<\/p>\n
NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2013 Actor-activist George Takei’s<\/a> 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<\/a>, which takes place Oct. 5-11. Libraries and bookstores around the country will highlights books that have been censored, from Maia Kobabe’s \u201cGender Queer\u201d<\/a> to Toni Morrison’s<\/a> \u201cThe Bluest Eye.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d said the \u201cStar Trek\u201d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Previous honorary chairs for Banned Books Week, established in 1982, include Ava DuVernay<\/a>, LeVar Burton<\/a> 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<\/div>\n Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.clickondetroit.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW YORK \u2013 Actor-activist George Takei’s next project is on behalf of a longtime passion \u2014 the right to read. 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2040849,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[348508,21741,364203,377673,377674,377675,377676,30188],"class_list":["post-2040848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ava-duvernay","tag-entertainment","tag-george-takei","tag-iris-mogul","tag-jason-reynolds","tag-maia-kobabe","tag-toni-morrison","tag-u-s-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/George-Takei-to-lead-Banned-Books-Week-urging-the-fight.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2040848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2040848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2040849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2040848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2040848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2040848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}