READ BANNED BOOKS

During her sophomore year at St. Paul Central High School, Elizabeth Seelig created this collage to answer the question: “What impacts do book bans have on the BIPOC community and how have people fought back?” She wrote in her artist statement: “Diverse books, which are frequently the object of book bans, can provide BIPOC readers with several community cultural capitals, including aspirational capital. When people don’t have access to books that reflect parts of their identity, they may have difficulty seeing themselves overcoming adversity and chasing their dreams. ... The words written with magazine clippings are three common ways that book bans are justified. I used magazine clippings as an allusion to stereotypical ransom notes, which disguise the sender’s handwriting and therefore the sender’s identity. This allusion illustrates how book banning justifications are usually disguises for the real intent of book banning. Book banning is often used as a tool to silence BIPOC narratives, and as the quotation highlights, to hurt the BIPOC community. ... The bottom half describes various ways that people have fought against book bans. ... The QR-code leads to a webpage that describes how to access the banned books. This webpage ties back into how simply reading banned books is an act of resistance. These many forms of resistance are not just meant to inform, but are also hopefully an inspiration to the viewer to join the fight against book bans.”