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Banned and Challenged: Restricting access to books in the U.S.

Perspective, ashley hope pérez: 'young people have a right' to stories that help them learn.

Ashley Hope Pérez

Author Ashley Hope Pérez wrote Out of Darkness, which is on the American Library Association's lists of most banned books. Kaz Fantone/NPR hide caption

Author Ashley Hope Pérez wrote Out of Darkness, which is on the American Library Association's lists of most banned books.

This essay by Ashley Hope Pérez is part of a series of interviews with — and essays by — authors who are finding their books being challenged and banned in the U.S.

For over a decade, I lived my professional dream. I spent my days teaching college literature courses and writing novels. I regularly visited schools as an author and got to meet teens who reminded me of the students I taught in Houston — the amazing humans who had first inspired me to write for young adults.

Then in 2021, my dream disintegrated into an author and educator's nightmare as my novel Out of Darkness became a target for politically motivated book bans across the country.

Book News & Features

Efforts to ban books jumped an 'unprecedented' four-fold in 2021, ala report says.

Author Interviews

Banned books: author ashley hope pérez on finding humanity in the 'darkness'.

Attacks unfolded, not just on my writing but also on young people's right to read it. Hate mail and threats overwhelmed the inboxes where I once had received invitations for author visits and appreciative notes from readers. At the beginning of 2021, Out of Darkness had been on library shelves for over five years without a single challenge or complaint. As we reach the end of 2022, it has been banned in at least 29 school districts across the country.

From the earliest stages of writing, I knew Out of Darkness would be difficult — for me, and for readers. I drew my inspiration for the novel from an actual school disaster: the 1937 New London school explosion that killed hundreds in an East Texas oil town just 20 minutes from my childhood home. This tragic but little-known historical event serves as the backdrop for a fictional star-crossed romance between a Black teenager and a young Latina who has just arrived in the area.

As I researched the novel, I imagined the explosion as its most devastating event. But to engage honestly with the realities of the time and of my characters' lives, I had to grapple with systemic racism, personal prejudice, sexual abuse and domestic violence. As I wrote, the teenagers' circumstances began to tighten, noose-like, around their lives and love, leading to still more tragedy. I sought to show the depths of harm inflicted on some in this country without sensationalizing that history. The book portrays friendship, loving family, community and healthy relationships because they, too, are part of the characters' world. Then, as now, young people struggle mightily for joy, love and dignity.

When Out of Darkness was first published, I braced for objections. Would readers recoil from the harshness of my characters' realities? Or would they recognize how the novel invites connections between those realities and an ongoing reckoning with racialized violence and police brutality? To my relief, the novel received glowing reviews, earned multiple literary awards, and was named to "best of the year" lists by Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal . It appeared on reading lists across the country as a recommendation for ambitious young readers ready to face disquieting aspects of the American experience.

So it went until early 2021. In the wake of the 2020 presidential elections, right-wing groups pivoted from a national defeat to "local" issues. The latest wave of book banning exceeds anything ever documented by librarian or free-speech groups. The statistics for 2021, which represent only a fraction of actual removals, reflect a more than 600% increase in challenges and removals as compared to 2020. (See Everylibrary.org for a continually updated database of challenges and bans and PEN America's Banned in the USA reports for April 2022 and September 2022 for further context.)

These book bans do not reflect spontaneous parental concern. Instead, they are part of an orchestrated effort to sow suspicion of public schools as scarily "woke" and to signal opposition to certain identities and topics. Book banners often cite "sexually explicit content" as their reason for objecting to books in high schools. What distinguishes the targeted titles, though, is not their sexual content but that they overwhelmingly center the experiences of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. If you were to stack up all the books with sexual content in any library, the tallest stack by far would be about white, straight characters. Tellingly, those are not the books under attack. Claims about "sexual content" are a pretext for erasing the stories that tell Black, Latinx, queer and other non-dominant kids that they matter and belong. Beyond telegraphing disapproval, book bans serve the interests of groups that have long sought to dismantle public education and shut down conversations about important issues.

Debates about the suitability of reading materials in school are nothing new. These include past efforts by progressives to reorient language arts instruction. Concerns about racist language and portrayals might well lead communities to seek alternatives to the teaching of works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . But de-emphasizing problematic classics does not generally entail removing the books from library collections. By contrast, in targeting high school libraries, conservative book banners seek to restrict what individual students may choose to read on their own , disregarding the judgment of school librarians who carefully select materials according to professional standards.

Rather than reading the books themselves, today's book banners rely instead on haphazard lists and talking points circulated online. Social media plays a central role in stoking the fires of censorship. Last year, a video of a woman ranting about a passage from Out of Darkness in a school board meeting went internationally viral. The woman's school board rant resulted in the removal of every copy of Out of Darkness from the district's libraries, triggered copycat performances, and fueled more efforts to ban my book.

Book banning poses a real professional and personal cost to authors and educators. For YA writers, losing access to school and library audiences can be career ending. And it is excruciating to watch people describe our life's work as "filth" or "garbage." We try to find creative ways to respond to the defamation, as I did in my own YouTube video . But there is no competing with the virality of outrage. Meanwhile, librarians and teachers face toxic work conditions that shift the focus from student learning to coping with harassment.

But book banning harms students, and their education, the most. Young people rely on school libraries for accurate information and for stories that broaden their understanding, offer hope and community, and speak honestly to challenges they face. As libraries become battlegrounds, teens notice which books, and which identities, are under attack. Those who share identities with targeted authors or characters receive a powerful message of exclusion: These books don't belong, and neither do you.

Back in 2004, my predominately Latinx high school students in Houston wanted — needed — books that reflected their lives and communities but few such books had been written. In the decades since, authors have worked hard to ensure greater inclusion and respect for the diversity of teen experiences. For students with fewer resources or difficult home situations, though, a book that isn't in the school library might as well not exist. Right-wing groups want to roll back the modest progress we've made, and they are winning.

These "wins" happen even without official bans. Formal censorship becomes unnecessary once bullying, threats and disruption shake educators' focus from students. The result is soft censorship . For example, a librarian reads an outstanding review of a book that would serve someone in their school, but they don't order it out of fear of controversy. This is the internalization of the banners' agenda. The effects of soft censorship are pervasive, pernicious and very difficult to document.

The needs of all students matter, not just those whose lives and identities line up with what book banners think is acceptable. Young people have a right to the resources and stories that help them mature, learn and understand their world in all its diversity. They need more opportunities, not fewer, to experience deep imaginative engagement and the empathy it inspires. We've had enough "banner" years. I hope 2023 returns the focus to young people and their right to read.

Ashley Hope Pérez, author of three novels for young adults, is a former high school English teacher and an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University. Find her on Twitter and Instagram or LinkT .

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Banned Books: Protect Your Freedom to Read

• Protect Your Freedom to Read
• The Banned Book Collection in Morris

Banned Books Week is celebrated annually, with sponsorship from the American Library Association (ALA), the National Association of College Stores, and many other organizations. According to the ALA, "Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted bannings of books across the United States."

A Worrisome Trend

ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 book challenges reported in 2021. Censors targeted a record 2,571 unique titles in 2022 , a 38% increase from the 1,858 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2021. Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community or by and about Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color.

• Censorship by the Numbers Resources documenting the number and locations of censorship attempts against libraries and materials compiled by ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom.
• Book Ban Data, ALA Latest numbers from ALA about book bans and challenges in the United States, including preliminary data from the first half of 2023. TL;DR: They're up. A lot.
• Banned and Challenged Books ALA's page devoted to censorship attempts and the annual Banned Books Week celebration.
• Book Bans, PEN America Resources and commentary related to book bans in the U.S., including a comprehensive list of successful school bans, assembled by a national writer's association.
• Ralph E. McCoy Collection of the Freedom of the Press Housed in the Special Collections Research Center on the first floor of Morris Library, the McCoy Collection offers the opportunity to explore issues of censorship and freedom of expression from a historical perspective. It is one of the world's best collections of rare books highlighting the history of First Amendment freedoms. It includes examples of many books that have been banned in the United States and Europe over the centuries. Many of the books listed below part of this collection. more... less... used in Overview of African American history collections in SCRC on Resources for the Study of African American History in Southern Illinois: Overview of Special Collections
• Beacon for Freedom of Expression The Beacon for Freedom project maintains an extensive database of censored publications and publications about censorship.

Banned Books Club and Books Unbanned

The Banned Books Club is a collaboration between libraries and sponsors to make banned books available online and at libraries for free. The University of Chicago and the Digital Public Library of America are offering free access to all Illinois residents through the Palace app.

• Banned Book Club Program to provide free access to electronic copies of banned books. Follow the steps to "Access Banned Books" to get your free card and start reading.
• Banned Books Club at the Palace Project Jump straight to the app the Banned Book Club uses to provide access to available titles.

A number of public libraries nationwide have joined the Books Unbanned initiative, offering free access to commonly challenged or banned titles in eBook form to readers age 13-26. If you fall in that age bracket, sign up for a free temporary library card and read banned books!

• Boston Public Library Books Unbanned Program
• Brooklyn Public Library Books Unbanned Program
• Seattle Public Library Books Unbanned Program

Top Ten Challenged Books from the Last Five Years

Banned in 2021 - 2022

According to PEN America, 1,636 different books were banned—not only challenged, but actually removed from shelves—in classrooms, schools, or libraries in the U.S. for at least a portion of the time between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. The following is a list of these banned titles available through Morris Library.

• Next: The Banned Book Collection in Morris >>
• Last Updated: Jun 17, 2024 11:16 AM
• URL: https://libguides.lib.siu.edu/bannedbooks

Who’s Behind the Escalating Push to Ban Books? A New Report Has Answers

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Updated : This article has been updated to reflect MassResistance’s opposition to its characterization by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

As book bans in schools across the country escalate, a handful of right-wing activist organizations and Republican lawmakers are behind them, putting pressure on districts to ban books about and by LGBTQ people and people of color.

That’s according to a new report by PEN America , a free speech advocacy organization. The groups pushing for books to be taken off library shelves and removed from the curriculum in school districts range from national advocacy groups with several branches across the country, including Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education, and MassResistance, to local-level Facebook groups. Together they are responsible for at least half of all bans, PEN America found.

The report identifies at least 50 different groups involved in local and state-level efforts to ban books, some with hundreds of chapters. Most of these groups have sprung up since 2021, when the current wave of objecting to books about LGBTQ people and people of color first started.

During the 2021-22 school year, nearly 140 school districts in 32 states banned more than 2,500 books, PEN America found. The latest report is an update to the one the organization released in April , and not only shows the escalating numbers of bans, but the organized efforts behind them.

The book bans represent an immense increase in the number of books banned compared with any previous years and are part of the larger movement to restrict classroom conversations and lessons about race, racism, gender identity, and sexual orientation that has been led by Republican lawmakers and conservative parent groups since 2021.

Twenty percent of all book bans over the past year were directly linked to the actions of these groups, with many more likely influenced by them, according to PEN America. That percentage is based on an analysis of news and publicly available information, such as statements at school board meetings or lists of books parents want banned.

In many of these cases, the advocacy groups also publicized their role in pushing for book removals. In an additional 30 percent of bans, there is some other evidence of the groups’ likely influence, including the use of common language or tactics, such as circulating a list of books that have been banned in other districts for parents to raise objections against.

“These groups probably do not necessarily represent a range of beliefs from our democracy,” said Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education programs at PEN America and author of the report. “So they’re having an outsized impact in a lot of places on what it is that everybody gets to read. And that, I think, is what’s most concerning.”

For his part, Brian Camenker, Executive Director of one of those groups, MassResistance, said he thinks free speech groups such as PEN America are “on the wrong side of history.”

He said that most books parents are complaining about and trying to get banned contain inappropriate sexual material, and that no one should be advocating for pornography in school libraries.

The pornography descriptor has been used across the country to describe books with LGBTQ themes and characters, and many librarians have refuted that claim.

“The LGBT issues, this is not necessarily a healthy behavior for libraries to be promoting on kids. And, and all of them, every one that I see involves sexuality,” he said. “The question isn’t really, who would want to ban these books, but the question is, who would want them?”

MassResistance was classified as an anti-LGBTQ+ “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center , but the organization refutes that characterization.

PEN America also estimated that at least 40 percent of the bans are linked to political pressure exerted by state officials or elected lawmakers.

For example, South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster wrote a letter last year asking the state department of education to investigate Gender Queer: A Memoir, by Maia Kobabe, a graphic novel on queer identity being available at a school’s library, calling it “sexually explicit” and “pornographic.”

“What we started to see was a picture of not just book banning, but a movement behind it,” Friedman said. “In a huge number of cases, these were not individuals who were responding to just a book their own child brought home, but they were people who had lists of books they had gotten online.”

From July 2021 to June 2022, PEN America found 2,532 instances of individual books being banned from schools, affecting 1,648 different book titles. Forty-one percent of banned books—or 674 titles—explicitly address LGBTQ themes or have protagonists or prominent secondary characters who are LGBTQ, the report says. Forty percent feature protagonists or secondary characters of color, and 21 percent of all banned titles directly address race and racism.

In the 2022-23 school year, book bans don’t seem to be slowing down. PEN America found at least 139 additional book bans that have taken effect since July 2022.

The most frequently banned books are Kobabe’s Gender Queer, which has been banned in 41 districts, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, banned in 29 districts, and Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, banned in 24 districts.

Once a book is challenged, administrators often don’t ask if the book has been read or support the discretion of their professional librarians, they just remove the book to avoid further controversy, Friedman said his reading of the research showed.

Camenker from MassResistance disagreed, saying it is very hard in his experience for parents to get books removed from libraries if they raise objections to them, even after reading excerpts from these books at public meetings, because of the policies districts have in place.

Districts often have policies in place if a parent wants to challenge a book or keep their child from reading it, but this is not the system most of the advocacy groups or politicians have been following, according to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

“What’s truly needed right now is for individuals to step up and support their libraries, both in schools and in public libraries,” she said.

“We need to counter this vocal minority that seems to have an outsized place on the stage and push back on the idea that having the government tell you what to think or what to read or limit what you think or read to a particular agenda imposed by an advocacy group,” Caldwell-Stone said.

An ALA report from last week also documents an increase in book bans and the larger role of right-wing advocacy groups in organizing parents to challenge books that contain characters or references to LGBTQ people and people of color.

That organization identified 681 challenges to books through the first eight months of this year, involving 1,651 titles.

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What You Need to Know About the Book Bans Sweeping the US

What you need to know about the book bans sweeping the u.s., as school leaders pull more books off library shelves and curriculum lists amid a fraught culture war, we explore the impact, legal landscape and history of book censorship in schools..

• The American Library Association reported a record-breaking number of attempts to ban books in 2022— up 38 percent from the previous year. Most of the books pulled off shelves are “written by or about members of the LGBTQ+ community and people of color."
• U.S. school boards have broad discretion to control the material disseminated in their classrooms and libraries. Legal precedent as to how the First Amendment should be considered remains vague, with the Supreme Court last ruling on the issue in 1982.
• Battles to censor materials over social justice issues pose numerous implications for education while also mirroring other politically-motivated acts of censorship throughout history. 

Here are all of your questions about book bans answered by TC experts. 

Alex Eble, Assistant Professor of Economics and Education; Sonya Douglass, Professor of Education Leadership; Michael Rebell, Professor of Law and Educational Practice; and Ansley Erickson, Associate Professor of History and Education Policy. (Photos; TC Archives) 

How Do Book Bans Impact Students? 

Prior to the rise in bans, white male youth were already more likely to see themselves depicted in children’s books than their peers, despite research demonstrating how more culturally inclusive material can uplift all children, according to a study, forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics , from TC’s Alex Eble.  

“Books can change outcomes for students themselves when they see people who look like them represented,” explains the Associate Professor of Economics and Education. “What people see affects who they become, what they believe about themselves and also what they believe about others…Not having equitable representation robs people of seeing the full wealth of the future that we all can inhabit.” 

While books have stood in the crossfire of political battles throughout history, today’s most banned books address issues related to race, gender identity and sexuality — major flashpoints in the ongoing American culture war. But beyond limiting the scope of how students see themselves and their peers, what are the risks of limiting information access? 

The student plaintiffs in Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982) march in protest of the Long Island school district's removal of titles such as Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. While the district would ultimately return the banned books to its shelves, the Supreme Court's ultimate ruling largely allowed school leaders to maintain discretion over information access. (Photo credit: unknown) 

“[Book bans] diminish the quality of education students have access to and restrict their exposure to important perspectives that form the fabric of a culturally pluralist society like the United States,” explains TC’s Sonya Douglas s, Professor of Education Leadership. “It's a battle over the soul of the country in many ways; it's about what we teach young people about our country, what we determine to be the truth, and what we believe should be included in the curriculum they're receiving. There's a lot at stake there.” 

Material stripped from libraries and curriculum include works written by Black authors that discuss police brutality, the history of slavery in the U.S. and other issues. As such, Black students are among those who may be most affected by bans across the country, but — in Douglass’ view — this is simply one of the more recent disappointments in a long history of Black communities being let down by public education — chronicled in her 2020 book, and further supported by a 2021 study from Douglass’ Black Education Research Center that revealed how Black families lost trust in schools following the pandemic response and murder of George Floyd.

In that historical and cultural context — even as scholars like Douglass work to implement Black studies curriculums — the failure of schools to properly integrate Black experiences into the curriculum remains vast. 

“We want to make sure that children learn the truth, and that we give them the capacity to handle truths that may be uncomfortable and difficult,” says Douglass, citing Germany as an example of a nation that has prioritized curriculum that highlights its own injustices, such as the Holocaust. “This moment again requires us to take stock of the fact that racism and bigotry still are a challenging part of American life. When we better understand that history, when we see the patterns, when we recognize the source of those issues, we can then do something about it.” 

Beginning in 1933, members of Hitler Youth regularly burned books written by prominent Jewish, liberal, and leftist writers. (Photo: World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo, dated 1938) 

Why Is Banning Books Legal? 

While legal battles over book censorship in schools consistently unfold at local levels, the wave of book bans across the U.S. surfaces a critical question: why hasn’t the United States had more definitive legal closure on this issue? 

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a noncommittal ruling that continues to keep school and library books in the political crosshairs more than 40 years later. In Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico (1982), the Court deemed that “local school boards have broad discretion in the management of school affairs” and that discretion “must be exercised in a manner that comports with the transcendent imperatives of the First Amendment.” 

But what does this mean in practice? In these kinds of cases, the application of the First Amendment hinges on the existence of evidence that books are banned for political reasons and violate freedom of expression. However, without more explicit guidance, school boards often make decisions that prioritize “community values” first and access to information second. 

While today's recent book bans most frequently include topics related to racial justice and gender identity (pictured above), other frequently targeted titles include Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close , The Kite Runner and The Handmaid's Tale . (Cover images courtesy of: Viking Books, Sourcebooks Fire, Balzer + Bray, Oni Press, Random House ‎ and Farrar, Straus and Giroux). 

“America traditionally has prided itself on local control of education — the fact that we have active citizen and parental involvement in school board issues, including curriculum,” explains TC’s Michael Rebell , Professor of Law and Educational Practice. “We have, whether you want to call it a clash or a balancing, of two legal considerations here: the ability of children to freely learn what they need to learn to be able to exercise their constitutional rights, and this traditional right of the school authorities to determine what the curriculum is.” 

So would students benefit from more national and uniform legal guidance on book banning? In this political climate, Rebell attests, the risks very well might outweigh the potential rewards. 

“Your local institutions are —in theory — protecting the values you believe in. And if somebody in Washington were going to say that we couldn't have books that talk about transgender rights and things in New York libraries, we'd go crazy, right?” said Rebell, who leads the Center for Educational Equity . “So I can't imagine that in this polarized environment, people would be in favor of federal law, whatever it said.” 

Why Do Waves of Book Bans Keep Happening?

Historians date censorship back all the way to the earliest appearance of written materials. Ancient Chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti began eliminating historical texts in 259 B.C., and in 35 A.D., Roman emperor Caligula objected to the ideals of Greek freedom depicted in The Odyssey . In numerous waves of censorship since then, book bans have consistently manifested the struggle for political control. 

“We have to think about [the current bans] as part of a longer pattern of fights over what is in curriculum and what is kept out of it,” explains TC’s Ansley Erickson , Associate Professor of History and Education Policy, who regularly prepares local teachers on how to integrate Harlem history into social studies curriculum. 

“The United States’ history, since its inception, is full of uses of curriculum to shape politics, the economy and the culture,” says Erickson. “This is a really dramatic moment, but the curriculum has always been political, and people in power have always been using it to emphasize their power. And historically marginalized groups have always challenged that power.” 

One example: when Latinx students were forbidden from speaking Spanish in their Southwest schools throughout the 20th century, they worked to maintain their traditions and culture at home. 

“These bans really matter, but one of the ways we can imagine a response is by looking back at how people created spaces for what wasn’t given room for in the classroom,” Erickson says. 

What Could Happen Next?

American schools stand at a critical inflection point, and amid this heated debate, Rebell sees civil discourse at school board meetings as a paramount starting point for any sort of resolution. “This mounting crisis can serve as a motivator to bring people together to try to deal with our differences in respectful ways and to see how much common ground can be found on the importance of exposing all of our students to a broad range of ideas and experiences,” says Rebell. “Carve-outs can also be found for allowing parents who feel really strongly that certain content is inconsistent with their religious or other values to exempt their children from certain content without limiting the options for other children.”

But students, families and educators also have the opportunity to speak out, explains Douglass, who expressed concern for how her own daughter is affected by book bans. 

“I’d like to see a groundswell movement to reclaim the nation's commitment to education — to recognize that we're experiencing growing pains and changes in terms of what we stand for; and whether or not we want to live up to the democratic ideal of freedom of speech; different ideas in the marketplace, and a commitment to civics education and political participation,” says Douglass. 

As publishers and librarians file lawsuits to push back, students are also mobilizing to protest bans — from Texas to western New York and elsewhere. But as more local battles unfold, bigger issues remain unsolved. 

“We need to have a conversation as a nation about healing; about being able to confront the past; about receiving an apology and beginning that process of reconciliation,” says Douglass. “Until we tackle that head on, we'll continue to have these types of battles.” 

— Morgan Gilbard

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the speaker to whom they are attributed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the faculty, administration, staff or Trustees either of Teachers College or of Columbia University.

Tags: Views on the News Education Policy K-12 Education Social Justice

Programs: Economics and Education Education Leadership History and Education

Departments: Education Policy & Social Analysis

Published Wednesday, Sep 6, 2023

Teachers College Newsroom

Address: Institutional Advancement 193-197 Grace Dodge Hall

Box: 306 Phone: (212) 678-3231 Email: views@tc.columbia.edu

Does banning books really help kids? A childhood education expert weighs in

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When Jaci Urbani taught early learners at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, one of the books she read to them was “Charlotte’s Web,” by E.B. White, a children’s novel about a pig destined for slaughter and his friendship with the barn spider who saves him. 

While Wilbur is saved (spoiler alert), by the end of the book, Charlotte dies. It was at this point some of the children would start to cry.

Here is where some educators and parents would put the book away and not take it out again. Instead, Urbani approached the moment with empathy and used it to open up a discussion with students about whether they’ve experienced loss and how they take care of themselves and others when they’re sad. Others prefer to keep books addressing issues they find difficult out of kids’ hands, an approach that is becoming more and more common in the form of book challenges and bans in schools across the country.  Many of the most frequently challenged books are being targeted for containing  LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit content , including having depictions of sexual abuse, topics some say parents should be the ones introducing to children.

But Urbani, now a professor of education at Northeastern University in Oakland and a childhood education expert, said we should be talking to children about uncomfortable topics and books allow for those conversations.

“Just because death is a sad topic doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it with kids and help them,” she added. “Those are the kind of conversations that we should have around these topics we find difficult. … There’s so many things that people can learn about and if it’s handled in a mature, developmentally appropriate way, kids can learn from it.”

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022 with 2,571 unique titles targeted by censors. This is nearly double the 729 attempts documented in 2021 and doesn’t account for attempts not reported or covered by the news. It’s also the highest number the ALA has seen since it began tracking book challenges over two decades ago.

The ALA found nearly half of demands were made by parents, patrons or political/religious groups . The vast majority were targeting not just one single book, but multiple titles. At least 40% of challenges targeted more than 100 books at once. In Texas, for example, there were 93 challenges to 2,349 titles.

The most challenged books of 2022 range from graphic memoirs (“Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe was number one on the list) to classic literature (Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”) to popular fantasy novels (“A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas). While the books may range in genre and topic, what many of them have in common is the reasons for being challenged.

“These numbers and the list of the Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022 are evidence of a growing, well-organized, conservative political movement, the goals of which include removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health from America’s public and school libraries that do not meet their approval,” the ALA wrote in its 2022 book censorship data snapshot.

Some of the organizations behind these bans, like Moms for Liberty, argue they are standing up for the rights of parents and they themselves want to be having these conversations with their kids. But are these bans helping or hurting kids? 

There’s so many things that people can learn about and if it’s handled in a mature, developmentally appropriate way, kids can learn from it. Jaci Urbani, a professor of education at Northeastern’s Oakland campus

Urbani takes the stance that they do more harm than good. Instead, books addressing so-called difficult topics can open avenues for discussions between kids and the adults in their lives (topics, she adds, they are probably already exposed to through friends and other media).

“Our society doesn’t like to talk about bad things,” she said. “It’s just shut down. It’s not engaging in a conversation around it. But kids know things. They’re very perceptive. I think it’s much more harmful that they have these book bans in place because kids need this knowledge and quite frankly, the adults who are banning these books need that knowledge.”

Additionally important for parents concerned about their kids’ reading material is looking at content in context. Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” which depicts his father’s experiences in the Holocaust, has been challenged for its language and for having an image of a partially naked woman . But in the context of the book, Urbani said, it’s appropriate.

“There’s nothing sexy about it,” she added.

But what if a child reads a book beyond their maturity level? Is that harmful? Urbani says there is a conversation to be had about whether some books are appropriate for a child’s developmental capability. For example, you wouldn’t read John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to a kindergarten class or dive into the brutality of slavery with a group of preschoolers.

“What we should all be engaging in a conversation together,” Urbani said. “There’s a responsibility to talk about things that are real in the world without getting into explicit detail.”

Urbani says each child will be different and she encourages parents to consider their child’s maturity level and be open to having conversations if their child reads something that confuses them or is beyond their maturity level. For educators, Urbani says looping in parents and letting them read their children’s assigned reading and encouraging them to talk about it with their students can be helpful, as can bringing in additional support in the form of a school counselor.

 But what you can do instead is introduce difficult topics in an age appropriate way. 

“(Enslaved people) were kidnapped from their families and their countries and their potential futures, and were forced to work to make money for somebody else in horrible conditions,” Urbani said. “I’m not going to say that to a 5-year-old. But I will talk about how we treat each other and how we want to care for each other in our classroom. That’s how you relate it. … I’m not going to talk about rape and beatings, but I will talk about the absolute right and wrong of slavery. Trying to whitewash it is just a way to lie to children because it makes adults uncomfortable.”

Erin Kayata is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email her at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @erin_kayata .

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Book Banning Efforts Surged in 2021. These Titles Were the Most Targeted.

Most of the targeted books are about Black and L.G.B.T.Q. people, according to the American Library Association. The country’s polarized politics has fueled the rise.

By Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter

Attempts to ban books in the United States surged in 2021 to the highest level since the American Library Association began tracking book challenges 20 years ago, the organization said Monday.

Most of the targeted books were by or about Black and L.G.B.T.Q. people, the association said.

Book challenges are a perennial issue at school board meetings and libraries. But more recently, efforts fueled by the country’s intensely polarized political environment have been amplified by social media, where lists of books some consider to be inappropriate for children circulate quickly and widely.

Challenges to certain titles have been embraced by some conservative politicians, cast as an issue of parental choice and parental rights. Those who oppose these efforts, however, say that prohibiting the books violates the rights of parents and children who want those titles to be available.

“What we’re seeing right now is an unprecedented campaign to remove books from school libraries but also public libraries that deal with the lives and experience of people from marginalized communities,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the American Library Association’s office for intellectual freedom. “We’re seeing organized groups go to school boards and library boards and demand actual censorship of these books in order to conform to their moral or political views.”

The library association said it counted 729 challenges last year to library, school and university materials, as well as research databases and e-book platforms. Each challenge can contain multiple titles, and the association tracked 1,597 individual books that were either challenged or removed.

The count is based on voluntary reporting by educators and librarians and on media reports, the association said, and is not comprehensive.

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Here you will find some items about book banning and censorship.  Looking for more?  Check out our  catalog !

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Websites of Interest

• ALA Banned & Challenged Books website Resource from the American Library Association
• Book Résumés Provides synopses, professional reviews, award information, and more for a variety of banned and challenged books. This resource is free to use and is a great tool for educators, librarians, parents, community members, and other defenders of books! Book Résumés is an initiative of the American Library Association's Unite Against Book Bans and various book publishers.
• Banned Book Club The Banned Book Club is a service that brings free digital access to banned books so that all readers have access to these titles. This is a collaboration between the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Lyrasis, and The Palace Project.
• A Perfectly Inoffensive School Library What does an inoffensive library look like???
• Censorship Resources Curated list of Censorship resources from the School Library Journal
• NCTE Intellectual Freedom Center Resources from the National Council of Teachers of English
• Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools Study from PEN America
• "Why Should I Care About Book Bans?" article from Social Education "This ninth-grade inquiry invites students to analyze arguments about banning certain books while also asking them to consider what makes a book worth reading."
• "Why Books Matter: 'Books Are Weapons in the War of Ideas'" article from Social Education "Those who would ban or burn books recognize that the threat to their power comes when people learn to think for themselves."

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Read the Books That Schools Want to Ban

These 14 titles have been under attack for doing exactly what literature is supposed to do.

Updated at 13:58 p.m. ET on February 3, 2022.

Book banning is back. Texas State Representative Matt Krause recently put more than 800 books on a watch list, many of them dealing with race and LGBTQ issues. Then an Oklahoma state senator filed a bill to ban books that address “sexual perversion,” among other things, from school libraries. The school board of McMinn County, Tennessee, just banned Maus , Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic memoir about the Holocaust. Officials said that they didn’t object to teaching about genocide, but that the book’s profanity, nudity, violence, and depiction of suicide made it “too adult-oriented for use in our schools.”

No one has yet figured out how to depict the Holocaust without ugliness, for the very obvious reason that it was one of the greatest crimes in human history. Maus details the cruelties that Spiegelman’s father witnessed during World War II, including in Auschwitz, as well as the pair’s complicated relationship after the war. Some nudity shows Jews—depicted in the book as mice (their German oppressors are drawn as cats)—stripped naked before their murder. Hiding these images from children purposefully ignores the mechanized gruesomeness of the Holocaust. And Maus ’s removal isn’t a side effect of an otherwise neutral attempt to keep classrooms wholesome. As I wrote in December, getting rid of books that spotlight bigotry is the goal .

Read: This is a shakedown

Books have been the targets of bans in America for more than a century. Maus is not the first, or the last, casualty of an ideology that, in the name of protecting children, leaves them ignorant of the world as it often is. The following 14 books employ difficult, sometimes upsetting imagery to tell complicated stories. That approach has made them some of the most frequently challenged, or outright banned, books in America’s schools; it also makes them perfect examples of what literature is supposed to do. Please consider buying them for the students in your life, and for yourselves.

To Kill a Mockingbird , by Harper Lee

Lee’s 1960 novel about a white lawyer defending a Black man falsely accused of rape in a segregated Alabama town won the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film. The novel, long used in classrooms as a parable about American racism, has faced various controversies over the decades. Last week, it was removed from a Washington State school district’s required-reading list —although not outright banned—for its racial slurs and for the perception of Atticus Finch as a white savior .

The Handmaid’s Tale , by Margaret Atwood

Atwood’s popular dystopian story turns the United States into a Christian theocracy called Gilead, where fertile women are stripped of their name and impregnated against their will. Its sexual violence and criticism of religion have made it ripe for challenges in schools . The original book, its adaptation into a graphic novel, and its sequel, The Testaments, were pulled from circulation, then quickly restored, in a Kansas school district in November.

Read: Slouching towards Gilead

The Bluest Eye , by Toni Morrison

Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye , has shown up multiple times on the American Library Association’s annual list of challenged books . The classic, which kicked off Morrison’s Nobel Prize–winning career , follows Pecola Breedlove, a Black girl with a tragic family history and a deep desire to have blue eyes. In January, The Bluest Eye was removed from a Missouri school district’s libraries to keep children away from painful scenes of sexual abuse and incest—which in Morrison’s hands become illustrations of the insidious psychological damage that racism deals to her characters.

Fallen Angels , by Walter Dean Myers

This Coretta Scott King Award winner, like many of Myers’s novels, follows a young Black protagonist. In this story, 17-year-old Richie Perry leaves Harlem for Vietnam, where he faces the horror and banality of war. As with Myers’s 1999 book Monster , some have deemed it too violent and profane for students.

Heather Has Two Mommies , by Lesléa Newman

Newman’s 1989 picture book broke ground by depicting exactly what its title says. A young girl named Heather has two lesbian mothers and realizes in the story that her family is different from her schoolmates’ families. She learns why she doesn’t have a father, and that there are many different kinds of families. Newman’s story might feel anodyne today, but the furor it caused in the 1990s, when it was the ninth-most-challenged book of the decade, hasn’t abated: Heather was taken off the shelves in a Pennsylvania school district in December.

Maus , by Art Spiegelman

The truth of the Holocaust is both abstracted and explicitly rendered in the graphic memoir Maus , which was banned in a Tennessee county last month by a unanimous vote . Spiegelman draws his Jewish family and protagonists as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs, but this style doesn’t fully blunt the hideousness of the victims’ suffering. Some of the topics that got the book banned, such as Spiegelman’s mother’s suicide, are essential to rendering the effects of the war. Without them, it would be a different story entirely.

Speak , by Laurie Halse Anderson

This 1999 young-adult book about a teenager dealing with the effects of sexual assault was notably called “soft pornography” in a newspaper op-ed that drew notice from Anderson herself . Speak ’s honesty about its protagonist’s trauma and the subsequent social shunning she endures has made it a perennial classic —and a target for criticism.

His Dark Materials , by Philip Pullman

Pullman’s award-winning fantasy trilogy is populated with talking armored polar bears, soul-sucking specters, and translucent angels. But ultimately, it’s about a war on adolescence. The story’s villains, all affiliated with an allegorical version of the Catholic Church, are motivated by a perverse desire to keep children innocent—even by essentially lobotomizing them. In contrast, the heroes celebrate knowledge and fight to overthrow the religious hierarchy threatening their world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the books were criticized for their supposed anti-Christian themes and plotlines involving witchcraft.

From the November 2019 issue: Philip Pullman’s problem with God

Looking for Alaska , by John Green

The teenagers at Green’s Alabama boarding school drink, smoke, swear, and fumble their way through life. Those actions have made the novel controversial for more than a decade. Green, whose later book The Fault in Our Stars was hugely popular, has repeatedly defended it—including what he calls its intentionally “massively unerotic” oral-sex scene.

Between the World and Me , by Ta-Nehisi Coates

This epistolary book by the famed Atlantic writer reflects on racism’s long shadow. Coates’s frank assessment of the effect of centuries of racial violence on contemporary Black Americans has been attacked in some schools. Between the World and Me and Coates’s We Were Eight Years in Power are also included on Representative Krause’s list of books that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”

The Hate U Give , by Angie Thomas

Thomas’s debut young-adult novel was a best seller and was quickly adapted into a film . Starr, a Black teenager, witnesses a white police officer kill her friend at a traffic stop. While navigating her grief, she gradually becomes a public advocate for racial justice. The Hate U Give has been challenged for its profanity and depiction of drug dealing, but most vigorously for its thematic connection to the Black Lives Matter movement. A South Carolina police union objected to its inclusion on a high-school reading list, calling it “ almost an indoctrination of distrust of police .”

Gender Queer , by Maia Kobabe

Through illustrations and tender writing, this graphic memoir follows the nonbinary author’s journey of self-discovery. Its exploration of sexuality and gender, especially in illustrations depicting oral sex, made its inclusion in school libraries a prime target for criticism last year.

In the Dream House , by Carmen Maria Machado

Machado’s captivating, experimental memoir details her abusive relationship with another woman, and her eventual escape from it. At a March 2021 school-board meeting in Leander, Texas, a parent read a sex scene from the book aloud and held up a pink dildo as part of an effort to demand its removal from a book club. In December, the district removed the book permanently from Leander schools.

Read: How surrealism enriches storytelling about women

All Boys Aren’t Blue , by George M. Johnson

The essays in this collection take apart and examine Black masculinity, queer sexuality, and Johnson’s own life. The book has been removed from school libraries in multiple states and lambasted as “sexually explicit,” which the author called “disingenuous for multiple reasons.”

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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How Americans feel about book bans, restrictions: Survey

The nation has seen record-breaking numbers of book banning attempts.

As schools and libraries across the country face record-breaking attempts to remove books from shelves, most Americans are opposed to book restrictions in public schools, according to a new survey.

In 2023, the American Library Association (ALA) documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship, as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials and resources.

The targeting of unique book titles increased by 65% from 2022 to 2023, reaching the highest level ever documented by ALA.

These efforts have increased alongside state legislation restricting certain school content on topics like race, sex, gender and more.

However, a new study by the Knight Foundation – a nonprofit that provides grants for journalism and the arts – found that two-thirds of Americans oppose efforts to restrict books. There are more strong opponents than strong supporters of book restrictions, with a 3-1 divide among respondents.

The study found that 62% of Americans oppose their state government legislating what content is allowable in school books.

Public school parents are more likely to be in favor of book restrictions, but more than half of parents (59%) still oppose book restrictions. This is lower than the 67% opposition rate among non-parents.

MORE: Books dumped en masse at Florida's New College, sparking controversy

About 7% of parents with reading-age children reported their child reading an age-inappropriate book from school, and 25% of pre-K-12 parents are concerned about this happening in the future.

Classroom or library content restrictions are often based on concerns about what is deemed “age-appropriate” for certain ages -- as is the case in legislation in Florida , Utah , Texas and other states.

More survey participants said it is a bigger concern to restrict students’ access to books that have educational value than it is for them to have access to books that have inappropriate content, especially when it comes to students in middle school and high school.

Six in 10 survey respondents saw age appropriateness as a legitimate reason to restrict students’ book access. However, the report found that far fewer say it is legitimate to block access to books that contradict parents’ political views, religious beliefs or moral values.

Most public school parents are confident in the appropriateness of their school’s book selections. The study also found that 78% of all adults say they are confident that their community’s public schools select appropriate books for students to read.

Though the public feels strongly about the issue -- 62% call it highly important -- very few have taken action themselves on the issue. Only 3% have personally engaged in the debate, according to the report -- 2% engaging to maintain access and 1% to restrict access.

Conservatives are over-represented in the support for book restrictions, making up 57% of book restriction supporters but only 27% of all adults, according to the Knight Foundation. Conservatives are also less likely to feel politically represented in public school books.

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Book Banning Attempts Are at Record Highs

A new report from the American Library Association found that the number of challenged titles increased by 65 percent in 2023

Ella Feldman

Daily Correspondent

Book-banning efforts reached the highest level ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA) last year, according to a new report .

In 2023, 4,240 unique titles were targeted for censorship in schools and libraries across the country—a 65 percent increase from 2022.

Book challenges are also becoming increasingly common in public libraries. The number of titles targeted at public libraries rose by 92 percent last year, while school libraries saw an 11 percent increase.

“I wake up every morning hoping this is over,” Emily Drabinski, president of ALA, tells the New York Times ’ Alexandra Alter. “What I find striking is that this is still happening, and it’s happening with more intensity.”

The reported numbers represent “only a snapshot” of censorship attempts throughout the year, says the association. The ALA calculates its totals using reports filed by library professionals and book challenges covered in the media. Censorship attempts that don’t fall into these categories are not included.

While book banning has a long history in the United States, researchers have tracked a sharp uptick in censorship efforts in recent years. In 2020 , the ALA reported that 223 unique book titles were challenged. That number rose to 1,858 in 2021 and then 2,571 in 2022.

Many of these books spotlight the lived experiences of LGBTQ individuals and people of color. In 2023, nearly half of the titles fell into this category.

“Our communities and our country are stronger because of diversity,” says Drabinski in a statement from the ALA. “Libraries that reflect their communities’ diversity promote learning and empathy that some people want to hide or eliminate.”

Many of the challenges came from a relatively small number of activist groups, as Deborah Caldwell-Stone, head of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, tells NPR ’s Tovia Smith.

“We’re not seeing an individual read a book and raise a concern about a book,” she says. “We’re seeing organized groups go to school boards, go to library boards, demanding the removal of dozens, if not hundreds, of books at a time. They are simply downloading lists from advocacy groups and demanding removal of those books.”

The number of challenges also varied by location. According to the ALA, 17 states saw attempts to ban more than 100 titles: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.

The association will publish its annual list of America’s most challenged books on April 8, which falls at the beginning of National Library Week .

In the ALA’s 2022 and 2021 lists, the most challenged book was Gender Queer: A Memoir , a graphic memoir about author Maia Kobabe coming out as nonbinary and asexual. In 2022, Gender Queer was followed by All Boys Aren’t Blue , George M. Johnson’s collection of essays about growing up Black and queer, and The Bluest Eye , Toni Morrison’s seminal novel about a young Black girl dealing with racism and abuse in the 1940s.

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Ella Feldman | READ MORE

Ella Malena Feldman is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. She examines art, culture and gender in her work, which has appeared in Washington City Paper , DCist and the Austin American-Statesman .

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Today, books are under profound attack in the U.S. They are disappearing from library shelves, being challenged in droves, and being decreed off limits by school boards, legislators, and prison authorities. And everywhere, it is the books that have long fought for a place on the shelf that are being targeted. Books by authors of color, by LGBTQ+ authors, by women. Books about racism, sexuality, gender, history.

Book bans in public schools have recurred throughout American history, with notable flare-ups in the  McCarthy era  and the  early 1980s . But, while long present, the scope of such censorship has expanded drastically and in unprecedented fashion since the beginning of the 2021–22 school year.

What is a book ban, and how is it different from a challenge? Can a book be banned if you can find it somewhere else? How does PEN America count book bans in its Index of School Book Bans ? What is the history of book bans? This FAQ answers some of the most common questions about book bans in America.

What Is a Book Ban? And More Frequently Asked Questions

PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished. Diminished access is a form of censorship and has educational implications that extend beyond a title’s removal.

It is important to recognize that books available in schools, whether in a school or classroom library, or as part of a curriculum, were selected by librarians and educators as part of the educational offerings to students. Book bans occur when those choices are overridden by school boards, administrators, teachers, or politicians, on the basis of a particular book’s content.

The phrase “book ban” does not:

• apply to initial decisions by a school district or school on which books to purchase or assign to students. 
• refer to situations in which educators initially determine that certain books are more appropriate for access at or above particular grade levels. 
• Nor does it apply to situations where professional educators and administrators engage in regular curriculum review or updates and make decisions about which books will or will not be assigned in class. if books are deaccessioned from libraries following best practices of collection maintenance and “weeding” that are content-neutral, and the result of regular updating, that is not a ban. 

A book ban occurs when an objection to the content of a specific book or type of book leads to that volume being withdrawn either fully or partially from availability, or when a blanket prohibition or absolute restriction is placed on a particular title within a school or a district.

School book bans take varied forms, and can include prohibitions on books in libraries or classrooms, as well as a range of other restrictions, some of which may be temporary.  For example, if a book that was previously available to all now requires parental permission, or is restricted to a higher grade level than educators initially determined, that is a ban. In some cases, books are removed from shelves for “review,” but not returned for a weeks or months. If students cannot access the book, that is a ban.

Book removals that follow established processes may still improperly target books on the basis of content pertaining to race, gender, or sexual orientation, invoking concerns of equal protection in education.

Since the fall of 2021, PEN America has counted over 10,000 book bans in schools across the country. The full impact of the book ban movement is greater than can be counted, as “wholesale bans” in which entire classrooms and school libraries have been suspended, closed, or emptied of books, either permanently or temporarily, restricted access to untold numbers of books in classrooms and school libraries.

Overwhelmingly, book banners target stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.

As public institutions, schools must serve our diverse democracy. School libraries provide a vital resource for educators, students, and parents in both supporting literacy and helping young people learn about the world. School libraries are places of voluntary inquiry, and efforts to restrict what information and ideas are available there often entail efforts to suppress or censor particular viewpoints, stories, and histories. 

There is also no guarantee that students will have easy or equitable access to books in other locations, have money to purchase a book, or even know a book exists. Many students in the United States attend schools without libraries, or, in districts without ready access to public libraries. Not all parents and families have the time or means to access public libraries, or to purchase books. This makes the ready availability of materials to students in school libraries unique and consequential to American democracy. Efforts to censor or ban books also spread to public libraries and booksellers , belying the idea that current efforts to censor books are only focused on schools.

Public schools are part of the fabric of our democracy, and public school libraries have been recognized as demanding special First Amendment protection. This means that even if particular book titles can be accessed elsewhere, the restriction of them in libraries is nonetheless a potential infringement of students’ constitutional rights. As noted in Counts v. Cedarville School District , a 2003 U.S. federal district court decision: “ The Supreme Court has held that ‘one is not to have the exercise of his liberty of expression in appropriate places abridged on the plea that it may be exercised in some other place.’”

Ready access to ideas and information is a necessary predicate to the right to exercise freedom of meaningful speech, press, or political freedom in our democracy, for young people and adults alike. Consider the following excerpt from the 1978 decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Right to Read Defense Committee of Chelsea v. School Committee of the City of Chelsea :

The library is ‘a mighty resource in the marketplace of ideas’ … There a student can literally explore the unknown, and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. The student who discovers the magic of the library is on the way to a life-long experience of self-education and enrichment. That student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom… The most effective antidote to the poison of mindless orthodoxy is ready access to a broad sweep of ideas and philosophies. There is no danger in such exposure. The danger is in mind control.

PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists instances where students’ access to books in school libraries and classrooms in the United States is restricted or diminished for either limited or indefinite periods of time.

PEN America also tracks the banning of unique titles. If the same book is banned in 10 school districts, that would count as 10 bans, but one unique title.

The banning of a single book title can mean anywhere from one to hundreds of copies are pulled from libraries or classrooms in a school district, and often, the same title is banned in libraries, classrooms, or both in a single district. 

PEN America does not count these duplicate bans in its unique title tally, but does acknowledge each separate ban in its overall count. 

Instances of book bans are recorded based on publicly reported data, primarily sourced from local journalists, school district websites, and school board minutes, as well as organizational partners. Local efforts from district employees and advocacy partners supplement our data collection efforts. 

PEN America also collects direct reports of book challenges from across the country. Those reports are counted only if PEN America is able to independently confirm that a book was removed or restricted, using other publicly recorded data.

Since 2021, there have been numerous accounts of quiet removals of books in libraries and classrooms by teachers and librarians, what is frequently called ‘soft censorship.’ PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans therefore is best thought of as a minimum count of these trends. This is a similar conclusion to that of the American Library Association , which routinely estimates that its counts reflect only a portion of the true number of books banned in schools.

A book challenge is any attempt to restrict or remove a book based on objections to its content. A book ban is the removal or restriction of those materials. 

PEN America does not track challenges that do not result in book bans.

PEN America is the only organization to track book bans in schools across the country. The American Library Association’s research focuses on challenges filed against books in libraries, including school libraries.

PEN America does not track public library bans and does not track challenges to books unless those challenges lead to a restriction or ban.

PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists decisions to limit or diminish access to books, not instances where books are challenged.

In response to challenges, however, books are frequently pulled from shelves during investigations, for limited or sometimes indefinite periods of time. This is counter to procedural best practices from the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and the American Library Association (ALA), which state that a book should remain in circulation while undergoing a reconsideration process. This is because, if schools suspend access to books in response to any challenge from any corner, it would render them incapable of serving students. A considered, due process is a more fair, democratic approach to challenges, which also safeguards students’ First Amendment rights.

If a book is challenged and remains on the shelves during the review process, and is ultimately retained, access to the book has never changed, and that is not counted as a ban in the Index.

If a book is challenged and the administration pulls it from the shelves or the school board orders it removed or restricted while under review, then it is counted in the Index as having been Banned Pending Investigation . Even if it is later returned to the shelves, it was effectively banned from students for the period it was under review.

In some cases individual schools or school districts opt to place some kind of restriction on a book title. When this is done in response to challenges or public demands, without considered review processes that involve professional educators and librarians, it can constitute a book ban, in that it reflects a decision to restrict or diminish access to a book from where it was previously accessible. This is different from regular acquisition processes where educators make determinations regarding which grade levels a book is appropriate for, or engage in processes of regular review of those decisions. 

If a grade-level restriction is placed on a book without any review consideration process, this constitutes a ban on the book. Access has been restricted for those students to whom it was previously accessible (e.g. a book is restricted to a high school library, and effectively banned from the middle school library where it was previously accessible as determined by professional librarians and based on publishers’ age recommendations).

If a school district removes a book from its libraries and places it in a different space in the building (ie, counseling or guidance or restricted shelving), then that constitutes a ban from libraries. If a school restricts a book only to an AP English classroom, when it was previously accessible in the library for all students, that too can constitute a ban on the book.

If a district mandates that students must acquire permission from parents to read or check out specific titles, then that constitutes a ban, as it restricts access for those to whom the book was previously accessible. This precise issue was taken up in Arkansas in Counts v. Cedarville School District (2003) , where it was decided that mandating parental permission on specific book titles could have a “stigmatizing effect” on a student, and that even though it was a minimal infringement, “The loss of First Amendment rights, even minimally, is injurious.” 

Some students may also have an unsafe home environment, for whom accessing a particular book might offer an important lifeline, but in which case parental permission would not be an option. Part of the role of public schools is to serve precisely such students. Each of these restrictive policies can thus place undue burdens or unfair hurdles on how some students access literature in public schools.

In Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico  (1982), the Supreme Court stated: “Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas.” The ruling affirmed the “special characteristics” of the school library, making it “especially appropriate for the recognition of the First Amendment rights of students,” including the right to access information and ideas. The central holding of Pico , on page 872 of the decision, was “ [L]ocal school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion. ” The Court further recognized that while school boards have “broad discretion in the management of school affairs,” including to take action due to books’ “educational suitability” or “pervasive” vulgarity, a board’s motivation should be demonstrated by the use of “established, regular, and facially unbiased procedures for the review of controversial materials.” The Court noted that the school board in Pico used a “highly irregular and ad hoc” removal process that ignored literary experts, district superintendent, librarians, and teachers, as well as guidance from book-rating publications.

In alignment with the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, the National Coalition Against Censorship  (NCAC) and American Library Association (ALA) have developed guidelines for handling formal complaints to school library collections, which are meant to safeguard students’ First Amendment rights by limiting the ability of community members of school boards to exercise content- or viewpoint-based censorship. They recommend that community members complete formal reconsideration requests in writing to school principals, and that schools form “reconsideration” committees, made up of teachers, librarians, school administrators, and members of the community, who will receive training in intellectual freedom and library policies, before they read, discuss, and collectively reevaluate the availability of a particular book in the school. ALA guidelines make clear that committee members are to “set aside their personal beliefs” and use objective standards, and that books are to remain in circulation until the process is complete and a final decision is made. They also provide guidance on how school-level committees should make initial decisions before they can be appealed to district-level committees, which would then be formed to continue to evaluate a book title’s availability. Finally, the district committee’s decision could be appealed to the school board for a final, district-wide determination. As the NCAC explains, these kinds of policies help “ensure decisions about instruction advance fundamental pedagogical goals and not subjective interests.”

While it is possible for such school-level or district-level “reconsideration” committees to decide to remove or restrict books, legal precedent and expert best practices demand that committee members, and principals, superintendents, and school boards act with the constitutional rights of students in mind, cognizant that it is better to allow access to literature for those who might want it than to eliminate that access for all based on the concerns of any individual or faction.

Book banning has a long , global history. The tactic is frequently associated with authoritarian governments who have enacted society-wide bans on particular texts, such as occurred in Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa. The United States has also previously banned the import or sale of particular texts, such as Ulysses by James Joyce and Howl by Allen Ginsberg.  

Although less extreme, there have been efforts to bar and restrict books in public schools going back decades, with notable flare-ups in the McCarthy era and the early 1980s . At various points throughout the 20th century, certain books have stirred controversy, with titles like Of Mice and Men and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings being some well-known examples. There have also been parallel efforts to pass state laws to prohibit and control what can be discussed in public schools and textbooks, most notably in the 1920s, with bans on the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution. These efforts mirror the significant wave of educational censorship we see today, including efforts to pass legislation that PEN America has called educational gag orders, and to enact book bans in schools. 

PEN America calls this the ‘ Ed Scare ,’ paralleling the ‘Red Scares’ which followed the First and Second World Wars. While there are historical parallels, the growing movement since 2021 to censor books in schools is unique, in both the scope and scale. Lists of books hundreds long have been assembled with demands that they be purged from school libraries by an expanding array of groups and individuals. 

Whereas past censorship in schools focused on particular topics, the ‘Ed Scare’ is also notable in the way it is increasingly focused on an evolving array of subjects, themes, and identities — including U.S. history, race and diversity, social emotional learning, LGBTQ+ identities, and sex education. This is also continuing to shape the kinds of books that are being targeted for removal in schools.

While PEN America conducted a formal count of books banned for the first time in the 2021-2022 school year, our organization has fought back against book bans for decades. In recent years PEN America has typically encountered a handful of such cases each year.  But since 2021, the scale and force of book banning in local communities is escalating dramatically. The book bans we’ve tracked since 2021 stand out for the scope and scale, occurring across dozens of states, with hundreds of titles targeted, and the extent to which they have also been driven by political pressure and rhetoric from elected officials.

In 2016, PEN America published Missing from the Shelf: Book Challenges and Lack of Diversity in Children’s Literature , which described instances of ‘soft censorship’ taking place in schools and libraries in response to parents’ challenges of books. The report also highlighted the disproportionate targeting of books by or about people whose identities and stories have traditionally been underrepresented in children’s and young adult literature, such as people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, or persons with disabilities. Today, this remains a central focus of the movement to ban books.

Since 2021, a campaign has emerged in many parts of the United States to advocate for the censorship of books in public schools. This campaign is in part driven by politics, with state lawmakers and executive branch officials pushing for bans in some cases. In Texas, for example, Republican state representative Matt Krause sent a letter and list with 850 books to school districts, asking them to investigate and report on which of the titles they held in libraries or classrooms. Political pressure of this sort in Texas , South Carolina , Wisconsin , Georgia , and elsewhere has been tied to hundreds of book bans. 

Another major factor driving this dramatic expansion of book banning has been the proliferation of organized efforts to advocate for book removals. Organizations and groups involved in pushing for book bans have sprung up rapidly at the local and national levels, particularly since 2021. These range from local Facebook groups to the nonprofit organization Moms for Liberty, a national-level organization that now has over 200 chapters . Broadly, this movement is intertwined with political movements that grew throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, including fights against mask mandates and virtual school, as well as disputes over “critical race theory” that in some states fueled the introduction of educational gag orders prohibiting discussion of “divisive” concepts in classrooms. 

The varied groups involved do not all share identical aims, but they have found common cause in advancing an effort to control and limit what kinds of books are available in schools. While many of these groups use language in their mission statements about parents’ rights or religious or conservative views , some also make explicit calls for the exclusion of materials that touch on race (sometimes explicitly critical race theory ) or LGBTQ+ themes .

Although “parents’ rights” is a powerful piece of political rhetoric, in most instances, it is being invoked to mean rights for a particular group of parents with distinct ideological views, rather than a neutral effort to engage all parents and students in ensuring that schools uphold free speech rights.

While parents and guardians ought to be partners with educators in their children’s education, and need channels for communicating with school administrators, teachers, and librarians, particularly concerning the education of their own children, public schools are by design supposed to rely on the expertise, ethics, and discretion of educational professionals to make decisions. In too many places, today’s political rhetoric of “parents’ rights” is being weaponized to undermine, intimidate, and chill the practices of these professionals, with potentially profound impacts on how students learn and access ideas and information in schools.

Parents ought to be encouraged to engage with schools through regular channels of dialogue, including parent-teacher conferences, PTA meetings, discussions with school leadership, and speaking at school board meetings. Most school districts have a way for parents to raise objections about the appropriateness of school library materials, and to have those concerns addressed by considered review processes by public schools and districts. But no parent ought to have the right to dictate or control what it is other parents, and all students, have the opportunity to read in schools.

Librarians and educators choose books for their literary and educational value. Books banned in American schools do not fit the well-established legal and colloquial definitions of “pornography” or “indecency.” 

Material can only be deemed ‘obscene’ if it meets three criteria outlined in the Miller test, which asks if the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that a work taken as a whole : 

• appeals to prurient interest
• depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and
• lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

The books that have been targeted for removal in American public schools with few, if any, exceptions, would manifestly fail this test. Books should always be evaluated in their entirety, not judged by an illustration or passage taken out of context.

PEN America's Banned in the U.S.A. Report Methodology

School book bans take varied forms, and can include prohibitions on books in libraries or classrooms, as well as a range of other restrictions, some of which may be temporary. Book removals that follow established processes may still improperly target books on the basis of content pertaining to race, gender, or sexual orientation, invoking concerns of equal protection in education. For more details, please see the first edition of Banned in the USA (April 2022) and the Frequently Asked Questions above.

The data presented in PEN America’s reports very likely undercounts the true magnitude of book censorship that has taken place in K-12 schools. There are book bans that are not reported publicly, and in some cases, entire classrooms and school libraries have been suspended or emptied of books, a phenomenon we have labeled “wholesale bans.” Because wholesale bans are difficult or impossible to quantify, they are not included in PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans . 

Definitions 

PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans differentiates between four discrete categories of bans: Banned from libraries and classrooms; Banned from libraries; Banned from classrooms; and Banned pending investigation. The same title can be banned from libraries, classrooms, or both, in different districts. 

Banned from libraries and classrooms : These represent instances where individual titles were placed off-limits for students in either some or all libraries and classrooms, and simultaneously barred from inclusion in curricula.

Banned from libraries : These represent instances in which administrators or school boards have removed individual titles from school libraries where they were previously available. Books in this category are not necessarily banned from classroom curriculum. This category includes decisions to ban a book from one school-level library (e.g. a middle school) even if it is included in libraries for higher grades (e.g. a high school), or other forms of grade-level restrictions. In many such cases, the decisions to ban books from lower-level libraries do not align with publishers’ age recommendations, nor are they the result of considered processes.

Banned from classrooms : These represent instances where school boards or other school authorities have barred individual titles from classroom libraries, curriculum, or optional reading lists. These constitute bans on use in classrooms, even in cases where the books may still be available in school libraries.

Banned pending investigation: These are instances where a title was removed during an investigation to determine what restrictions, if any, to implement on it. In cases where such investigations have concluded, and particular titles have been further restricted or banned as a result, PEN America uses one of the categories above. Though timelines vary across districts, pending investigations can drag out, resulting in bans on particular titles that last months at a time. 

What Can I Do To Help Fight Book Bans?

Book banning often happens at a local level, and community voices can be the most powerful in standing up for students’ freedom to read. Here are ways you can take action:

• Attend local school board meetings or write an oped in your local paper to make your voice heard in your community. 
• Add your name to the growing band of activists working and striving to protect the written word.
• Stay informed of new threats and learn how you can help fight censorship by signing up for PEN America’s newsletter about educational censorship .
• Support students in speaking out and offer them PEN America’s Tipsheet on How to Fight Book Bans.
• Support librarians and offer them PEN America’s Tips for Librarians Facing Harassment and Threats.
• Are you an author whose book has been banned, challenged, or restricted? Read our Tipsheet for Authors.
• Is your school district or local library banning books? Report Book Bans to PEN America.
• Read banned books , including those titles that get less publicity.

Further Reading

• Banned in the USA: Mounting Pressure to Censor (July 2022 – June 2023)
• Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools (July 2022 – December 2022)
• Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools ( July 2021- June 2022 )
• Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights ( July 2021 – March 2022 )
• America’s Censored Classrooms
• Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach
• Educational Intimidation: How ‘Parents’ Rights’ Legislation Undermines the Freedom to Learn
• Book Banning in Walton County Based on Misleading “Porn in Schools” Report Illustrates Alarming Influence of Fringe Groups on Educational Censorship

LGBTQ+ Titles Targeted for Censorship: Stand Against Book Banning

Photo: NYPL

Pride Month brings together the LGBTQ+ community and its allies to celebrate and remember those who have fought for equality and the freedom to live authentically. While this is a time for festivities and celebration, Pride Month this year takes place against the backdrop of an unprecedented rise in attempts to ban books in schools and libraries across the country—bans that overwhelmingly target books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters.

2022 saw the largest-ever number of attempted book bans in the more than 20 years that the American Library Association has been keeping records —nearly double the number reported in 2021. Of the 13 most targeted books last year, seven were challenged on the basis of their LGBTQ+ content.

Banning books is an attempt to silence voices. Voices that have fought to be heard. Voices whose stories light the way for the next generation. Voices that belong in libraries. Let us say it loud and clear: Libraries are for everyone and books are for everyone. 

The New York Public Library remains dedicated to ensuring that no perspective, no idea, no identity is erased. This Pride, we ask you to stand with us to push back against censorship and stand up for the freedom to read.

Most Challenged Books With LGBTQ+ Themes (2022)

ALA documented challenges to 2,571 unique titles in 2022. The books below—targeted for their LGBTQ+ content— are among ALA's Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022. See the full list. Check out the books below, talk to your librarians about what other titles have been the target of censorship, then—check them out. Read banned books. Ensure these stories—and the writers who share them—are read, their voices amplified, and their impact felt.

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by Maia Kobabe

In this intensely cathartic autobiography, Kobabe (who uses e/em/eir pronouns) charts eir journey of self-identity. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual,  Gender Queer  is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide to gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto

by George M. Johnson

The first book by the prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist shares personal essays that chronicle his childhood, adolescence, and college years as a queer Black youth, exploring subjects ranging from gender identity and toxic masculinity to structural marginalization and Black joy.

by Mike Curato

In the summer between middle school and high school, Aiden Navarro navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and finds himself drawn to Elias, a boy he can't stop thinking about.

Looking for Alaska

by John Green

Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

by Stephen Chbosky

Charlie is a freshman and while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. He's a wallflower—shy and introspective, and intelligent beyond his years, if not very savvy in the social arts. We learn about Charlie through the letters he writes: trying to make friends, family tensions, exploring sexuality, experimenting with drugs—and dealing with his best friend's recent suicide.

by Jonathan Evison

Mike Muñoz is a young Mexican American not too many years out of high school—and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew. Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it.

This Book Is Gay

by Juno Dawson

A British author of teen fiction offers basic information about the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender experience, including terms, religious issues, coming out, and sex acts, for people of all orientations—including the curious.

Further Reading:

• Staff Picks: Trans and Nonbinary Reads
• Debut LGBTQ+ Poets to Read This Pride Month
• Stonewall: Core Reading for the Past, Present, and Future
• Compelling New LGBTQ+ Memoirs
• New Books for Kids & Teens To Celebrate Pride Month
• Banned Books Reading List: Stand for the Right to Read Freely

NYPL staff at the 2022 NYC Pride March

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8 Banned Books to Add to Your Faith and Justice Reading List

Book-banning has always been about censoring the stories, histories, and information that push us to question the status quo. From the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century, states throughout the Southern U.S. enacted anti-literacy laws, restricting enslaved people’s ability to read and write. During the Holocaust, Nazis burned books they considered “un-German.” And today, school districts across the country are banning books that have LGBTQ+ and racial themes. Many of these bans claim to protect minors from material that is not age appropriate, but in reality, they restrict stories related to race, sexuality, and gender.

Book-banning across the country continues to rise with some districts firing librarians  and teachers  for using “banned” books. In March, the American Library Association  reported the number of book challenges across the country nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022. Further, a record-breaking 2,571 individual books were earmarked for censorship, an increase of 38 percent from 2021.

In some districts, there’s even been moves to ban one of the most notable books of all time — a book that contains stories of incest, rape, and slavery: the Bible. 

One parent in Colorado , among others in Utah and Texas, challenged the Bible’s place in school libraries because of its “explicit and inappropriate sexual and violent content,” including “incest and rape, promiscuity, gang rape, obscenity, infidelity, and abortion.” The parent, Rob Rogers, requested the Bible’s removal to make a point after a conservative group rallied to get several LGBTQ+ books banned from El Paso County, Colorado’s largest school district.

“This isn’t about the books,” he wrote in a letter to the school district. “It’s about the principle. It’s about ensuring fairness and equity. When books by brilliant authors are being removed based on subjective ‘standards,’ the rule should apply to all.”

Christians are called to tell the truth, even and especially when it’s uncomfortable. The truth about racism and chattel slavery is raw, graphic, and traumatic, but pretending that slavery never happened or that racism doesn’t exist won’t make those realities go away. Neither will ignoring the existence of LGBTQ+ people or the questions many young people face when thinking about gender and sexuality.

A report from The Washington Post found that those who have pushed for the banning of books about gender and sexuality believe they are protecting children from “obscene” material. “[B]ook challengers say they are fighting for children’s innocence, sanity and well-being — and, some believe, for their souls,” writes Post reporter Hannah Natanson. But Christians know that the truth, though sometimes uncomfortable, shall set us free (John 8:32). God has created us all uniquely, with different desires, life experiences, and talents. To understand the full breadth of humanity and God’s creation, both children and adults should have access to books that teach them the truth about the world and their neighbors.

Here are eight banned books we suggest adding to your faith and justice reading list:

1. Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation , by Ari Folman, illustrated by David Polonsky (2018)

Excerpts of a diary kept by Anne Frank during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands have been translated into more than 70 languages and adapted into several plays and films, including the 1955 play, The Diary of Anne Frank . However, Ari Folman, whose parents are survivors of the Holocaust, is the first person to adapt the diary into a graphic novel (graphic novels are one of the most common types of books being banned). Florida Rep. Randy Fine claims that Folman and Polonsky’s adaptation contains pornography, and Moms for Liberty stated that the adaptation “ minimizes the Holocaust. ” The graphic novel contains two passages from the diary regarding sexuality that were not included in many previous adaptations of Franks’s diary: In one passage, Frank expresses attraction to another girl, and in another, Frank discusses her genitalia — both examples of healthy explorations of sexuality for teenagers. Through its inclusion of illustrations and Frank’s thoughts on sexuality, this adaptation helps the reader get a visceral sense of what it is like to come of age while your world is falling apart. The Anne Frank Fonds, the foundation which holds the copyright of the diary, has approved the graphic novel.

2. Between the World and Me , by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

Coates’ letter to his son was removed from schools in South Carolina after students in an AP class wrote to the school board saying the content made them uncomfortable. In May, South Carolina passed a bill that banned the teaching of controversial concepts regarding race and sex. Loosely inspired by James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time , Coates’ letter to his son details his life as a Black man in the U.S.

Coates, an atheist, has a nuanced view on how religion influences the world. In Between the World and Me , Coates acknowledges the significance of the Black church in the fight for racial justice. Describing Civil Rights activists in the ’60s, he writes, “I think they are fastened to their god, a god whom I cannot know and in whom I do not believe. But, god or not, the armor is all over them, and it is real.” Coates may not be a Christian, but his work is certainly no less cosmological. Coates’ writing pushes readers to reflect on what they believe about violence, hope, and God’s will.

3. Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot , by Mikki Kendall (2020)

In Hood Feminism , Mikki Kendall shows readers the intersections where mainstream white feminism has fallen short by concerning itself not with “basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few.” Kendall points to specific issues of justice that white feminism has largely ignored, including food insecurity, homelessness, education, safety, health care, and economic justice, as well as how race, gender, and sexuality intermix with these issues. Texas Rep. Matt Krause included the title on his 2021 list of more than 800 titles that said could cause “discomfort,” including many books that discuss race, gender, and sexuality. Kendall doesn’t focus on religion in Hood Feminism , but as Bernadette Raspante wrote in her book review for The Table, which advocates for women’s ordination in the Roman Catholic Church, “Kendall reminds her readers, as prophets do, that our liberation is wrapped up in the liberation of others.”

4. The Fire Next Time , by James Baldwin (1963)

In this compilation of essays that’s been banned in schools across the country, Baldwin writes about systemic racism, white ignorance, and the hypocrisies of both the church and the Nation of Islam. In the first essay, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” Baldwin tells his nephew that “freedom” is not yet here, reminding him how the country is still built around white understandings of the world. Baldwin encourages him to disturb that societal structure. Referring to their white neighbors, Baldwin writes, “We, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.”

The second essay, “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind,” details Baldwin’s adolescence in Harlem, as well as his personal struggles with faith and the failures of white Christianity. At the core of these essays is the idea that we must understand ourselves to understand others. Baldwin’s words still resonate with readers 60 years after its initial publication. 

5. Gender Queer: A Memoir , by Maia Kobabe (2019)

This illustrated memoir of Kobabe’s journey with understanding gender and sexuality is the most banned book in the U.S. Kobabe is nonbinary, and the memoir explores Kobabe’s experience first coming out as bisexual, then later as nonbinary and asexual. The book is banned based on claims that it has sexually explicit images, which include, for instance, depictions of a gynecological visit. In an interview with NPR , Kobabe explained the importance of including these images: “[I]t’s hard to fully explain, I think, how a gender identity can impact every facet of life as an adult without touching at least a little bit on sexuality.”

For cisgender people who don’t typically wrestle with their gender identity, or even see their sexuality as part of their identity, it is important to learn how these seemingly routine tasks, like a gynecologist appointment, can be dysphoric. As Kobabe told the New York Times in 2022, “When you remove those books from the shelf or you challenge them publicly in a community, what you’re saying to any young person who identified with that narrative is, ‘We don’t want your story here.’” 

6. Beloved , by Toni Morrison (1987)

Beloved has been on banned book lists since as early as 2006. It is a heart-wrenching novel about the formerly enslaved Sethe and her family. When Sethe realizes she is being pursued by slavecatchers, she fears for her children’s futures, and kills her oldest daughter, Beloved, so Beloved will not be taken back into enslavement. Its storyline contains brutal themes of racism, sexuality, infanticide, and bestiality.

As Emily Knox, author of Book Banning in 21st-Century America , told Time magazine in 2022, “What she tried to do is convey the trauma of the legacy of slavery to her readers. That is a violent legacy. Her books do not sugarcoat or use euphemisms. And that is actually what people have trouble with.” In Beloved , spirituality is a balm amid the tragedy. Morrison’s spirituality, and that of her characters, is rooted in a love that inspires her to fight against injustice. Morrison reminds us in Beloved that “Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.”

7. The Hate U Give , by Angie Thomas (2017)

Angie Thomas is not concerned that her debut novel has been on banned book lists basically since its release in 2017. The Hate U Give tells the story of Starr Carter, a teenage girl who witnesses police shoot her close friend during a traffic stop. This book contains issues many of today’s teenagers are wrestling with: racism and police brutality, drugs and profanity, and a Black protagonist who feels obligated to code-switch between life at home and life at her predominantly white private school.

Thomas was inspired to write this story because of her personal experience reckoning with the murders of young Black men by police. A Christian herself, Thomas says she admires the boldness of Christ. “I write books that make people uncomfortable, but honestly, as a Christian, I feel like that’s what I’m called to do. I’m not called to be comfortable.”

8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , by Maya Angelou (1969)

Maya Angelou is among the top banned authors in the U.S. In the first of her seven autobiographical works, Angelou recounts the early years of her life, up until age 17, as she learns to challenge racism and patriarchy. A young Angelou finds freedom in literacy, relating to and learning from characters in the countless stories she reads. Angelou’s personal story involves intense experiences of racism and sexual abuse, which is grounds for removal in some school districts. Through her writing, Angelou teaches us that, try as the world might, the voices of those who long for justice will not be silenced. As she writes in her poem “ Still I Rise ,” “You may kill me with your hatefulness, / But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

Lexi Schnaser (she/her) is the social media and communications assistant at Sojourners.

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Liliana Kennedy reads a book titled “Banned Books” during a Hamilton East Public Library board meeting on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023, in Noblesville Ind. Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters.

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