Book Club Discussion Post: All Boys Aren’t Blue

Welcome to our Banned Books book club! This go round we’ve selected three books that have been banned or challenged for various reasons. Each of our books – All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas – have their own Discussion Posts. Even if you weren’t able to get your review written yet, don’t worry – all are welcome here in this post’s comments or our Social Media platform discussions. In our Facebook group, Cannonball Read Book Chat we’ll have some additional prompts so please join us there as well.

Registered participants in this year’s Cannonball Read 14 can join the #CannonBookClub Zoom Book Club on Saturday September 17 at 2 pm EDT/ 11 am PDT. Those Cannonballers should have already received connection details by email. (Contact us if you haven’t!) If you’re not registered, but would like to; please drop us a line to get signed up and receive the Zoom details. 

For those of you returning or who might be joining in for #CannonBookClub for the first time (hello new friends!) all are welcome, you don’t have to be registered for CBR14. The topics are numbered, so please refer to them below by that number to help people find the conversations they are looking for; and only respond to one topic per comment to help keep things clear. If you are responding to someone else’s thoughts, please try to reply directly to that comment.

Now, onto the questions:

1. Do you think what George M. Johnson aims to achieve for the younger audience they also achieved with their adult audience?
2. Do you think there are any valid reasons to ban books? 
3. The popular saying goes, “forgive and forget”, but Johnson posits that forgiveness isn’t a requirement, only accountability. How do you feel about it? Do you agree with Johnson?
4. In All Boys Aren’t Blue Johnson says, “I’ve come to learn that symbolism is a threat to actual change—it’s a chance for those in power to say ‘Look how far you have come’ rather than admitting, ‘Look how long we’ve stopped you from getting here.'” Where do you recognize a symbolic gesture that’s taking the place of real change? What is the real change that’s needed?
5. How do you feel about the term memoir-manifesto? If you could write a memoir-manifesto, what would your purpose be? Who would you be writing it for? 
6. What is the value of hope in All Boys Aren’t Blue?
7. All Boys Aren’t Blue’s challenges and bans often include accusations of the book being obscene. Do you think it is possible for art or literature to be obscene? 
8. I’ve got something to talk about that isn’t covered above, meet me in the comments!