High school students in Pinellas County, Florida will no longer have access to the first book by African-American writer Toni Morrison (1931-2019) The Bluest Eye in their classrooms or libraries.
According to Tampa Bay Timeslocal school district officials announced that they had withdrawn the title from circulation after a review prompted by a mother’s complaint.
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, published in 1970, the author tells the story of an African-American girl growing up after the Great Depression. On the 50th anniversary of the book, in 2020, The New Yorker he said the play “blazed a new trail in the American literary landscape by placing young black women at the center of the story.”
It was part of a copious body of work that earned Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, joining dozens of other prizes, including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for loved (Loved).
Pinellas school officials took notice of The Bluest Eye after a mother, Michelle Stille, objected to it being a reading in his son’s advanced literature course.
In a video posted to YouTube, Stille, who teaches at a private Christian school, said she was “shocked that any adult would expose 15-year-olds to such explicit descriptions of illegal activity.”
He further said that he intended to remove any of his seven children studying public schools, calling them “Marxist indoctrination camps.”
A new state law requires schools to review all library books, even in classrooms, that are “harmful to minors.”
Some Florida districts have closed classroom libraries to children while they browse titles. Others have withdrawn titles pending formal review after receiving complaints from parents or community members.
The school board maintains that administrators have the “right and obligation” to review materials on a regular basis, with or without formal complaints. They have done so on several occasions, he said, pointing to a summer initiative to consider the appropriateness of almost 100 books as an example.
The news was greeted with praise from conservative advocates like blogger David Happe, who thanked the board for listening to the public. Others criticized the move, alleging that state laws on parental rights have been used as weapons against certain groups.
“Another parent shouldn’t be able to step on my rights to my child,” mother Barbara Mellen told the board. “Please stop the removal of materials from schools.”
