Book-banned, or more accurately, book-dumped in Florida.

Well, I got book-banned, or book-dumped. 

“When I Knew,” an anthology that includes my short essay, is among the hundreds of books that were dumped by rightwing anti-gay minions at New College of Florida.

The Herald Tribune and The Guardian have the story:

“Sarasota’s New College, the once liberal arts school subjected to a “hostile takeover” by well-rewarded, ultra-conservative DeSantis allies, was exposed by the city’s Herald-Tribune for dumping thousands of library books, including a clear-out of its gender and diversity center.

Democratic politicians likened it to Nazi-era book burning, and a preview of the extremist Project 2025 agenda linked to the Republican former president Donald Trump’s campaign to win back the White House in November.

“These messages are coming from DeSantis’s appointed and approved leaders, and the governor should just go ahead and admit he wants to be the dictator that Trump wants to be, because that’s what this is,” said the Democratic state congresswoman Yvonne Hayes Hinson.

“This shameful book dump is just the latest chapter in this Republican regime’s war on books and ideas. How insecure do you have to be to ban books on gender and women’s studies. They’re just plain weird.”

This is what happens when rightwing idiots think they’re going to take over and suppress books and ideas that they think are “woke.” Of course the opposite of being woke is being stupidly asleep at the wheel while the world continues to evolve.

The idiocy of all this is that these books still exist. You can’t make a book disappear. They can be republished in new editions, or be found in other libraries or sold at used bookstores.

Here’s my contribution to “When I Knew,” edited by Robert Trachtenberg, with a sweet –and accurate– illustration by Tom Bachtell. Contributions include short essays by B. D. Wong, Arthur Laurents, Simon Doonan, Stephen Fry, Marc Shaiman, Michael Musto and many others. Imagine trying to censor the voices of these accomplished people.

You can buy a copy on BookShop, and, if you’re inspired, donate it to your local library.