Join Keenan Norris, PhD for an overview of WWII-era suppression of Black literature (Richard Wright, Chester Himes), this presentation will, additionally, visit the African American Policy Forum's data on current book bans, linking the current crackdown with times past. Actively engaging the audience, this presentation will examine the supremacist and imperialist logics that commonly undergird book bans.

Presenter

Keenan Norris’s latest book is Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings. Keenan’s novel The Confession of Copeland Cane won the 2022 Northern California Book Award and his essays have received the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award and Folio: Eddie Award. Keenan teaches English and Creative Writing at San José State University.

Join the SJSU King Library and the San José Public Library — in partnership with the SJSU Pride Center, SJSU College of the Humanities & the Arts, SJSU Department of Humanities, SJSU Center for Steinbeck Studies, SJSU School of Information, Santa Clara City Library, California State Senator Dave Cortese, SJSU Department of English & Comparative Literature, SJSU Department of African American Studies, SJSU Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and the SJSU Artistic Excellence Programming Grants — as we celebrate Banned Books Week with a week's worth of events highlighting our right to read freely.