sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies
Abstract
This paper examines how the relationship between race and gender-based violence impacts how schools choose which books to ban. In particular, this paper focuses on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (1970) and the novel’s place on the American Library Association’s compiled lists of the most frequency banned books in the United States. Using an analysis of The Bluest Eye in conversation with the work of academics such as Spillers (1987) and Crenshaw (1991), this paper posits the intersection between race and rape in The Bluest Eye — and how that intersection implicates white supremacy in gendered violence —which leads to schools banning The Bluest Eye more frequently than other books involving rape without a racialized lens.
Publication Date
2018
Recommended Citation
Roskin-Frazee, Amelia
(2018)
"Banning Blackness: Race, Gender-Based Violence, and Classroom Censorship,"
sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies: Vol. 11, Article 6.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/sprinkle/vol11/iss1/6
Included in
Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons