UNITED STATES - At school, you may have read the Journal Anne Frank in class, the diary of a young Jewish girl exiled to the Netherlands during the Nazi regime. But in early September, a teacher in Texas was fired for reading extracts from the novel to his pupils in the fourth grade. According to the school district concerned, this version of Journal contains pornographic material.
The controversial extract is taken from a graphic novel adapted from the original work, which includes passages cut from other editions. And one of these passages concerns, among other things, a description of the clitoris written by Anne Frank. The teenager also mentions her attraction to another girl.
After parents complained about these passages being read " inappropriate "The teacher was dismissed, reports the television channel KFDM. This is not the first time that this adaptation has been contested: last year in Texas, the book was withdrawn from certain libraries.
However, the Anne Frank Fund, which manages the copyright for the various editions of the newspaper, had already defended the content of this graphic novel, explaining that a book written by a 12-year-old girl was perfectly appropriate for her peers.
A worrying wave of censorship
But the controversy doesn't stop there: the graphic novel has also been banned in several districts of Florida. This is just one of many examples in the United States, where school libraries have been facing a growing wave of censorship since 2021. A growing number of restrictive laws have been passed by Republican elected representatives, and unsurprisingly it is books about marginalised communities and dealing with subjects such as discrimination, gender and sexuality that are being banned.
Examples abound, particularly in conservative states: in one district in Florida, a book about two male penguins raising a baby penguin together was banned from nursery and primary schools. In South Carolina, it was Ta-Nehisi Coates' memoir on systemic racism, Black anger, which had been singled out by students who had managed to censor the book at their school.
The controversy is growing, to the point that on Tuesday 19 September, 175 artists and activists, including Ariana Grande, Roxane Gay and Mark Ruffalo, signed an open letter condemning this wave of censorship. " Soon these regressive ideologues will turn their attention to other forms of art and entertainment, persisting in their attacks that scapegoat marginalised communities, particularly racialised people and those from the LGBTQ+ community, "The text also calls for the defence of artistic freedom.
Text by huffingtonpost.fr /Émilie Rappeneau
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