Welcome to Season 2 of the Velshi Band Book Club. I'm Ali Velshi.

School libraries across the state of Tennessee have to sift through their entire collection of books to determine which novels, which memoirs,

and which classics are likely to run afoul of a draconian new state law that is so broad

it could sweep up everything from To Kill a Mockingbird to the Bible.

Nearly 3,400 books have been pulled from library shelves across public schools in Iowa to comply with a new law that prohibits books that include a, quote, sex act, which sweeps up award winners and classics that have been studied for generations, including 1984 by George Orwell and The Giver by Lois Lowry.

And Utah has outlawed 13 books, including works by Judy Bloom and Margaret Atwood, from every single public school.

And more books will be next.

Under a new state law, it takes just three of the state's 41 school district boards to claim a novel contains objective-sensitive

material to get a title banned. Censorship and book-banting efforts in America are becoming more

common, more accepted, and now they're being enshrined in law. These overt censorship efforts

share something insidious in common. They successfully

eliminate access to critical literature under the guise of protecting students from material

that is inappropriate. Well-organized right-wing groups who claim to stand for parental rights

have created a boogeyman around the idea of inappropriate books in

classrooms and libraries. They pound the table about sex and violence, quoting out-of-context

passages from the novels that have landed in their crosshairs to make the book seem dangerous

and scary. But often they don't read these books. They don't know the arc of the

character, the key plot points, or even the name of the author. They wouldn't know that a painful

passage in the context of a novel exploring the effects of sexual assault on a young woman

can make a reader experiencing the very same thing in real life ask for help.

They wouldn't know that a story that includes a family with two mothers can make a reader

understand a classmate better or feel more proud of who they are.

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