Velshi Banned Book Club

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi brings you “Velshi Banned Book Club,” an act of resistance against the book banning and censorship epidemic sweeping the nation. In each episode, a different author joins Ali to discuss why their work is being targeted and what is so crucial about the literature itself. “Velshi Banned Book Club” is a series rooted in literary and cultural analysis, in the notion that reading is resistance. Read along with Ali.


Velshi Banned Book Club Season Two Reading List:
"Small Acts of Courage" by Ali Velshi
“The Giver” by Lois Lowry
“1984” by George Orwell
“How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents” by Julia Alvarez
“American Street” by Ibi Zoboi
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
“Hunger” by Roxane Gay
“The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls
“Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare
“All the Rivers” by Dorit Rabinyan
“Bridge to Terabithia” by Katherine Paterson
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
“Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson
“Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi
“Maus” by Art Spiegelman

Velshi Banned Book Club Season One Reading List:
“Two Boys Kissing” by David Levithan
“Boy Erased” by Garrard Conley
“All American Boys” by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
“Dear Martin” by Nic Stone
“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
"The Tempest" by William Shakespeare
“Nineteen Minutes” by Jodi Picoult
“Give a Boy a Gun” by Todd Strasser
“The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones
“Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe” by Benjamin Alire Saenz
“Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Perez
“Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson
“Ready or Not” by Meg Cabot
“Beloved” by Toni Morrison
“Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston