Actor-activist George Takei’s next project is on behalf of a longtime passion \u2014 the right to read.<\/p>\n
The American Library Association announced Monday that the 88-year-old Takei will serve as honorary chair of Banned Books Week, which takes place Oct. 5-11. Libraries and bookstores around the country will highlights books that have been censored, from Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” to Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”<\/p>\n
“I remember all too well the lack of access to books and media that I needed growing up. First as a child in a barbed-wire prison camp, then as a gay young man in the closet, I felt confused and hungry for understanding about myself and the world around me,” said the “Star Trek” actor, who spent part of his childhood in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.<\/p>\n
“Please stand with me in opposing censorship, so that we all can find ourselves \u2014 and each other \u2014 in books.”<\/p>\n
Previous honorary chairs for Banned Books Week, established in 1982, include Ava DuVernay, LeVar Burton and Jason Reynolds.<\/p>\n
Takei will share leadership with honorary youth chair Iris Mogul, a first-year student at the University of California, Santa Cruz who has been active for years in anti-banning campaigns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actor-activist George Takei’s next project is on behalf of a longtime passion \u2014 the right to read. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-36674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}