In solidarity with students. who have had books banned in their district, the Department of Africana Studies / Rites and Reason Theatre invites you to join us for a reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.

On May 2, 2023, in an act of symbolic protest against rising instances of educational repression, we invite you to volunteer to read, or just stand in solidarity with the twenty-four members of the Brown community who will read the book aloud in its entirety to celebrate Morrison’s groundbreaking text which has been banned in public libraries and school systems in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

As a department, we are committing ourselves to standing for the freedom of expression, the freedom to read, the freedom to imagine and explore artistic universes.

We invite the campus and surrounding community to join us, to bear witness, to stand with others who can not abide censorship. We shall not remain silent in the face of elementary and high school libraries being picked clean of books on Black, brown, and LGTBQ+ topics, or the aims to demonize queer, trans, radical, women, and Black thinkers. We invite you to join us.

4:30 PM until the book is read.