“This event has a multicultural mission statement and we are focusing on the freedom to read ethnic studies,” Day said.

This year, Banned Book Week falls a week before the 2nd annual Ethnic Studies Week. Organizers specifically chose to read the book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” because it has been the target of many attacks on ethnic studies in the Arizona Public School System and the Texas Education Board over the last couple years.

Khoo organized Monday’s banned book readings, which were cosponsored by the center, located in Cesar Chavez Student Center, and the College of Ethnic Studies. It was also part of ALA’s larger Banned Books Week campaign. The center has its own library which offers a collection of books that focuses on specific topics such as Asian Pacific Islanders, race, class, gender, women’s studies and the occupation of Alcatraz.

April Mara Cristal is part of Pinoy Pinay Educational Partnerships, a teaching organization that sends people to public schools in the San Francisco Unified School District to teach Filipino American Studies. Cristal, an English linguistics major, participated in Banned Books Week on campus by reading an excerpt from “Pedagogy of the Oppressed.”

“This is one of the major texts that everyone in our program reads,” Cristal said. “The theories that are expressed in this book and that are taught through this book are the theories that we use to teach our students.”

The ALA’s Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 as a national celebration of the right to read. It is also to spread awareness about the dangers of censorship, advocate for intellectual freedom and First Amendment rights, support authors whose writings have been challenged, and as a way to say thank you to librarians, teachers, booksellers and anyone who makes those views available.