Last month a Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) directive seemed to require that copies of Marjane Satrapi’s memoir Persepolis be removed from classrooms and school libraries. A later memo clarified that the book was allowed to remain in libraries; the concerns…
Category: Education
Captain Underpants Leads ALA’s Top Banned or Challenged Books of 2012
National Library Week is here, and that means it’s time for the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom to release its annual list of the books most frequently banned and/or challenged in public libraries and schools in the previous…
CBLDF Executive Director Helps Keep Toronto Reading
Join CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 16, at the North York Central Library in Toronto (5120 Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario M2N 5N9) for Keep Toronto Reading: Graphically Speaking — Dirty Comics, a spirited discussion…
Obscenity Case Files: “I know it when I see it”
In the last edition of the Obscenity Case Files series, we discussed the Pope v. Illinois decision and how it impacted the Miller Test for identifying obscene material, which is not protected by the First Amendment. In this edition, we’ll take…
CBLDF Raises New Defense of Persepolis
Chicago Public Schools may think their letter regarding the attempted ban of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis provides an adequate defense for their actions, but today’s letter from the Kids Right to Read Project unquestionably eviscerates CPS’s argument. CBLDF is a sponsor…
Marjane Satrapi Wants to Know What CPS Fears About Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi wrote Persepolis not just to share her personal experiences growing up in Iran but also to make human the people of a country that has been otherwise vilified around the globe. Satrapi recently spoke with Khury Petersen-Smith with…
TONIGHT: The Trial of Zap Comix Presentation in NYC
Tonight in NYC, see Charles Brownstein, Executive Director of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund present “The Trial of Zap Comix: Comics, Counterculture & Obscenity in NYC” at the NY Comics & Picture Story Symposium. This presentation explores People v. Kirkpatrick a…
Students, Teachers, Iranian-born Artist React to PERSEPOLIS Ban
Two weeks after the news broke that Chicago Public Schools officials had removed Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel memoir Persepolis from 7th grade classrooms and placed it “under review” for use in 8th-10th grades, reactions continue to pour in from various…
Defending Manga: The Ryan Matheson Story
The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is proud to release Defending Manga: The Ryan Matheson Story, a short documentary video recounting the young American citzen’s fight for justice after being wrongfully accused of criminal activity because of fantasy and humor…
Chip Kidd Takes Action to FREE PERSEPOLIS
Chip Kidd — designer extraordinaire, writer, comics devotee, and CBLDF supporter — has added his voice to the cacophony decrying the attempt to ban Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis in Chicago schools. Recently, Kidd compiled a series of #FreePersepolis memes, calling on…