Every month, NYC Books Through Bars offers supporters a way to send books to incarcerated readers in prisons across the country. It’s always an intriguing collection. Last month, the group collected 450 books during their January campaign that included books that mixed astrology with social justice, graphic fiction with women’s history, and witches with vampires.  This month, NYC Books Through Bars takes on the thorny topic of censorship.

The Censor’s Bundle includes: Maus, The Bluest Eye & An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. 3 books for $30.

Vist freebirdbooks.com/shop.html to participate in the February campaign.

In an email, the group explained:

Lately, school boards across the country have taken an active stance against classic works of literature as well as contemporary social examinations that might scandalize our youth. While many prison systems also have a heavy hand when it comes to banning books, these examples have escaped their suppression.

The three we are including have been in the news of late: Maus–Art Spiegelman’s wrenching graphic novel about the Holocaust–recently removed from the 8th grade curriculum of Tennessee’s McMinn County School; The Bluest Eye–Toni Morrison’s brutally honest novel of the psychological toll of racism–stripped from the libraries in Missouri’s Wentzville School District; and An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States–Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz’s alternative reframing of the American narrative–one of over 800 books selected by Texas state representative Matt Krause in a witch hunt to purge books from schools that might generate “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress.”