Banned Books Week

By -
Executive Director Lori Starr with her Banned Books Week selection
Banned Books Week began in 1982 in response to so many books being banned and protested in libraries, classrooms, and bookstores. Many classics that have been a part of the literary canon for decades are still being protested and their merit challenged.

 J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Toni Morrison’s Beloved Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein have all been banned and protested for different reasons. Having just hosted an exhibition on the photographs of Allen Ginsberg and learning about the trial around the publication of HOWL by City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, we're more keenly aware of the fierceness of the fight for the freedom of expression.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We All Need the Human Touch: Ray Harryhausen's The 3 Worlds of Gulliver

By -
Image
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And how many times have we had Clarke's Third Law cited by the pro-tech contingent? San Francisco has been at the epicenter of a new tech boom. When programming cultural events centered on technology for Bay Area arts organizations, it may be impossible not to consider the social and political issues surrounding it.
Read more

Jews on Vinyl Revue, Review

By -
Image
Roger Bennett, co-curator of Jews on Viny, co-founder of Idelsohn Society Part of the reason we formed the Idelsohn Society For Musical Preservation was to change the legacy of the performers we meet. Over the past five years we have uncovered a lost world of Jewish music replete with performers whose careers have been in danger of being written out of history. Our efforts have been focused on recording their stories, documenting their career arcs, and in many cases, giving them the opportunity to take the stage again, so a young audience can rock out to their sound and appreciate their legacy. Thanks to Connie Wolf and the board and staff at CJM, we were able to do this in fine style at the Jews on Vinyl Revue—and in perhaps the highlight of our work so far, Idelsohn co-founder David Katznelson was able to present Irving "Fabulous Fingers" Fields with a proclamation from Mayor Gavin Newsom, declaring that it was officially Irving Fields Day throughout the city. For thi
Read more

Stanley Kubrick: A Jewish Story

By -
Image
Stanley Kubrick with his viewfinder during the production of Lolita (GB/United States; 1960-62). © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.  Stanley Kubrick was born in 1928 into a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx. Though he was not raised in a religious family, Kubrick grew up immersed in a strongly Jewish context. [1] The West Bronx, where his father Jacob Kubrick was a physician, was home to a growing Jewish middle class in the 1920s. Here, Kubrick first encountered many of the Jewish people who would have profound influences on his film career. This included Marvin Traub, who introduced Kubrick to photography; Alexander Singer, cinematographer for Kubrick’s first film  Day of the Fight ; Gerald Fried, who composed the score for his first five films; writer Howard Sackler, who wrote an early screenplay for Kubrick; and Weegee, the tabloid crime photojournalist, who was born Arthur Fellig. In 1949, Kubrick moved to Greenwich Village where his proximity to
Read more