ALL 850 BOOKS TEXAS LAWMAKER MATT KRAUSE WANTS TO BAN: AN ANALYSIS

I get an assortment of E-letters from an outfit called Book Riot. This is an article from one that I thought was both interesting and pertinent (as well as appalling). Sorry the link is long.

On October 25, Texas Republican State Representative Matt Krause sent a letter to the Texas Education Agency asking if any of the schools in the state have the books listed on a 16 page spreadsheet, as well as how much in funds schools had spent on these books.

These books are theoretically related to House Bill 3979, a so-called anti-CRT bill that bans teaching any materials that could mean “an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex.” Of course, the bill — which is an overreach that has confused school districts about how to follow it — doesn’t actually mention books in school libraries. It’s about curriculum. Nonetheless, with the increase of book bans and challenges recently, Krause appears to want to preemptively remove any books that could be challenged for causing “discomfort.”

Ever since I saw this list, I’ve been itching to dig into it. It’s a bizarre assortment of titles, formatted in a way that suggests it’s copy-and-pasted from library listings. (The format of “Title : subtitle” is common in library records, but not in most other places.) Where did these books in particular come from, and what’s really on it? I went through all 850 books to find out, and I found some interesting and unsettling things.

Some disclaimers first: these are rough numbers. As you might expect, looking into 850 books took a while, so these are based on a glance at the cover and description. Also, I used “trans” as an umbrella term for any books dealing with gender-nonconforming people for the sake of clear statistics.

https://bookriot.com/texas-book-ban-list/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=RR%20Nov%205%2C%202021&utm_term=BookRiot_TheRiotRundown_DormantSuppress