Pink blew into Miami on Tuesday, November 14, like a hurricane, but instead of bringing death and destruction, the Grammy-winning singer brought books.
Being a voracious reader, she brought the best books: banned ones.
Over the last year the banning of books from school libraries have increased, but no state stands out as much as Florida where 40% of the US's incidents of censorship have occurred.
Despite nearly half of the school districts in Florida encountering instances of book banning, Gov. Ron Desantis says it's all a hoax.
"In Florida, pornographic and inappropriate materials that have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students violate our state education standards," Desantis explained in March.
But nothing was snuck in.
Those 300 books which were banned in Florida were ordered by teachers, librarians and editors and many have been read for generations.
So Pink, with the help of PEN America, have pledged to give away 2,000 books at the South Florida shows the singer is currently headlining.
Tuesday she got the party started in Miami where fans were greeted with stacks of four banned books:
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved by Toni Morrison; The Family Book by Todd Parr, a children's picture book that shows a variety of families including same-sex parents; the poem The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman - written for and read at President Joe Biden's inauguration; and Girls Who Code by Reshma Saujani.
Not exactly the stuff booksellers feel the need to tuck away in a brown paper bag. But more and more authors of color and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community are seeing their books demonized and pulled out of school libraries.
“I’m a voracious reader, and I’m a mom of two kids who are also voracious readers,” Pink said Sunday during an Instagram livestream explaining why this cause matters to her.
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“And I can’t imagine my own parents telling me what my kids can and cannot read, let alone someone else’s parents, let alone someone else that doesn’t even have children that are deciding what my children can read.”
Pink has just a few more shows on her schedule, three in Florida, one in OK, and one in TX. Grab your tickets via her website.
