 Golden Books, 1993 | Halfway through a bizarre conversation about the "Barbie" movie, I realized that my wife thought the director was Greta Thunberg. To be fair, neither of us knows much about Barbie (or movies). When we were growing up in the '60s, I was into outer-space toys, and my future wife was studying the Bible. Decades later, our own daughters had no Barbies. They got stuffed animals, puppets and a couple of American Girl dolls. Hispanic Josefina and Depression-era Kit were absurdly expensive, but at least they came with those painfully earnest history books (story). This week, very late to the Dream House, I discovered that Barbie has inspired a veritable library of books. Goodreads lists so many I couldn't even count them all. As Barbie once said, "Math class is tough!" Who can be trusted in the U.S.-China spy wars? Dive into a tale of espionage and foreign intelligence by Post Opinions columnist and bestselling author David Ignatius. Read more. | | | | | M.G. Lord's "Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll," traces the wholesome toy back to a "pornographic caricature" in a Berlin newspaper — a bizarre trajectory that I'm sure the Germans have a word for (story). Before she died in 2002, Barbie inventor Ruth Handler told her own story in "Dream Doll" (review). And "Dressing Barbie: A Celebration of the Clothes that Made America's Favorite Doll and the Incredible Woman Behind Them" has just been released in paperback; we've got a stylish Q&A with the author and fashion designer Carol Spencer (interview). The real treasure trove, though, is Barbie fiction. The Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University recently published an article about the 13 Barbie novels and collections of short stories released by Random House in the early 1960s. Curiously, Barbie bards Cynthia Lawrence and Bette Lou Maybee seem to have vanished into thin air. (What other kind of air would be appropriate for Barbie?) Grolier published a 12-volume set of Barbie books in the late 1990s. And in 2005, Golden Books launched a series called "Barbie Diary of the Decade," hoping to catch some of that American Girl Doll literary magic (story). These days, Barbie would never make it to the beach if she had to read all the books about her. The voluminous stories capture her as a mermaid, a ballerina, a farmer, a firefighter, a doctor, a princess, a gardener, a spy, a teacher and, of course, a woman who knows that "Hair is Amazing." One of the classics, "Very Busy Barbie," was created by Barbara Slate, who later illustrated a graphic novel version of "The Mueller Report," which suggests a degree of flexibility that even double-jointed Ken would envy. Other books to screens - "Oppenheimer," starring Cillian Murphy, detonates today in theaters. Christopher Nolan's three-hour biopic is based on "American Prometheus," the 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. Reviewing the book for The Washington Post 17 years ago, James Gleick wrote, "'American Prometheus' is comprehensive, finely judged where it most matters and sometimes revelatory" (review). This week, Washington Post movie critic Ann Hornaday says "Oppenheimer" "evolves from a historical and biographical deep dive to a meditation on moral injury and, in its final hour, to a thoroughly gripping psycho-political thriller" (review). Fun fact: In 1948, when Oppenheimer was director of the Institute for Advanced Study, T.S. Eliot became the organization's first artist in residence. But the poet left before the end of the year to accept the Nobel Prize, an honor that forever eluded the father of the atomic bomb.
- "See You on Venus," starring Virginia Gardner and Alex Aiono, opens today in theaters. The story is about an American teenager who flies to Spain with a friend to find the mother she never knew. Surprise: She finds love, too (trailer). The movie is based on a debut novel by Victoria Vinuesa, which won't be released until Sept. 5.
 Candlewick; background photo of the U.S. Capitol by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post. | Last week, as the House was finishing up the National Defense Authorization Act, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) tossed in an amendment to prohibit spending on pornography in schools run by the military. Some Americans are unaware that the Defense Dept. runs 160 schools worldwide for about 66,000 children of military families. Everyone is unaware that these schools are buying pornography. "Enough is enough," Boebert thundered. "I don't send my boys to school to receive indoctrination from the woke mob or to be sexualized by groomers." Having cleared that up, she began to enumerate some of the corrupting books lurking in DoDEA libraries. It was the usual run-down of Moms for Liberty greatest hits, including "All Boys Aren't Blue," "This Book Is Gay" and "Gender Queer." From such satanic texts, teenagers learn about "masturbation" and "ejaculation" and get lured into the homosexual lifestyle. Worst of all, Boebert found a copy of "Julián Is a Mermaid" in a DoDEA elementary school library. "It describes a boy who wants to become a mermaid," she said. "During the book, the boy repeatedly strips down to his underwear. Later, he puts on lipstick and dons a headdress. He is then given costume jewelry before being taken to the NYC Mermaid Parade, where he can freely express himself." Imagine that: a book encouraging a child to "freely express himself." What's next? Women wearing pants? White shoes after Labor Day? Breaking away from her script, Boebert said, "I see some folks getting uncomfortable in this room right now," which I suspect is her typical effect on any room. Fortunately, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) rose on behalf of "LGBTQ people whose experiences must be told." Speaking as a former student in a DoDEA school and now the mother of a queer daughter, Houlahan said, "The beauty of books is in their ability to expose us to worlds and ideas that are outside of our own. Our schools should be focused on creating environments that support every student and not censoring their individual experiences." She noted that Boebert's amendment could be used to ban Judy Blume's novels or any book that teaches young people about their bodies. Houlahan went on to say she was "quite disgusted by some nonstop attempts that seem to be coming from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to label content that they don't like as pornography — as a shield that, frankly, in my opinion, is hiding blatant bigotry." Boebert responded, "I am not allowed to show my children triple X-rated videos, nor would I." Good to know. Her amendment passed. _tstmp_1689896832-3000-1745.jpeg) Ta-Nehisi Coates and Mary Wood, an AP English teacher at Chapin High School, speak with supporters before a school board meeting on Monday in Irmo, S.C. (Joshua Boucher/The State via AP) | On Monday night, Ta-Nehisi Coates did what we should all be doing: He attended a school board meeting where a great book about African American life was being challenged. The book at issue was "Between the World and Me," by Ta-Nehisi Coates. During the Lexington-Richland district 5 school board meeting in South Carolina, Coates sat next to Mary Wood, an AP English teacher who had been told in February to stop using his memoir. Coates didn't speak at the school board meeting, and he told me later that he wanted to "keep attention on Mary." If you're looking for a hero-teacher in a racist subculture, Mary Wood is it. Referring to the censorial minority clamoring against her, Wood told me, "They poked the wrong bear." Wood has been teaching for 14 years. She tells me that 80 percent or more of her students regularly receive a qualifying score on the AP exam. That's more than 20 points higher than the global average. (My wife teaches this same course in Bethesda, Md., and she also uses Coates's memoir.) In AP Lang, as it's commonly called, students practice analysis, argumentation and persuasive writing. Last February, Wood began a unit that involved studying redlining, access to education and a list of related vocabulary words. "Between the World and Me" would give the students a chance to analyze a complex argument and develop their own. "We didn't get that far," Wood says. "After a couple of days, the lesson was halted, and I had to revise the curriculum and no longer teach the book." Reportedly, a few students in her all-White class had complained to the school board that the unit made them "feel uncomfortable" and "ashamed to be Caucasian." (Such racist idiocy is all the rage: Florida just passed new education standards that claim enslaved people "developed skills" that "could be applied for their personal benefit.") Wood says she was given a letter of reprimand by the principal that was placed in her school file — even though she's taught "Between the World and Me" before and even though the school had bought the books for her students. "None of it made sense," Wood says. "I didn't break a single policy. I'm following the standards of the College Board. I didn't understand how systemic racism or Black perspective could be considered controversial during Black History Month." "I feel like we have regressed 25 years," Wood says, "and it scares me that we'll regress more." But seeing Coates at the school board meeting was a thrill. Naturally, he signed Wood's copy of "Between the World and Me." "What a good human he is, a truly good human. It was a really special thing to have an author show up." The calls are coming from inside the house. I've spent the last few years railing against book burning by right-wing fanatics, but some people who monitor freedom of expression full time see the threat as more bipartisan. According to PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, the principle of free speech "is at grave risk of losing its moorings within our society." I used to worry we were in the middle of an immensely consequential battle. Now I'm wondering if the United States is, in fact, settling into an insidious consensus. At a meeting with The Washington Post editorial board on Wednesday, Nossel described an alarming intolerance arising all across the political spectrum. "I don't think any of us expected this," she said. "Soft censoriousness from the left has been met with out-and-out censorship from the right and an absolute embrace of heavy-handed legislative tactics to ban and suppress certain ideas." (Disclosure: I'm a member of PEN America.) I think college kids shouting down some pinstriped racist is a lot less dangerous than the State of Missouri threatening to imprison librarians, but I see Nossel's point. Speech codes and book bans may start in opposing camps, but both warm their hands over freedom's ashes. Liberals want transphobic slurs and vaccine misinformation muzzled, while conservatives want discussions of sexuality and Black history banned. We can argue about the relative harm of those actions, of course, and pundits on the left and right have made playing the game of whatabout? more popular than pickleball, but the result is a flurry of suppression that leaves freedom of expression orphaned. What's most concerning is how poorly we're teaching young people about the sanctity of intellectual and artistic liberty. "We're in danger of losing a rising generation on the principle of free speech," Nossel said. "They're mostly progressive, and they don't see a stake for themselves in the very idea of free speech. They've come to see it as a smokescreen for hatred and as a kind of cudgel of the right." Meanwhile, Republicans are actually wielding a very different cudgel. To erase the lives of Black and LGBTQ+ people, conservative activists have rushed to pass laws banning what they call "divisive concepts." Such state-enforced silence is incompatible with freedom. "We all have to accept that discourse is not always comfortable," Nossel said. "We have to be very judicious in recognizing that there are some very narrow circumstances where speech can cause harm, but that the rest of what you're talking about is really more offense and a little bit of upset. It's not actual lasting harm, and it cannot be used as a justification to police what ideas can be discussed and talked about." These days, even saying that seems risky.  Copyright © 2023 USPS. | Today at Morehouse College in Atlanta, the U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp to honor the late John Lewis (video). Lewis, who died in 2020, was a leading figure in the Civil Rights movement and a member of the House of Representatives for more than 30 years. Toward the end of his life, Lewis saw his position in American history cemented in American literature, too. In 2016, he won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for the concluding volume of his graphic memoir trilogy "March." The NBA judges said his work, with Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, "creates a visceral and immediate experience of history from the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church to the signing of the 1965 Voting Rights Act." At the NBA prize ceremony, Lewis choked back tears as he said, "I grew up in rural Alabama, very, very poor, very few books in our home. And I remember in 1956, when I was 16 years old, some of my brothers and sisters and cousins going down to the public library trying to get library cards. And we were told that the library was for Whites only and not for Coloreds." "But I had a wonderful teacher in elementary school who told me, 'Read, my child, read.' And I tried to read everything." The John Lewis first-class stamp is based on a photograph taken by Marco Grob for Time magazine in 2013. The full sheet of 15 stamps also includes a photo of Lewis taken by Steve Schapiro at a nonviolence workshop in Mississippi in 1963. This is a Forever stamp in every sense (order).  The newly launched Nonbinarian Book Bike in Brooklyn. (Photo courtesy of K. Kerimian) | People can't always come to the books, so the books must come to them. That challenge inspired K. Kerimian to create the Nonbinarian Book Bike. It's a three-wheeled bookmobile that has started distributing free queer literature in Brooklyn. "Book deserts and accessibility are part of the disparity in literacy," Kerimian tells me. But the hostile political climate affects some readers more than others. "Rising anti-trans legislation across the country, as well as the regional book bans we've seen of queer books created what I thought was an urgent need." Determined to do something practical, Kerimian consulted with a variety of people who work in libraries and bookstores. They reached out to Icicle Tricycles in Portland, Ore. For about $4,600, the company created and delivered a delightfully eye-catching tricycle that Kerimian now rides around Brooklyn a couple of times a week. (Other volunteers are in training; steering the Nonbinarian Book Bike is a lot trickier than it looks!) The books have been donated by authors, publishers, publicists, agents and other people in the book industry. Anyone can help by buying books from the Nonbinarian Book Bike's wish list, which currently contains "The Death of Vivek Oji," "In the Dream House," "Bad Gays" and other titles to give the Moms for Liberty nightmares. On Monday, just a few days after its enthusiastic launch, the Nonbinarian Book Bike was spray-painted by vandals. While sitting in an Emack & Bolio's ice cream store wondering how to recover, Kerimian got a call from Icicle Tricycles. They'd seen the news on Instagram. "We believe in what you do," they said. "How can we, from across the country, support you?" "Both of us had a little cry," Kerimian says. And more support flooded in over social media and in person. Everyone wanted to know how to help. As it turns out, the Nonbinarian Book Bike was treated with a thin UV protection layer over all its graphics. So the spray-paint damage was only skin deep and didn't really hurt the vehicle. In English class, we call that a metaphor, a sweet one.  The Hall at Wadham College, University of Oxford, where participants in the Oxford Centre for Fantasy course ate with the summer students. (Photo by Susan Mackay Smith) | Last March, I mentioned that the Oxford Centre for Fantasy in England was offering a workshop to improve your writing while wandering around "the landscapes that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and their fellow Inklings." One of you took me up on that suggestion! Susan Mackay Smith in Boulder, Colo., writes, "Because of this newsletter, I went, and it was marvelous, inspiring, occasionally rigorous (the hike up to the Uffington White Horse, or rather, the hike down), and so worthwhile." The workshop, including meals and lodging in Wadham College, cost about $2,000 total. It was led by the novelists Julia Golding (a.k.a. Joss Stirling and Eve Edwards) and M.G. Harris. "They are both exceptional teachers and entertaining tour guides," Smith says. A longtime writer and teacher herself, Smith has been a Tolkien fan since her 7th grade French teacher recommended his work. "'Lord of the Rings' was a total shock," she tells me. "That's what fiction can do!" Later, inspired by Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and their Inklings group, Smith found her own critique group, which includes fellow writers Carol Berg, Curtis Craddock and Courtney Schafer. Given Smith's background, visiting the Oxford Centre for Fantasy was a dream come true. "Every day for five days," she says, "we had creative writing seminars in the college, then outings to various places, including the Sarehole Mill in Birmingham (the original of the Old Mill in Hobbiton); the Kilns (C.S. Lewis's house); Otmoor bird sanctuary (for Lewis Carol and Tolkien); Wayland's Smithy, a 5,000-year-old long barrow, which likely inspired the Barrow-downs in 'The Fellowship of the Ring'; several walks around the city of Oxford to Merton and Magdalen Colleges and the like (and Blackwell's bookshop, which is an amazing Tardis-like place, bigger inside than out, and also which published Tolkien's first poetry). Oh, I could go on and on." The Road goes ever on and on,
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can. — from "The Lord of the Rings," by J.R.R. Tolkien  Penguin Books | MacArthur "genius" Terrance Hayes published two books this month. Reviewing his new collection of critical writings, "Watch Your Language," my colleague Becca Rothfeld said, "Time and time again, he introduces a phrase or form that appears familiar, then radically reinvents it. The results are strange, sometimes surreal and always sublimely surprising" (review). The same could be said about his new poetry collection, "So to Speak." These are pieces that fuse trauma and humor, erudition and silliness in ways that somehow preserve those disparate qualities. In one poem, for instance, Hayes recalls "when James Baldwin & Audre Lorde each lend / Stevie Wonder an eyeball." Here's one of two poems that share the same title: Strange As the Rules of Grammar Ladies & Gentlemen put your hands together
for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's beautifully iambic name Do not think of all the tall in him
squeezing into a stall at the mall as strange Some days his father whispered to himself
Someday that boy's going to change his name I ran away from home as soon as I had a chance
when I was four or five in the Carolinas Certain words never used to cross my mind
A god who claims to be on the side of good but remains hidden is strange as the rules of grammar
The mouth fills with mouthfuls of grammar Strange as the flowers a lost child finds
in the woods & consumes Strange as that "that!" a toddler cries in public
when something shiny appears a candy hard as a ruby wrapped in plastic
a lonely coin blinking in the grass or at the bottom of a fountain
within the toddler's grasp The first time my parents left me alone
with a babysitter I ran away before noon They spent hours looking for me
before going home to find I had been waiting on the porch the whole day
they say You too may recall a story
so old you never thought to mention it to anybody Strange as the first wound you ever received
The scar so old others must tell you how it was made From "So to Speak," by Terrance Hayes. Copyright © 2023 by Terrance Hayes. Published by arrangement with Penguin Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.  Ron Charles modeling PEN America merch in his backyard. (Photo by Dawn Charles) | When the PEN American folks visited The Post on Wednesday, they were kind enough to give me this cool T-shirt and a new book tote, which is now my favorite. By the time you read this, I'll be on the road to New Hampshire to visit my folks. Dawn's reading Sarah Winman's "Still Life," one of my favorite novels of 2021 (rave), and I'm reading "My Name Is Iris," by Brando Skyhorse, which I'll tell you about next week. Meanwhile, send any questions to ron.charles@washpost.com. You can read last week's issue of the newsletter here. Tell friends who might enjoy this free newsletter that they can get it every week by clicking here. And remember, you can find all our books coverage, updated every day, here.
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