What do Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler and Audre Lorde have in common?
They are acclaimed Black women authors, ancestors and storytellers whose words have shaped how generations understand race, gender, identity and power. Their work also sits within a longer history of Black literature being challenged, restricted or pushed from view.
That history is not confined to the past.
To mark Banned Books Week, Unerased | Black Women Speak asked what is at stake when access to stories, history and civic participation is threatened.
Reading Is Resistance, a three-part video series, marks Banned Book Week but acknowledges that bans against Black women are imposed every day! The series builds on the work of Power Read 25, Unerased’s national civic engagement and reading initiative celebrating Black women’s lives through biography. Across three conversations, authors, scholars, educators, journalists and civic leaders examine the many forms of erasure, from books removed from shelves to restrictions on what young people can learn and barriers to the ballot box.
The series, available on the Unerased YouTube channel, opens with The Banned Shelf, an exploration of literary erasure through the lives and works of Black women writers.
Zora Neale Hurston scholar Sharon D. Johnson joins Dana A. Williams, author of Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship, and Soyica Diggs Colbert, author of Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry. Williams’ and Colbert’s biographies are also featured on the Power Read 25 list.
Their roundup, curated by Power Read 25 Project Director Tracy Chiles McGhee, considers why writers like Hurston, Morrison and Hansberry remain essential reading and what is lost when Black women’s words become harder to access.
The connection to biography is particularly important. A biography does more than record the milestones of a life. It provides context. It allows readers to understand what someone encountered, what shaped her thinking and how she responded to the world around her. Preserving those stories helps preserve a fuller account of the history Black women helped make.
Episode 2, Banning the Ballots, widenes the conversation by moving from access to books to access to the ballot box, particularly timely as the November midterm elections approach.
Moderated by New Pennsylvania Project founding CEO Kadida Kenner, the discussion features Vote Lead Impact founder Krysta Nicole Jones and All About the Ballots cofounder and Executive Director Cassandra Brown. Both are members of the Power Read 25 Advisory Committee.
They examine voting rights, civic participation and the continuing work of ensuring Black women’s voices are heard in American democracy.
The series closes with Setting the Books Free, a roundup introduced by Unerased Creator & Campaign Director Gwen McKinney, turning attention to young readers and the people working to protect their access to books, history and ideas. The show, premiering on October 22 at 7pm, and there after, will be streamed on the Unerased Youtube channel.
Washington Informer publisher Denise Rolark Barnes joins author and literacy consultant Caroline Brewer and Vanderbilt University Peabody Library Director Tiffeni Fontno to consider what happens when young people’s access to books is restricted and what educators, librarians, journalists, authors and communities can do to keep stories within reach.
Brewer’s Harriet Tubman, Force of Nature: A Biography in Poems, which is included in the Power Read 25 youth collection, offers one example of how history can be made accessible to a new generation of readers.
Across all three conversations is a simple idea: Access is essential.
A book and a ballot may seem like very different things, but both support the fundamental act of participation. Who gets access? Who gets heard? Who gets to encounter information and ideas? And who gets to make choices for themselves?
Black women have long used the written word to document lives, challenge prevailing narratives and preserve histories that might otherwise have been ignored, distorted or erased. Protecting those stories requires keeping them within reach and ensuring another generation has the freedom to encounter them.
Because reading is both an act of discovery and an act of resistance.
To access the three-part video series, visit Youtube@unerasedbws.
Joshua Levi Perrin is a writer for Unerased | Black Women Speak.
