What's happening at Hostos Library?

Join us on Wed. April 9 at 2 p.m. as we welcome celebrated author Ian Frazier, who will read from his latest book, Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough.

RSVP at https://hostos.libcal.com/event/14309489

https://hostos.libcal.com/event/14309489

This year many of us have had more time to read as we've been quarantined in our homes. We hope you may have included a selection of "Banned" Books in your reading!

WHAT IT IS:

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information.

Banned Books Week brings together those who support the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those that may be considered  controversial, unorthodox or unpopular (even politically incorrect).

By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the dangers posed by censorship.The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted with removal or restrictions by libraries and schools. While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This is due to the tireles efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read.

Visit these websites to learn more about censorship and how you can participate in Banned Books Week.

• American Library Association - Banned Books Week

  Website of the ALA office for Intellectual Freedom

• Banned Books Week

• First Amendment Center

• National Coalition Against Censorship

• Banned Books Week: Celebrating 30 years of Liberating Literature

• Banned & Challenged Classics 

• Frequently Challenged Books 

• Most Frequently Challenged Authors in the 21st century 

• Top Ten Challenged Books by Year 

For more information, go to our Libguide on Banned Books Week:  

Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month! From September 15, which is the anniversary of independence for several Latin American countries, to October 15, we celebrate the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America..

Resources on the Web:

• The official National Hispanic Heritage Month website which contains a comprehensive collection of exhibits, collection, images, videos and resources for teachers like lesson plans activities and more.  
• Smithsonian Institution Hispanic Resources 
• The National Endowment for the Humanities
• Primary Source Sets from the Library of Congress on Hispanic Exploration in America and Mexican American Migration and Communities.
• ABC-CLIO’s American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience Learn about Latino experiences first-hand, through the voices of Latino authors and contributors. Featuring more than 200 volumes of unique content. The database includes hundreds of primary source documents such as maps, images, audio clips, interviews, music files, speeches, documents, links to relevant websites and other material.
• Referencia Latina offers full-text content from prominent newspapers from 10 Latin American countries as well as magazines, health reports, reference books and images
• History of Hispanic Heritage Month by History.org
• Top Resources for National Hispanic Heritage Month from EBSCO
• Hispanic Heritage Month Resources for Teachers, Parents & Kids
• Facts about Latinos in America by Pew Research Group

Hostos Library resources

• Latino Literature contains poems, plays, novels and short stories by Latin American authors. Contents are in either Spanish or English.
• Multicultural and Diversity Resources Libguide - Hispanic/Latino Americans contains links to books, databases and notable works by Latinos
• Online Research for Latin American/Latinx & Caribbean Studies will assist students in doing research in Lat Am/Latinx & Caribbean Studies
• Diversity Studies Collection (Gale) 
• Handbook of Latin American Studies
• HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) 
• Latin American Women Writers 
• Latino Literature 

New York Public Library

• Digitalia is a Hispanic Database of ebooks and ejournals where you will find thousands of ebooks from the most renowned Spanish and Latinamerican Publishing Houses, as well as relevant journals that cover all topics of interest 
• A Guide to NYPL's E-Resources on Hispanic Heritage: Created to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in 2017, this site has a number of useful e-resources that are still up to date and relevant

Queens Historical Society

• Pan de Muerto - Oct 11th zoom event 

Brooklyn Library

• Virtual Storytime Event - Sept 24

Podcasting is a fun way to share information and improve your public speaking skills. A podcast is a great way to communicate with others and build community. Want to create a podcast? Not sure where to start? NYPL has a solution. You can register online to take the Create Your Own Podcast workshop. You can also use our resources from home at your own pace and create a podcast with Anchor with easy step-by-step instructions. Anchor is a free and easy application used to create, host, and stream podcasts.

Get inspired to start your own by listening to a variety of podcasts and share your unique perspective. Here are a few of my favorites:

• The Librarian Is In Podcast
• Jesus and Jollof with Luvvie Ajayi and Yvonne Orji
• The Daily Show With Trevor Noah: Ears Edition
• I Weigh with Jameela Jamil
• Listen Hunnay with Jeannie Mai
• Directionally Challenged: Candice King and Kayla Ewell
• The Radical Latino
• The Suga: Tika Sumpter and Thai Randolph
• The Koy Pond with Jo Koy

If you do not have a library card, you can apply for one here and access our SimplyE app and free databases such as Academic Search Premier, Mango Languages, Lynda.com, LearningExpress Library, and Brainfuse!

Check out more blogs from The New York Public Library: https://www.nypl.org/blog

— Lilian Calix, Adult Librarian, The New York Public Library

Hey Arianna here! Today I bring you some of the more weirdly banned books in the United States. I’ll mostly focus on what I believe are staples of children’s books. These are books I myself have read multiple times growing up and thought was just something all kids read. Apparently various schools across the U.S. have banned these books at some point. Enjoy this list and the summer! Who knows - maybe one of your favorite childhood books has been banned as well somewhere.

• James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl: Dahl’s childhood classic is frequently banned for a few reasons – likely it’s due to the book’s mentions of drug use, use of the word “ass” and, when a character, The Spider, licks her lips, it could be interpreted as sexual.
• Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White: Everyone knows Charlotte’s Web, or rather everyone should know about the friendship between Wilbur, a pig, and Charlotte, a spider.  In 2006, a Kansas group decided Charlotte’s Web was a blasphemous book because the animals spoke. According to world.edu, the group claimed that “humans are the highest level of God’s creation and are the only animals that can communicate vocally. Showing lower lifeforms with human abilities is sacrilegious and disrespectful to God.” There are other reasons too, but this is the most common one I found.
• The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling: You may not have read Harry Potter, but I’m sure at some point you’ve seen at least some part of one of the seven movies based off this book. The Harry Potter Series has been banned many times. The American Library Association even went on to write “Harry Potter and the 20 Years of Controversy,” an article that details why. It boils down to religion and accusations that Harry Potter features witchcraft, sorcery and a glorification of magic and the occult.
• A Light in the Attic by Shel Silvertstein: I loved, loved this book as a kid and pretty much still do as an adult. Silverstein’s rhymes were a nice break from the drudgery of a bad day and put a smile on my face. Finding out this book was banned at some point was surprising. According to CBSNews’ Banned Book Week Highlights, A Light in the Attic was banned for reasons such as “encouraging disobedience, glorifying Satan, suicide and cannibalism.”
• Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford: Yes, Waldo has been banned before! Finding the red and white striped individual in an overly crowded drawing while he chameleons himself is just a surprising ban. Even more surprising are the reasons for the ban - according to world.edu, Where’s Waldo? contains “inappropriate and seditious hidden images.” This included a topless sunbather and a gay couple.

In September, libraries everywhere will be celebrating “BANNED BOOKS WEEK,” which takes place this year on the 27th through October 3. If you would like to learn more about banned books, the American Library Association (ALA) has a compiled list of frequently challenged books. You can see the list here: http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks

If you liked this post, please let us know by following the Library on Twitter and Facebook.

Works Cited

“A Light in the Attic - Banned Books Week - Pictures - CBS News.” CBSNews, www.cbsnews.com/pictures/banned-books-week/6.

Baldassarro, Wolf. “Banned Books Awareness: Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White.” World Leading Higher Education Information and Services, 3 Apr. 2011, world.edu/banned-books-awareness-charlottes-web-eb-white.

Baldassarro, Wolf. “Banned Books Awareness: James and the Giant Peach.” World Leading Higher Education Information and Services, 22 May 2011, world.edu/banned-books-awareness-james-giant-peach.

Baldassarro, Wolf. “Banned Books Awareness: Where’s Waldo?” World Leading Higher Education Information and Services, 12 June 2011, world.edu/banned-books-awareness-wheres-waldo.

Peters, Patricia. “Harry Potter and 20 Years of Controversy.” Intellectual Freedom Blog, 13 Aug. 2017, www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=10636.

Hey, Arianna here!

Living in the Information Age means being able to acquire info with the tap of a finger. But did you know that what we read can influence the way we perceive people and situations? If an author is writing with an agenda in mind, he or she will try to persuade readers to see things through his/her point of view. That’s called Bias.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of Bias is:

1.  an inclination of temperament or outlook
   1. especially : a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment: PREJUDICE
2. an instance of such prejudice
3.  BENT, TENDENCY
   1. : deviation of the expected value of a statistical estimate from the quantity it estimates
   2. : systematic error introduced into sampling or testing by selecting or encouraging one outcome or answer over others

Bias can be found in the language used by an author inside a book or an article or in the script that accompanies a video. The author might sprinkle certain words here or there, usually adjectives, to steer the reader toward a certain way of thinking. He or she might use overly emotional language or make certain allusions to subtly manipulate the reader.

See what I did there? Be aware of authors making strong statements without providing adequate citations revealing where he or she got this information from. Never accept “facts” according to face value – always check sources if they are not stated outright. By definition, if an article is biased, the author has cherry picked facts to suit his or her narrative.

Did you know that there are some professions where it is actually someone’s job to ad bias to articles or pictures? For example, Public Relations and Advertising are two areas where people are hired to convey a positive image and reputation of their company at all times. These “Spin Doctors” are masters of media bias. “Spin” refers to using vague, dramatic and sensational language to garner a reaction and may play fast and loose with the facts. Authors “spin” objective facts to cloud a reader's perception. Today’s news media is one such place where one can see the work of spin bias.

Spinned articles, and biased articles in general focus on appealing to a reader’s emotions. Tabloid newspapers and gossip papers like the National Inquirer use “loud” language to get their point across. Beware of any publication that promises “exclusive” and “secret” information that only these writers have access to. Conspiracy theories are popular among “fringe” elements, people who claim only “they” know the truth, a psychology often invoked by cult leaders.

Challenge yourself by doing this little exercise: take an article from a random website and identify if there is a bias within that article. Find the keywords that make up that bias. Is the article using substitute words for “said,” and if so, what do these words convey? Does it describe a prominent figure objectively or does it use only a negative buzzword? Does it give a number of facts but provides no way for you to check whether these facts are true or not? Always question whatever you read – avoid being a passive reader. After you’ve read an article that upsets you, ask yourself, is the article objective or biased? Can any of the facts mentioned in the piece be checked for accuracy, or not?

I hope this article has been helpful to you. Knowledge is power!

Happy Summer Everyone!

I’m sure that, within the last two weeks, you have all heard about (or participated in) BLACK LIVES MATTER protests to end Police Brutality after the death of George Floyd and countless other black people. There are many ways to support this massive movement. One way is to read books written by Black authors. The books listed below are timeless classics that everyone should read at some point in their life. I’ll also include a list for a young adult audience. You may surprise yourself, but most of the books you may have already read! Sometimes large summaries give the plot away, so I’ll try to keep them as short and as spoiler free as possible. 

• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: Published in 1937, the story follows Janie Crawford as she recalls her life, starting with her spiritual and sexual awakening. She alludes to it by describing a pear tree visited by bees. Janie continues her recollection about her life, exploring her marriages and her journey to what she feels is the ideal love.
• Beloved by Toni Morrison: Published in 1987, Sethe is a former slave living in Denver with her daughter in 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is haunted by her past life as a slave and what she felt she had to do in order to escape as well as a malicious spirit in her home. Beloved is told through flashbacks.
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: Published in 1969, this was the first of seven autobiographies by Maya Angelou. This book follows her life from 3 years old until 16 years old. Angelou writes about her childhood, the racism she faced, the memory of her rape and about running away.
• Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin: This 1955 nonfiction book reprints essays written by Baldwin that had been featured in various magazines. It includes ten essays about race in American and Europe through the lens of his memories.
• Kindred by Octavia Butler: Last on the classics list is Kindred. Published in 1987, this science fiction novel tells the story of Dana, a young African-American woman being shunted between her modern day (1976) home in California and a pre-Civil War plantation in Maryland where she meets her ancestors.

Books for Youths/Young Adult

• Slam by Walter Dean Meyers: Any Walter Dean Meyers book is a pretty good book for a youngster. Slam, published by Scholastic, follows the story of “Slam” Harris, a high school basketball player. He navigates going to a predominately white school, his family issues and life on a basketball court.
• The Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi: The first of three books in the Legacy of Orisha, Adeyemi was inspired by other fantasy novels, Yoruba culture and West African mythology. It takes place in the fictional land of Orisha and follows Zélie Adebola as she maneuvers through the land of Orisha fighting for her life and those of the Maji. I really don’t want to spoil this book, so I’ll leave it at that. The sequel Children of Virtue and Vengeance came out last year.
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas: You’ve probably read or heard of this book because it was the featured “Hostos Reads” selection last year as well as the basis for a 2018 movie adaptation. The story follows sixteen year old Starr Carter as she navigates living in a poor neighborhood and commuting to a mostly white, elite school. When her childhood friend is killed by a police officer, Starr witnesses the act. Her two worlds begin to merge when she tries to keep her witness status hidden, but instead starts to find her voice when she speaks out about it.
• SLAY by Brittney Morris: Seventeen year old Keira Johnson, one of the only black students at Jefferson Academy, balances her life as the seemingly perfect student during school and the developer of the secret Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) SLAY. No one knows her identity as the developer. It isn’t until a murder over a dispute in SLAY rockets the game into fame that Keira must fight to keep her identity secret, her game safe, and herself as a person whole.

Hope everyone is staying safe!

Your Friendly Tech Tutor, Arianna

Arianna