The number of reported challenges to books in the United States continues to increase — and the number of calls for censorship of unique titles was up nearly 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022 — according to data released by the American Library Association's (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom.
Each year the ALA releases data on books it states have been most often challenged for removal from public and school library shelves. Though the group says it's not possible to track every challenge, and that many go unreported, the data come through a variety of sources, including news stories and voluntary reports sent to the Office of Intellectual Freedom.
While the 1,247 documented demands to censor library books and materials narrowly avoided surpassing 2022's numbers, the amount of unique titles targeted nearly doubled; going from 2,571 titles in 2022 to reaching up to 4,240 titles in 2023. Of these titles, the most challenged and the reasons cited for censoring the books are listed below.
“Libraries are vital institutions to each and every community in this country, and library professionals, who have dedicated their lives to protecting our right to read, are facing threats to their employment and well-being," says president of the American Library Association, Emily Drabinski. "Every challenge to a library book is an attack on our freedom to read. The books being targeted again focus on LGBTQ+ and people of color. Our communities and our country are stronger because of diversity. Libraries that reflect their communities' diversity promote learning and empathy that some people want to hide or eliminate.”
Once again this year, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, published in 2019, tops the ALA's list. The graphic memoir follows Kobabe's path to gender-identity as nonbinary and queer. Most of the books on the list have been challenged with claims of including LGBTQIA+ or sexually explicit content.
It's worth noting that many of the efforts to ban books are ineffective in the end. The vast majority of the books that parents complain about and hope to see removed from their children's schools, eventually remain on their shelves. Few, if any, books are actually 'banned', if we take the term to mean unobtainable within the United States. Still, the ongoing challenges to the written word and to librarians providing it, are concerning to many.
Just like last year, Erasmus University Library acquired all targeted books on the 2023 list and all titles are available for loan at the library. In relation to important values such as intellectual freedom and access to information, the library plays a prominent role and with a strong awareness of information ethics, the Erasmus University Library collected these works. These books are a valuable addition to the diverse literature collections available at the library.
Keeping into account two titles tied for the same place this year, here are the top-10 of most challenged books over 2023, according to ALA data:
Once again the most challenged book according to the American Library Association, Maia Kobabe's graphic novel has been the topic of heated debate in several high school board meetings. Criticism seems to focus mostly on one panel depicting an erotic scene on a Greek urn, which some parents deem pornographic. However, sceptics point out that this is part of a growing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. As one county official in Illinois tells the Chicago Daily Herald: "The words we're hearing are not different from what we're seeing in other parts of the country with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that's being pursued. And we know that this language is dangerous. It causes violence."
Kobabe, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns e, em, eir (known as Spivak pronouns), wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post responding to the controversy. Recollecting eir own journey to understanding eir identity, e underlines the importance of having access to a library with books by non-binary authors in which e could recognize eir own experience: "Queer youth are often forced to look outside their own homes, and outside the education system, to find information on who they are. Removing or restricting queer books in libraries and schools is like cutting a lifeline for queer youth, who might not yet even know what terms to ask Google to find out more about their own identities, bodies and health."
Journalist and activist George M. Johnson's book All boys aren't blue is a young adult 'memoir-manifesto', detailing his own youth as a queer Black man and directly addressing kids growing up in similar circumstances. The book discusses, among other topics, consent, agency, and sexual abuse. It also contains two sexual encounters and statutory rape. In Florida, a member of the school board filed a report with the Sherriff's Office, claiming the book violates state obscenity laws and stating she was particularly concerned about the book's "detailed descriptions" of masturbation, oral sex and sodomy. Even though the committee appointed to review the book deemed it "appropriate for use", the book was banned "for now" from all schools in the county by the school's superintendent.
With This book is gay, Juno Dawson (also credited as James Dawson until 2015) aimed to write "a manual to all areas of life for an L.G.B.T.Q. person". As Dawson told the Guardian: "I'm willing to bet there are thousands of boys and girls in single bedrooms in towns, villages, suburbs and cities who are in hiding. There will be kids who are still scared and ashamed and that's not good enough. Every child has the right to feel safe and secure in both their environment and their skin."
The book was challenged among other places in Alaska, where a petition was started to remove it from a public library for profanity and sexually explicit content. The library director declined to do so. Dawson responded to the petition saying she wouldn't mind the book being moved to a different shelf: “I love librarians with all my heart and I trust they will find an appropriate shelf to stock This Book Is Gay where younger readers can’t get to it, but those who desperately need it can".
“I wondered why so many students have mental health issues, bad disciplinary problems. I believe they are being poisoned by what they hear and what they read," was the statement from Board Chair Kevin Adams when voting to ban The perks of being a wallflower from Florida's Northview High School. The book by Stephen Chbosky is a coming-of-age novel written as a series of letters from its main character, Charlie, to an unnamed friend. In these letters, Charlie writes about his struggles with relationships, substance abuse, mental health, and identity. Today, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is still subjected to multiple bans for including topics like drug use, teenage sex, sexual abuse, and abortion.
In an interview with the National Coalition Against Censorship, Chbosky commented: “This book is my love letter and wish for every kid who is struggling with identity, because at the time I was writing it, I was struggling with my own.”
Mike Curato's graphic novel Flamer tells the story of Aiden Navarro, a 14-year-old boy away at Boy Scout Camp, who is coming to grips with his sexuality. The book has been singled out by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the book banning group Moms for Liberty, whose concerns include that it contains “alternate sexualities.”
What gets lost in that conversation, Curato said, is that Flamer is a book about suicide prevention. “This is a book about telling someone that regardless of how someone may disagree with who you are as a person, you still deserve to be here. There is a place for you, and no one has the right to take that away.”
The oldest book on the list, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's The bluest eye has faced criticism since 1970 and has been on the most challenged book list for decades. Most recently, it was banned by a school board in Missouri. Morrison's debut novel has come under fire for its depiction of racism and for containing sexually explicit content, including sexual abuse and rape, making it not appropriate for school-age children according to some parents and teachers.
The bluest eye tells the story of Pecola, a young African-American girl growing up in Ohio following the Great Depression. She is consistently told that she is ugly because of her dark skin, fueling her desire for blue eyes, which she equates with whiteness. On her reasons for writing this novel, Morrison said: "I felt compelled to write this mostly because in the 1960s, black male authors published powerful, aggressive, revolutionary fiction or nonfiction, and they had positive racially uplifting rhetoric with them that were stimulating and I thought they would skip over something and thought no one would remember that it wasn't always beautiful."
The verse novel Tricks, which tells the stories of five individual teenagers and their struggle to survive on the fringes of society, was challenged for some of its sexually explicit passages, and topics such as drugs, rape, and LGBTQ+ content.
In an interview, author Ellen Hopkins said it’s better to address issues rather than ignore them and pretend they don’t exist, as the people calling for bans are, according to her, trying to do. “To say this stuff won’t happen if they don’t read about it, I mean, I just don’t even know where the logic is. [...] I’m there to help them make better choices, better decisions. And that’s my whole point to writing," she said, referencing the expansion of her work into school presentations where she shares the stories with students in a learning environment.
Jesse Andrew's book Me and Earl and the dying girl depicts the high-school friendships of two boys and a girl who is suffering from cancer. It was published in 2012 and a film adaptation came out in 2015, but it only entered the top 10 of the most challenged books list in 2021. The book has faced challenges because of profanity and language considered degrading to women, as well as sexually explicit scenes. The author has reacted on Twitter that these book bans are "picking up momentum" and are "fearful purity-obsessed parents and opportunistic politicians are makings kids' lives worse."
Let's Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human is a non-fiction graphic novel and guide to sex education, oriented towards teenagers. It has been praised for its diversity and comprehensiveness, but these very qualities and its main topic were also the reasons some called for censoring the book.
Patricia McCormick's novel details the story of a girl from Nepal who is sold into sexual slavery in India. While the characters may be fictional, the novel sheds light on a very real problem which puts it in the realm of realistic fiction. The novel faced challenges because of its depictions of rape and sexually explicit scenes.
McCormick wrote a New York Times opinion piece about the opposition her work has faced. She writes: "To ban this book is [not just dishonoring the girls I interviewed in India and Nepal who had been sold into slavery, but is] also disrespectful to the teenagers who want and in some cases need to read it. I’ve visited classrooms and juvenile detention centers all over the country since the book came out in 2006. At nearly all the visits, students come forward to say that they have been sexually abused or are being sexually abused — and that seeing their experience rendered in a book finally emboldened them to say so. [...] That’s what is consistently missing in the national conversation about book banning: the voices of those children and teenagers who see their experiences in print and finally realize they aren’t alone."
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