Starting in mid September, the library will host a book display of challenged or banned books in the Popular Reading Lounge on the second floor of Library North.The Community is invited to visit the display and learn more about why some titles are banned in libraries across the country.
Date: September 15th - October 15th
Location: Popular Reading Lounge, Second Floor, University Library
The 2025 Banned Books Week theme from the American Library Association is "Censorship is So 1984--Read for Your Rights!" Come celebrate intellectual freedom and your right to read by participating in our Chalk Art exhibit. All students, staff, faculty and community members are invited to come draw their favorite scene from a Banned Book on the floor outside the library. This exhibit will be up all week.
The University Library is inviting the community to document your favorite Banned Book on our Community Mural, located inside the Library North lobby. People are encouraged to describe their feelings regarding censorship and to use the space to reflect on this year's theme.
Date: All Week
Location: Inside the Library
Join Education Librarian Dr Kimberly Franklin for a special panel on the state of censorship within Children's Literature. This panel will feature Cal State Faculty, students and community members. More info to come!
RSVP COMING SOON
Time: 12:15-1:30pm
Location: Community Room (Library North B131)
Banned Books Week: Read-Out!READ OUT BANNED BOOKS! Celebrate our freedom to read by stopping by to read or listen to excerpts from some of the most challenged and banned books in the country. A microphone and speakers will be set up outside the University Library. Email jmasuna@calstatela.edu if you’d like to sign up for a 3-min slot to read from your favorite banned or challenged book.
Time: 11:00am - 3:00pm
Location: Outside the Library
Join the Banned Books Week Committee members in discussing Chapter 4 of Isabel Milan's award winning book, Coloring into Existence.
"Coloring into Existence investigates the role of authors, illustrators, and independent publishers in producing alternative narratives that disrupt colonial, heteropatriarchal notions of childhood. These texts or characters unsettle the category of the child, and thus pave the way for broader understandings of childhood. Often unapologetically politically motivated, queer and trans of color picture books can serve as the basis for fantasizing about disruptions to structures of power, both within and outside literary worlds (NYU Press, 2025)."
Access Chapter 4 for free from the University Library
Time: TBD
Location: Community Room (Library North B131)
Join us for a screening and discussion of the documentary Precious Knowledge.
"Precious Knowledge interweaves the stories of students in the Mexican American Studies Program at Tucson High School in the mid 2010s. While 48 percent of Mexican American students currently drop out of high school, Tucson High’s Mexican American Studies Program has become a national model of educational success, with 100 percent of enrolled students graduating from high school and 85 percent going on to attend college. Meanwhile, the 2010 Arizona lawmakers passed a bill giving unilateral power to the State Superintendent to abolish ethnic studies classes. The filmmakers spent an entire year in the classroom filming this innovative social-justice curriculum, documenting the transformative impact on students who become engaged, informed, and active in their communities. Precious Knowledge provides an insider’s perspective student leaders fight to save their classes" (PBS Independent Lens, 2025).
RSVP Coming Soon
Time: TBD
Location:(Library North B131)