Spider Woman" is a graceful, intensely compelling novel about love and victimization. In an Argentine prison, two men share a cell: Molina, a gay window dresser who is self-centered, self-denigrating, yet charming as well; and Valentin, an articulate, fiercely dogmatic revolutionary haunted by memories of a woman he left for the cause. Both are gradually transformed by their guarded but growing friendship and by Molina’s obsession with the fantasy and romance of the movies.
"The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison
"The Bluest Eye" is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of Black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom, Pecola's life does change – in painful, devastating ways. What its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment, "The Bluest Eye" remains one of Toni Morrisons's most powerful, unforgettable novels – and a significant work of American fiction.
"Beloved" by Toni Morrison
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s "Beloved" is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past.
Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present.