Banning Books with Suzanne Nossel

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon sits down with Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, to talk about some of the issues related to free expression and book banning. With more than 4,000 book bans at last count, this is an issue that has swept across the nation. Suzanne discusses what kind of book bans they see the most, and how veiled language about “protecting children” is used to remove books that contain narratives only a minority of people find uncomfortable. Books are more frequently labeled “pornographic” or “indecent" incorrectly, causing a chilling effect across classrooms, libraries, and resulting in some classic literature and health-related content to be removed from the shelves.

How do we as a society reconcile the framework and the value of the 1st Amendment in America, with restrictions on books and the censorship of diverse ideas? And what can the majority of parents do to fight for the freedom of information and expression in schools?

Special thanks to our guest, Suzanne Nossel, for joining us today.

Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon

Guest: Suzanne Nossel

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today. My guest is Suzanne
0:09.7	Nossal, who works for Penn, America. Just an organization that defends free expression
0:16.8	in the United States, whether that is protecting people from book bands or it is making
0:23.1	sure that a college campus speaker is allowed to share their ideas even if you don't like
0:28.5	them. Penn, America does incredibly important work and we're going to talk specifically
0:33.4	about some of the issues related to free expression and book banning in today's episode. So let's
0:39.6	dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting. I am really excited
0:47.3	to be chatting today with Suzanne Nossal. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Sharon.
0:51.9	I have long admired the work that your organization does and I wonder if you could fill us
0:58.3	in on the type of work that Penn, America does. Just in case somebody is not familiar with
1:05.8	what you do. Sure, absolutely. I'd be delighted. We are an organization with a mission to
1:10.8	both celebrate and defend freedom of expression worldwide. So on this kind of celebration
1:16.6	side of the organization, if you will, we give out the country's most comprehensive program
1:21.6	of literary awards. Penn, America awards. They've been called the Oscar Books by Vanity
1:27.7	Fair and the New York Times. We give out awards for fiction and nonfiction and biography
1:33.1	and playwriting. I have a wonderful ceremony to celebrate authors. We do literary programs.
1:40.2	Now all across the country, we have 10 chapters as well as offices in New York City, Los Angeles
1:46.1	and Washington, DC. We do a big festival every year called Penn World Voices where we bring
1:51.5	in writers from all over the world to be in dialogue with American counterparts. And
1:56.9	then we have a side of the organization that is focused on the defense of freedom of expression.
2:01.7	We consider that in a very broad minded way. So part of our work includes elevating lesser
2:08.4	herd voices, people who are shut out of the debate. We have a program for incarcerated
	...

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