Industry & Advocacy News
October 19, 2017
Update from NCAC 10/27/2017: “Biloxi Junior High School announced in a letter to parents that To Kill a Mockingbird will stay in English classrooms, despite parental objections to the word ‘nigger.’ This victory is bittersweet. On the one hand, the book will be restricted to an optional reading list, available only to students with permission slips. However, the school also announced it will form extracurricular intensive study groups for students interested in engaging more critically with the text.”
A school district in Mississippi decided to pull To Kill a Mockingbird off the 8th grade reading list. The decision comes following complaints by parents over the classic’s use of the “n-word.” Many criticized the controversial decision, including Arne Duncan, the secretary of Education from 2009 to 2015 under President Obama, “When school districts remove To Kill a Mockingbird from the reading list, we know we have real problems.”
The Authors Guild has joined the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Association of American Publishers, American Booksellers for Free Expression, National Council of Teachers of English, and the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators in signing a letter prepared by National Coalition Against Censorship’s Youth Free Expression Committee to urge the district to return the book to the classroom.
See the letter below.
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