Dave Eggers offers to replace books a South Dakota school board wants to pulp

The writer calls the planned destruction of copies of five titles – by Bernardine Evaristo, Alison Bechdel, Imbolo Mbue and Stephen Chbosky as well as his own – ‘an unconscionable horror’

Dave Eggers: ‘Every high school student should have unfettered access to literature’

Lucy Knight
Fri 6 May 2022 11.20 EDT

Dave Eggers, author of dystopian satire The Circle, has said he will provide free copies of his novel to schools in South Dakota, as well as copies of four other books that have been banned in the district’s schools.

School administrators in Rapid City thought The Circle, along with How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and Booker prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, inappropriate for pupils. The district’s schools’ copies have been marked as surplus and are due to be destroyed….

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Eggers, who founded non-profit publishing company McSweeney’s in 1988, is known for standing up for his principles. He refused to sell the hardback edition of The Every, his sequel to The Circle, via Amazon, in a stand against the retailer’s monopoly on the book trade.

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Students can email McSweeney’s executive director Amanda Uhle at amanda@daveeggers.net if they wish to be sent any of the banned books, with the titles to be shipped by independent bookstores.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/06/dave-eggers-offers-replace-books-south-dakota-school-board-pulp