A Florida lawmaker is reaching out to counties in the state to ask them whether they plan to review or remove Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new book from school libraries, the Daily Beast reports.
Fentrice Driskell, the Democratic minority leader in Florida’s House of Representatives, says she thinks that the Republican governor’s memoir, The Courage To Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, might run afoul of HB 1467. The state law, which DeSantis signed last March, requires school boards to post online lists of instructional materials, and allows members of the public to formally object to inclusion of any materials in the curriculum.
Published in February by Broadside Books/HarperCollins, The Courage To Be Free became a bestseller shortly after its release. Many political observers see the release of the book as a prelude to a presidential run by the governor, whom former President Donald Trump has sharply criticized and insulted in the past months. A critic for Kirkus called the memoir “boldly grandiose, turgid, and remarkably unenlightening.”
Driskell says that parts of DeSantis’ book deal with “divisive concepts” such as gender ideology, and that it contains scenes of violence, including one passage that describes the 2017 shooting of Steve Scalise, a Republican congressman from Louisiana.
Driskell told the Daily Beast that when it comes to DeSantis’ book, turnabout is fair play.
“The very trap that he set for others is the one that he set for himself,” she said.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
