book banning thesis statement

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

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Banned Books — On Banning Books: The Complex Debate Over Censorship

On Banning Books: The Complex Debate Over Censorship

• Categories: Banned Books Literary Criticism

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Published: Sep 12, 2023

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Table of contents

The reasons behind book censorship, the impact on society, arguments for and against banning books, broader implications for freedom of expression.

• Moral Concerns: Some books are banned due to content that is deemed morally objectionable or offensive, often related to themes of sexuality, religion, or violence.
• Political Reasons: Governments or authorities may ban books that criticize or challenge their ideologies, as a means of controlling information and maintaining power.
• Protecting Youth: Concerns about age-appropriate content lead to book bans in schools and libraries, with the intention of shielding young readers from potentially harmful material.
• Historical Context: Books have been banned or burned throughout history to suppress dissenting voices or eliminate ideas that challenge the status quo.
• Protecting Social Norms: Some societies ban books that challenge traditional values or norms, fearing they may disrupt the social fabric.

Positive Impacts:

Negative impacts:, arguments for banning books, arguments against banning books.

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Article Contents

Introduction, materials and methods, acknowledgments, supplementary material, author contributions, data availability.

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Book bans in political context: Evidence from US schools

All authors contributed equally to this work.

Competing Interest: The authors declare no competing interest.

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Marcelo S O Goncalves, Isabelle Langrock, Jack LaViolette, Katie Spoon, Book bans in political context: Evidence from US schools, PNAS Nexus , Volume 3, Issue 6, June 2024, pgae197, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae197

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In the 2021–2022 school year, more books were banned in US school districts than in any previous year. Book banning and other forms of information censorship have serious implications for democratic processes, and censorship has become a central theme of partisan political rhetoric in the United States. However, there is little empirical work on the exact content, predictors of, and repercussions of this rise in book bans. Using a comprehensive dataset of 2,532 bans that occurred during the 2021–2022 school year from PEN America, combined with county-level administrative data, multiple book-level digital trace datasets, restricted-use book sales data, and a new crowd-sourced dataset of author demographic information, we find that (i) banned books are disproportionately written by people of color and feature characters of color, both fictional and historical, in children's books; (ii) right-leaning counties that have become less conservative over time are more likely to ban books than neighboring counties; and (iii) national and state levels of interest in books are largely unaffected after they are banned. Together, these results suggest that rather than serving primarily as a censorship tactic, book banning in this recent US context, targeted at low-interest children's books featuring diverse characters, is more similar to symbolic political action to galvanize shrinking voting blocs.

Book banning is increasingly common in US schools. While most studies focus on centralized, state-sponsored censorship, individuals such as parents and local organizations have participated in this recent wave of banning. Our study empirically describes banned books and authors, finding high rates of children's books written by authors of color among banned books. Furthermore, we analyze the local contexts that predict bans and evaluate how interest changes after books are banned. In sum, we suggest that this wave of book bans is best understood as a form of political action in increasingly contested local contexts rather than as a means of effective censorship. These findings contribute to scholarship on social movements, polarization, and censorship in contemporary democracies.

While a quintessential signifier of censorship and intellectual suppression, book banning is not a foreign practice to the American public ( 1 ). United States schools and libraries have banned books with some regularity for the past two centuries, as traditional norms were challenged by modernist and scientific thought ( 2 , 3 ). However, the 2021–2022 school year saw a drastic increase in book bans across the country, often through mandates from school boards and parent complaints ( 4 , 5 ). Following the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the intensification of a partisan “culture war” ( 6 , 7 ), book bans have become central to a broader conversation around politics, civics, and identity.

Journalists have diligently documented the recent rise in book bans, particularly noting how bans directed against profanity, violence, and sexual content target books with LGBTQ+ and Black characters ( 8–11 ). While there are cases, most notably around the work of Mark Twain, where books are removed from the curriculum or annotated to note the historical context, the vast majority of bans follow larger debates about the inclusion of critical race theory ( 12 ), LGBTQ+ perspectives, and inclusive gender theory ( 13 , 14 ) in school curriculums. To proponents of bans, exposure to books that convey these theories is a form of indoctrinating students, such that bans protect children from inappropriate content ( 15 ). By contrast, opponents describe bans as questionably legal attempts to deny young people access to information about the reality of systematic race- and gender-based discrimination in US public institutions and to vital social representations affirming a wide range of experiences and identities ( 16 , 17 ). Bans seemingly censor particular identities exactly at the time that students begin to explore their own.

Academic research on contemporary book banning in the United States is scant but growing. Legal scholars have identified the contradictions between students’ First Amendment rights and censorship attempts ( 17 , 18 ), while library science scholars have described recent book bans as a revival of McCarthyism, diminishing intellectual freedom and a sign of increasing precarity for public libraries and schools ( 4 , 19 ). Education scholars find little evidence that bans protect children ( 20 ) and further argue that bans, in infringing upon children's human rights and their ability to access information, are likely to hinder the development of critical thinking skills ( 16 ).

Outside of book bans, much of our understanding of contemporary information censorship comes from the study of authoritarian actors and online environments, where states take a variety of measures to suppress oppositional information ( 21–24 ). Yet unlike state-sponsored forms of information suppression, book bans in the United States exist within a framework of participatory democracy. Bans are supported by complex and often opaque collaborations between local parent organizations and national political organizations such Moms for Liberty, with close ties to the Republican Party ( 25 ) and are adjudicated through the democratic operations of school boards. As book bans are dispersed across the country, what are the motivating factors uniting them? To what extent are they predictable, both politically and in regards to the content they target?

Our study answers these questions through a systematic analysis of 2,532 book bans that occurred in the United States during the 2021–2022 school year ( 26 ) that we annotate and substantially extend with administrative data, multiple digital trace datasets, restricted-use book sales data, and a new crowd-sourced dataset. These multifaceted data allow us to empirically assess the full spectrum of content being banned—the majority of which, we show, is written by women and people of color and features characters of color, both fictional and historical—but that otherwise does not neatly align with the descriptions of gratuitous sexual content or dogmatic texts on race and gender theory. We also assess the heterogeneity of socio-political contexts in which book bans occur, a level of detail crucial to understanding book bans as a form of collective action embedded within multiple layers of social context. Altogether, our findings suggest that it is perhaps more apt to think of current book bans as a political tactic to galvanize conservative voters in increasingly divisive electoral political districts, rather than as a pragmatic effort to restrict access to certain materials.

Additionally, we test for the presence of two competing common effects of censorship: (i) the successful suppression of information ( 27 ) or (ii) a backlash effect, also known as the “Streisand effect,” where attempts at censorship drive more attention to the information ( 28 ). We find that there is very little interest in banned books even before they are banned. Furthermore, we find that the bans rarely intervene to draw more or less attention to a book, with national and state levels of interest in books remaining largely unaffected after they are banned. These findings suggest that while many banned books and authors are in line with the “culture wars” surrounding race and gender, bans are likely ineffective as a form of mass censorship of these topics. These findings compel us to reconsider book bans not solely as cultural or educational issues but as forms of political action, targeting the ballot box via library shelves and classrooms.

We investigate three aspects of contemporary book bans. First, we assess the variety of content and identities of authors that are being targeted. We address the first question by grouping crowd-sourced book genres into broad thematic clusters, and the latter by collecting and analyzing self-identified author demographic information. Second, we ask in what contexts books are most likely to be banned via a series of regression analyses applied to a broad range of county-level demographic factors. Finally, we ask how interest changes after books are banned through a pre–post analysis across several indicators of interest, including book sales and Google searches. Table S1 lists each research question and data source.

Types of banned books and authors

We use an inductive, data-driven approach to produce a high-level typology of books that are banned. The goal of this approach is to identify high-level book groupings (which we refer to as “genres”) based on book subgenres, such that each book is more similar in subgenre composition to the other books within its genre than to books in other genres. We use crowd-sourced book subgenres from Goodreads—a popular website where users can list and review books they read—yielding 143 unique subgenres (e.g. “Fantasy,” “LGBT,” “American History”) among the banned books in our sample, with each individual book associated with up to 10 subgenres. This procedure, based on the commonly combined Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) and Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (HDBSCAN) algorithms (( 29 , 30 ); see Materials and methods for more details on the clustering procedure), identified six thematic genre clusters that parsimoniously characterize the banned books (Fig. S1 ).

We summarize these genres, in order of frequency, as: (i) children's books with diverse characters, including both LGBTQ+ characters and characters of color (37%), (ii) nonfiction books about social movements and historical figures (22%), (iii) fantasy and science fiction (10%), (iv) young adult queer romance novels (10%), (v) women-centered fiction (10%), and (vi) fiction with mature, nonromance themes, like violence or drug use (7%), with 4% of books remaining unclustered as outliers (Fig. 1 A). These trends remain relatively stable across the 12 months of the 2021–2022 school year, with a peak for book banning in the winter months, when school boards are more likely to be actively meeting (Fig. 1 B).

Children's books featuring diverse characters are most likely to be banned. A) Proportion of banned books clustered into each genre. Books ( N = 1,370) can only be clustered into one genre, so genres sum to 100%. B) Number of bans per genre over time. Number of bans ( N = 2,532; books can be banned multiple times) per genre each month over the 2021–2022 school year, smoothed with loess.

In addition to characterizing the main genres targeted by book bans, we identify how bans also operate to censor authors from various demographic groups. Through an Amazon Mechanical Turk crowd-sourcing task, we collected the self-identified gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality of the 1,139 unique authors in our sample (with 95.7% of authors having a publicly-available online profile containing the information). We found that 64% of banned authors are women and 3% are nonbinary, while only 29% are men. In addition, 19% of authors in our sample self-identify as LGBTQ+ and 39% as people of color (Asian, Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, or otherwise self-identifying as a person of color).

To identify how the demographics of banned authors might systematically differ from the general author population, we compare them to (i) the US Census group who self-identify as authors ( 31 ) and (ii) a dataset of authors who wrote the most popular books from 1950–2018 ( 32 ), where popular books were defined as those published by the most prolific publishing houses and held by at least 10 libraries. We find that while women and LGBTQ+ authors are slightly overrepresented among banned authors, authors of color are strongly overrepresented among banned authors (women, χ 2 (2, N = 4,631) = 14.5, P < 0.001; LGBTQ+, χ 2 (1, N = 4,610) = 6.8, P = 0.009; people of color, χ 2 (2, N = 4,887) = 839.6, P < 0.001; Fig. S2 ).

In fact, the odds that an author of color was banned is 4.5 times higher than a white author, in comparison to all authors ( z = 7.8, P < 0.001; Fig. 2 A), and 12.0 times higher than a white author, in comparison to only the most popular authors ( z = 25.1, P < 0.001; Fig. 2 B). This phenomenon is driven largely by women of color, who make up 24% of banned authors in our sample, roughly twice the proportion of authors of color overall ( 31 ) and five times the proportion of authors of color who wrote the most popular books from 1950–2018 ( 32 ). Unfortunately, neither reference group of authors collected intersectional gender and race information (e.g. the proportion of authors who are women of color) or information about nonbinary authors (Fig. S2 ).

Books written by authors of color are far more likely to be banned. Odds ratios, split by demographic variable (race, gender, and whether an author identified as LGBTQ+), comparing the proportion of authors who wrote banned books in the United States during the 2021–2022 school year to A) the proportion of authors who listed their occupation as a writer or author in the United States in 2022 ( 31 ), which does not collect data on LGBTQ + authors, e.g. where odds POC /odds white = ( n POC banned / n POC all )/( n white banned / n white all ) and B) the proportion of authors who wrote the most popular books in the United States from 1950–2018 ( 32 ), e.g. where odds POC /odds white = ( n POC banned / n POC popular )/( n white banned / n white popular ). 95% confidence intervals and statistical significance were assessed via a z test.

Further, we find that the types of books authors write are associated with their identities. Children's books and nonfiction books about social movements were the most popular genres for each intersectional group of authors (e.g. non-LGBTQ+ white men or LGBTQ+ women of color), with the exception of nonbinary authors, who were more likely to write fantasy sci-fi books than any other genre (Fig. S3 ). However, non-LGBTQ+ women of color were more likely than any other group to write children's books featuring diverse characters, the most frequently banned category of books. By banning children's books, women authors of color are effectively banned as well.

Socio-political environments of book bans

While the majority of book bans occurred in Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas, they appear across the country (32 states), indicating that there are contextual factors motivating book bans beyond simple regional tendencies (Fig. 3 A). In order to assess the factors that predict book bans, we establish a comparison group comprised of counties that were not the site of book bans but which share a commuting zone with at least one county whose schools did ban books. Commuting zones are official designations developed by the US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service that group counties based on dense economic interrelationships. Each county belongs to exactly one commuting zone, of which there are 709 in total. This empirical strategy allows us to investigate how counties with school districts that ban books might differ along social and political lines despite sharing a similar socioeconomic background, regional context, and, presumably, culture.

Republican vote share predicts bans across counties in the same commuting zone. A) Distribution of book bans across US counties (2021–2022). Counties containing school districts that banned books in the 2021–2022 school year are compared to neighboring counties in the same commuting zones that did not ban books. There were no book bans in Hawaii (not displayed) during the study period. B) Republican vote share in book-banning counties vs. neighboring counties. The fraction of voters in counties with and without book bans who voted for the Republican presidential candidate each year, beginning in 2000.

Given the lack of prior quantitative research about the current wave of book bans, we test for a broad range of potentially associated factors including immigration patterns, average income and education levels, rates of religious observance, racial demographics, and political participation (Fig. S4 ). For example, one could imagine that racial threat ( 33 , 34 ) associated with local influxes of nonwhite immigrants might increase the likelihood of local book bans, or that parents of higher socioeconomic status have more free time to devote to volunteer activities ( 35 ), or that religiosity net of political identity is associated with support for censorship ( 36 ).

Across all factors, one of the most substantial distinctions between counties that banned books and those in the same commuting zone that did not was the change in vote share won by Republican candidates in US presidential elections. From 2000 to 2016, there was no significant difference in Republican vote share between counties that banned books and others in their commuting zone that did not ban books (Fig. 3 B). However, in 2020, counties with a weakened Republican majority, although still remaining above 50%, went on to ban books during the 2021–2022 school year while the nearby countries where the Republican majority gained strength did not ban books. Regression analyses identify that books are banned in communities that are wealthier, more educated and whiter, but the change in Republican vote share remains one of the strongest and most significant predictors across multiple specifications (Table S2 ). In other words, Republican strongholds were not likely to ban books while counties with increasingly precarious conservative majorities were.

Interest in banned books

We use two different indicators—internet searches and book sales—to assess national interest in the banned books in the months prior to and proceeding each ban. Both interest indicators only cover a fraction of the total number of bans ( Bookshop.org , 13%; Google Trends, 62%), with data unavailable for the remaining bans because of low interest (i.e. there were no sales or too few Google searches to populate the Google Trends data). The different rates of available data across the two indicators reflect the different types of interest captured in the two datasets; for example, it takes significantly less effort to search for a book online than it does to purchase it.

There is strikingly low overall national interest across both indicators throughout the period of our study. This is particularly noteworthy given the historical focus of censorship on banning popular books. The low data availability is consistent with our other data collection efforts (see Section S3 for more information). The individuals and organizations that advocate for book bans presumably strive for a decrease in interest, which would be a sign of effective censorship, an effect we are unlikely to see at the national level. Conversely, we could expect increased interest due to a “Streisand effect” ( 28 ), whereby interest rises following the ban due to the increased media attention or as a form of protest.

We observe a small positive change—approximately 1%—comparing the three months following a ban and the 3 months prior among national Google search results for books (Fig. 4 A), but this is not evident in the sales data (Fig. 4 B). However, this is tempered by the large rate of missing data and the null results of the sales, suggesting that book bans produce little change in the number of people who engage (or do not) with a book. Primarily, we find that bans are directed at books that largely do not attract the public's interest to begin with.

Interest in books does not substantially change after they are banned. Average interest across the 3 months prior to each ban and 3 months after each ban, with 95% confidence intervals, for A) Google Trends searches, which has a small significant positive change in mean interest and B) Bookshop.org sales, which do not significantly change.

The relationship between national levels of interests in banned books and the local effects are unknown. Indeed, data availability prohibits more targeted estimates ( Section S3 ). While national levels of Google searches increase slightly after books are banned, at the state level, searches do not change significantly (Fig. S9 ). At the local level, Seattle Public Library's open data portal allows us to access book check-out data, and we find these local results to be consistent with the national- and state-level trends: interest is generally low both pre- and post-ban, and does not change (Fig. S10 ). However, no school district in Seattle banned books during our study period nor is the city representative of areas that generally ban books. Even so, we interpret these null results as confirming our broader argument that contemporary book bans do not generally target popular books.

Disaggregating interest data for each of the five most frequently banned books in our sample, we find that there is only a small increase in interest for one book: Gender Queer: A Memoir ( 37 ), which received more Google searches in the months after a ban than it did preceding (Fig. S5 ). It is not possible to distinguish the increased interest in Gender Queer: A Memoir as a backlash effect to the ban or a general rise due to the increased media attention the book received as the country's most frequently banned book.

Book bans are increasingly common in US schools and libraries, suggesting censorship is growing within certain participatory democracy systems. Our large-scale study identifies consistent features of contemporary book bans: the books targeted for bans are most often children's books and nonfiction books about historical figures; they are disproportionately likely to be written by women and authors of color, particularly women of color; and the general US public has low levels of interest in them, both before and after bans occur. Further, we find books are more likely to be banned by school districts in counties with increasingly contested presidential elections compared with neighboring counties: specifically, those in which the Republican candidate, while still winning over 50% of votes, faces stronger competition from Democratic challengers than in previous elections. This is one of the strongest predictors that a school district within a county will ban a book. Despite the increasing prominence of book bans in American political and social life, bans tend to target books with relatively low sales and interest to begin with, suggesting that the goals of traditional forms of censorship (i.e. suppression of oppositional information) are not the most important practical outcome of book bans.

These findings prompt an expansion of the dominant censorship narrative around book bans. We do not propose that conservative organizers are uninterested in restricting access to content they deem objectionable. However, our results demonstrate that bans are impractical efforts of censorship, insofar as they are directed at rather marginal cultural objects. Furthermore, at a time when roughly 97% of 3- to 18-year-olds have home internet access ( 38 ), it is unclear whether the removal of school books meaningfully restricts student access to their, or similar, content.

This raises the question: if they are not meaningful censorship campaigns, what are book bans accomplishing? We argue that our findings are suggestive evidence that book banning primarily serves as a reaction to increasingly contested, local political contexts. Given the strong association between conservatism and book bans in contemporary media coverage, it is somewhat surprising that the counties banning books are less conservative (as proxied by presidential elections) than neighboring counties, in particular since the 2016 election. One way to resolve this apparent contradiction is to interpret book bans as a form of collective action whose primary motive is to galvanize an apparently shrinking voting bloc by appealing to “culture war” antagonisms around race, gender, and sexual identity, rather than (or in addition to) as a form of control directed at access to certain cultural and intellectual goods. From this perspective, we identify censorship as a strategy potentially used to mobilize conservative voters, rather than an authoritarian, top-down approach of suppressing information in the perceived interest of the state.

In light of our findings, further work should better distinguish the political efficacy and spread of book bans, especially those targeting diverse casts of characters, women and nonbinary authors, and authors of color. In particular, identifying how book bans might galvanize conservatives’ involvement in local politics and increase voter turnout will be required for better understanding the political effects of book bans. Our results are compatible with at least two different, but nonmutually exclusive interpretations that future work could disambiguate: (i) that due to the politically contested nature of these districts grassroots interest in local book bans precedes and ultimately benefits from the intervention of politicians and groups such as Moms for Liberty, or whether (ii) these organized groups identify candidate school districts on the basis of electoral politics and subsequently mobilize conservative parents in the area.

Additionally, while we find no evidence for mass censorship at a national scale, it is possible that book bans are associated with other outcomes at the local level. To this end, more qualitative work about the experience of parents and children in schools that ban books is necessary. Children's books, particularly those that win awards, already over-represent white characters ( 39 ) and there is a risk that further removing books featuring characters of color and LGBTQ+ characters from school shelves will only exacerbate what Ebony Elizabeth Thomas calls the “Diversity Crisis” in children's and young adult literature, whereby characters of color are scarce and often only depicted as the subjects of violent plot points ( 40 ). This could have serious implications for a child's sense of belonging in their community—regardless of whether they can still feasibly access the content of the books in other ways—that is invisible at the national level of our analysis. Even children belonging to social groups that are not targeted by these efforts may experience adverse consequences in learning outcomes if their schools become the sites of political contestation ( 41 ).

Our study is necessarily limited by data availability ( Section S3 ). The PEN America Index of Book Bans is the most comprehensive resource available but should not be interpreted as an absolute record of all bans. We are not able to differentiate between bans that are still in effect and those that were implemented and then overturned by the school board. The availability of books at each school is also not known: books might be placed on a no-purchase list or otherwise barred from acquisition before they have the opportunity to be banned from shelves; alternatively, banned books may never appear in the most conservative districts due to a lack of demand rather than a coordinated removal. In general, there is very little accessible data about book sales and interest. Despite the celebrity of “Best Seller” lists, book sales are heavily embargoed and it is not possible to extract usable sales data from Amazon, which represents about half of the online book sales and 75% of the ebook market ( 42 ). These data restrictions pose difficulties for assessing the state of banned books in particular and the diversity of the publishing industry in general ( 43 ). The open data portal provided by the Seattle Public Library offers a sign of promise for the collection of book interest and engagement data, although it requires a level of infrastructure unavailable to most school districts and libraries. It is possible that more robust and localized sales or library check-out data would be better positioned to identify the presence of a censorship effect, although our results suggest this is most likely not the case.

Our results allow us to better understand the rise of book bans. Book banning appears more similar to political strategies to receive attention and exert power. This is not to say that we should dismiss them as censorship attempts, but rather understand their primary purpose as most likely something other than information suppression, especially since the vast majority of the books banned are not popular books. In fact, the most sensational cases of book bans, which receive the majority of media attention, are rarely representative of the average banned book. While classic novels like Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird ( 44 ) and Toni Morrison's Beloved ( 45 ) do appear in our sample of banned books, it is far more likely that banned books are picture books or contemporary educational nonfiction books about important historical figures. Attention should be directed towards the children's books that make up the majority of the bans and future research should investigate which books are the target of bans and which stay on shelves.

As bans continue to increase across the country, our results suggest that these are political actions in addition to censorship tactics. The political ramifications of book bans remain under-examined. For example, in one Texas school district, an estimated $30,000 was spent compensating hundreds of hours of staff time reviewing and adjudicating book bans during the 2022–2023 school year ( 46 ). As book bans continue, they will infringe upon student's rights to information and incur heavy costs on taxpayers. Understanding their political context is an imperative.

We rely on PEN America's Index of School Book Bans ( 26 ), which includes instances in the United States in which student access to a book is restricted for a period of time, either in a school library or classroom. It is assembled through reviews of news articles, school websites, and letters to school districts, and should be considered a conservative estimate of book bans in the United States. It does not include books that were deaccessioned through standard procedures nor can it speak to books that were not purchased by the school in the first place. We use this dataset to identify each instance of book banning and each banned book (which could be banned by multiple school districts). The dataset documents a total of 2,532 bans and 1,649 unique books in the United States during the 2021–2022 school year. Table S1 summarizes our data sources and their relation to our research questions.

County-level data

We matched each school district in the PEN America list to their respective counties and augmented each ban with county-level demographic data from the US Census Bureau. We combine this with the county-level presidential vote share data from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab ( 47 ) and data from the US Religion Census Religious Congregations and Membership Study ( 48 ). It is important to highlight that 29 school districts (out of 146) span more than one county. In these cases, all the counties that overlap with the school district were marked as a county that banned a book in the period. In our final sample, there are a total of 621 counties. Among these, 146 counties are home to school districts that enacted book bans during the specified period. The remaining 475 counties are counties in the same commuting zones as those that banned books but did not have their school districts enact book bans during that time.

Book-level metadata

We collect book-level metadata from multiple sources. First, we collected all the Goodreads genres listed for every banned book. Goodreads is a digital platform owned by Amazon that allows users to track their reading habits and leave reviews for books. Goodreads crowd-sources its genre labels through “user shelves” which function as a reader-produced classification system ( 49 ). For the 1,371 books in our sample that could be found on Goodreads with genre annotations (83%), there were a total of 143 unique genres, with each book having a maximum of 10 genre associations—such as “Law,” “Feminism,” “Young Adult,” or “Fantasy”—per book and an average of 7.2 genres per book before preprocessing. Because genre associations are derived from Goodreads users rather than publishers or authors, we manually created a set of genre correspondences to ensure qualitative consistency among genres (such that, e.g. a book tagged “Lesbian” would necessarily also be tagged “LGBT” if it were not already). After this preprocessing, the average book was linked to 7.8 genres.

With each book represented as a vector of genre dummy variables in this 143-genre feature space, we used the UMAP algorithm ( 50 ) to convert this sparse representation to a dense, 2D, and continuous one, then clustered these 2D representations of each book using the HDBSCAN algorithm ( 30 ). We combine these algorithms as UMAP's dimensionality reduction has been shown to improve the performance of HDBSCAN ( 51 , 52 ), while also enabling 2D visualization. As with many clustering applications, a model which yields too few clusters may obscure important variation in the data, while too many clusters can undermine the ultimate goal of summarizing data in a qualitatively legible way. Given that our purpose for clustering is to summarize and yield qualitative insights about our data rather than other downstream applications, we explored a range of hyperparameters and evaluated them in terms of the percent of books left unclustered (which we sought to minimize) and qualitatively, in terms of the perceived quality and distinctiveness of clusters. In the end we selected a model that yields six high-level genre clusters of books.

Finally, we used the Google Books API to gather short descriptions of each book (generally similar or identical to what appears on the book's back cover). After removing blurbs from critics and author bios such that only descriptions of book content per se remained, we fit a structural topic model ( 53 ) to these documents to provide an overview of lexical themes and their interrelations within the corpus of book descriptions. As the results of the topic model substantively replicate those of the genre-based analysis, we include them in the supplement (Fig. S1) rather than present them here.

Author demographic data

We collected the self-identified gender, race, and sexuality of each author in our dataset through an Amazon Mechanical Turk crowd-sourcing task that asked participants to collect such self-reported data from publicly available biographies on author websites, Wikipedia pages, and similar sources. We tested and timed the task to take around 3 min for a user new to the task to complete. We intentionally did not use a name-based algorithmic classifier to obtain this information because of known biases, especially for those who identify as people of color ( 54 ).

To assess the quality of information obtained, we audited a random sample of the results ( N = 50 authors). We found that the majority of authors who self-identified their gender, race/ethnicity, or sexuality online were found by participants, but 22% of authors who self-identified as queer and 19% of authors who identified their race and/or ethnicity were not found by participants, so our estimates of the proportions of queer authors and authors of color are likely conservative. However, participants generally copied over the information accurately (98% accuracy for gender information, 85% for sexuality information and 100% for race/ethnicity information). Detailed results of this audit can be found in Table S3 .

We compared our results to two reference datasets: (i) the proportion of writers and authors in the United States who listed their occupation as a writer or author in 2020, provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics ( 31 ) and (ii) the proportion of authors who wrote the most popular books in the United States from 1950 to 2018 ( 32 ). Unfortunately, neither reference source collected cross-tabulated (intersectional) gender and race data (for example, the proportion of authors who are women of color).

Interest data

We leverage two distinct measures of interest to assess the possible impact of book bans, comparing the average interest in the 3 months prior to and following each ban. Outside of best seller lists, book sales data are heavily embargoed, with the top provider of book data to publishing houses refusing to license their data for academic research or interested individuals ( 43 ). To overcome this limitation, we negotiated access to restricted-use sales data from Bookshop.org , an online platform responsible for about 1% of the online book market in the United States. While sales data are likely the most robust measure of interest in a book, we complemented the sales data with a weaker yet broader measure of interest—search data from Google Trends (for more details see Section S3 ). The Bookshop.org data is normalized as they shared the data with us under the condition that we do not report exact sales. Both the Bookshop.org and Google Trends results reported in the main text are measures of interest at the national level. We also ran Google Trends results at the state level and found that interest did not significantly change post-ban (Fig. S9 ). Finally, the most granular level of interest is at the local level, and there is very little public data available at the local level. We ran the same analysis using Seattle Library's open data portal, where we can collect the number of checkouts for each book in the city's library system, and again found no significant change (Fig. S10 ). However, Seattle is not representative of the regions that typically ban books, thus we cannot draw specific local-level conclusions, but as a large metropolitan area we expect that national-level effects, were they to exist, should be visible in these data and thus it serves as an additional robustness check of our national-level results.

For each interest indicator, we conduct a pre–post design, comparing the average interest across the 3 months preceding the ban with the three following months. The latter group contains the ban month itself. We chose a monthly time series measure because the PEN America dataset includes the month of each ban but not the day. Indeed, bans are likely to occur over several weeks as a group petitions the school district for the removal of a book, meetings are held, and a final decision is made. For robustness, we ran the same tests on different time groups (1 month, 4 months, 6 months); all groupings produce similar, nonsignificant results (Fig. S7 ).

We thank Chris Bail, Lizzie Martin, Jay A. Pearson, Alejandra Regla-Vargas, Nina Wang, Sam Zhang, and reviewers for helpful comments. We additionally thank Bookshop.org for their cooperation and generous sharing of data. This manuscript was posted on a preprint: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4618699 .

Supplementary material is available at PNAS Nexus online.

This research was assisted by a Social Science Research Council (SSRC)/Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science Research Grant.

All authors contributed equally to conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, data curation, and writing.

Open-source code used for our analyses is available at https://zenodo.org/records/10982953 . All underlying source data used to run our analyses is available at https://zenodo.org/records/10982955 , with the exception of the restricted-use book sales data and the author demographic data. Anonymized versions of the book sales data and author demographic data are included in the open-source repository, but the full versions may be available upon request to qualified researchers.

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When are book bans unconstitutional? A First Amendment scholar explains

Associate Professor of Law, University of Dayton

Disclosure statement

Erica Goldberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Dayton provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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The United States has become a nation divided over important issues in K-12 education, including which books students should be able to read in public school.

Efforts to ban books from school curricula , remove books from libraries and keep lists of books that some find inappropriate for students are increasing as Americans become more polarized in their views.

These types of actions are being called “book banning.” They are also often labeled “censorship.”

But the concept of censorship, as well as legal protections against it, are often highly misunderstood.

Book banning by the political right and left

On the right side of the political spectrum, where much of the book banning is happening, bans are taking the form of school boards’ removing books from class curricula.

Politicians have also proposed legislation banning books that are what some legislators and parents consider too mature for school-age readers, such as “ All Boys Aren’t Blue ,” which explores queer themes and topics of consent. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s classic “ The Bluest Eye ,” which includes themes of rape and incest, is also a frequent target.

In some cases, politicians have proposed criminal prosecutions of librarians in public schools and libraries for keeping such books in circulation.

Most books targeted for banning in 2021, says the American Library Association, “ were by or about Black or LGBTQIA+ persons .” State legislators have also targeted books that they believe make students feel guilt or anguish based on their race or imply that students of any race or gender are inherently bigoted .

There are also some attempts on the political left to engage in book banning as well as removal from school curricula of books that marginalize minorities or use racially insensitive language, like the popular “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Defining censorship

Whether any of these efforts are unconstitutional censorship is a complex question.

The First Amendment protects individuals against the government’s “ abridging the freedom of speech .” However, government actions that some may deem censorship – especially as related to schools – are not always neatly classified as constitutional or unconstitutional, because “censorship” is a colloquial term, not a legal term.

Some principles can illuminate whether and when book banning is unconstitutional.

Censorship does not violate the Constitution unless the government does it .

For example, if the government tries to forbid certain types of protests solely based on the viewpoint of the protesters, that is an unconstitutional restriction on speech. The government cannot create laws or allow lawsuits that keep you from having particular books on your bookshelf, unless the substance of those books fits into a narrowly defined unprotected category of speech such as obscenity or libel. And even these unprotected categories are defined in precise ways that are still very protective of speech.

The government, however, may enact reasonable regulations that restrict the “ time, place or manner ” of your speech, but generally it has to do so in ways that are content- and viewpoint-neutral. The government thus cannot restrict an individual’s ability to produce or listen to speech based on the topic of the speech or the ultimate opinions expressed.

And if the government does try to restrict speech in these ways, it likely constitutes unconstitutional censorship.

What’s not unconstitutional

In contrast, when private individuals, companies and organizations create policies or engage in activities that suppress people’s ability to speak, these private actions don’t violate the Constitution .

The Constitution’s general theory of liberty considers freedom in the context of government restraint or prohibition. Only the government has a monopoly on the use of force that compels citizens to act in one way or another. In contrast, if private companies or organizations chill speech, other private companies can experiment with different policies that allow people more choices to speak or act freely.

Still, private action can have a major impact on a person’s ability to speak freely and the production and dissemination of ideas. For example, book burning or the actions of private universities in punishing faculty for sharing unpopular ideas thwarts free discussion and unfettered creation of ideas and knowledge.

When schools can ‘ban’ books

It’s hard to definitively say whether the current incidents of book banning in schools are constitutional – or not. The reason: Decisions made in public schools are analyzed by the courts differently than censorship in nongovernment contexts.

Control over public education, in the words of the Supreme Court, is for the most part given to “ state and local authorities .” The government has the power to determine what is appropriate for students and thus the curriculum at their school.

However, students retain some First Amendment rights: Public schools may not censor students’ speech, either on or off campus, unless it is causing a “ substantial disruption .”

But officials may exercise control over the curriculum of a school without trampling on students’ or K-12 educators’ free speech rights.

There are exceptions to government’s power over school curriculum: The Supreme Court ruled, for example, that a state law banning a teacher from covering the topic of evolution was unconstitutional because it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the state from endorsing a particular religion.

School boards and state legislators generally have the final say over what curriculum schools teach. Unless states’ policies violate some other provision of the Constitution – perhaps the protection against certain kinds of discrimination – they are generally constitutionally permissible.

[ Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today .]

Schools, with finite resources, also have discretion to determine which books to add to their libraries. However, several members of the Supreme Court have written that removal is constitutionally permitted only if it is done based on the educational appropriateness of the book, but not because it was intended to deny students access to books with which school officials disagree.

Book banning is not a new problem in this country – nor is vigorous public criticism of such moves . And even though the government has discretion to control what’s taught in school, the First Amendment ensures the right of free speech to those who want to protest what’s happening in schools.

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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 .

The Hydra Nature of Book Banning and Censorship

A snapshot and two annotated bibliographies.

• Michelle Boyd Waters University of Oklahoma
• Shelly K. Unsicker-Durham University of Oklahoma

In Fall of 2022 two researchers set out to explore both scholarly work on censorship and news articles via social media, to help gain a broader understanding of censorship and book banning trends. The following research question guided their research: What does this wave of book banning and censorship look like across the US? What they discovered is a kind of censorship-Hydra, an evolving beast posing an ever-present danger, one that will likely take the courage, collaboration, and ingenuity of educators everywhere. This article offers a snapshot of this current beast of book banning and censorship in the form of two annotated bibliographies—one focused on news reports and trends in social media—the other focused on academic searches of scholarly articles.

Author Biographies

Michelle boyd waters, university of oklahoma.

Michelle Boyd Waters is a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma studying English education. She taught middle and high school English Language Arts for 10 years and is now studying the establishment and impact of writing centers in high schools. She is the Graduate Student Assistant Director at the OU Writing Center, an Oklahoma Writing Project Teacher Consultant, and co-editor of the Oklahoma English Journal.

Shelly K. Unsicker-Durham, University of Oklahoma

After 23 years of teaching English Language Arts, Shelly is a PhD candidate with the University of Oklahoma in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum, where she has also served as graduate instructor, researcher, and co-editor of Study & Scrutiny. Her favorite research pursuits include expressive writing pedagogy, teacher conversations, and young adult literature. 

THREE REFERENCE LISTS:

REFERENCES FOR ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY #1

Authors speak out on censorship. (2022, March 11). National Council of Teachers of English. https://ncte.org/resources/ncte-intellectual-freedom-center/authors-speak-out-on-censorship/

Backus, F., & Salvanto, A. (2022, April 6). Big majorities reject book bans - CBS news poll. CBS News. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/book-bans-opinion-poll-2022-02-22/ . DOI: https://doi.org/10.3886/icpsr04092.v1

Banned & Challenged Books: Simon & Schuster. New Book Releases, Bestsellers, Author Info and more at Simon & Schuster. (n.d.). Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/bannedbooksweek

Blake, M. (2022, July 27). A surprising list of recently banned books. Penguin Books UK. https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2022/05/surprising-books-that-have-been-recently-banned-2019

Chess, K. (2018, September 8). Why I hate censorship in ya fiction. Khristina Chess. https://www.khristinachess.com/blog/2018/9/8/why-i-hate-censorship-in-ya-fiction

Friedman, J., & Farid Johnson, N. (2022, September 19). Banned in the USA: The growing movement to censor books in schools. PEN America. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/

Frisaro, F. (2023, May 24). Amanda Gorman’s inauguration poem banned by Florida School. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/amanda-gormans-inauguration-poem-banned-by-florida-school

Gregory, J. (2022, September 9). 22 titles pulled from Missouri district shelves to comply with state law and more: Censorship roundup. School Library Journal. Retrieved October 2, 2022. https://www.slj.com/story/22-titles-pulled-from-missouri-district-shelves-to-comply-with-state-law-and-more-censorship-roundup

Jensen, K. (2022, August 4). A template for talking with school and Library Boards about book bans: Book censorship news, August 5, 2022. Book Riot. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://bookriot.com/book-censorship-news-august-5-2022 . DOI: https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0173.0203

Jensen, K. (2022, August 25). States that have enacted book Ban laws: Book censorship news, August 26, 2022. Book Riot. Retrieved October 2, 2022. https://bookriot.com/states-that-have-enacted-book-ban-laws-2022/

Jensen, K. (2023, May 25). When do we move from advocacy to preparation?. Book Riot. https://bookriot.com/when-do-we-move-from-advocacy-to-preparation/

The Learning Network. (2022, February 18). What students are saying about banning books from school libraries. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/learning/students-book-bans.html

Lopez, S. (2023, May 8). The extreme new tactic in the crusade to ban books. Time. https://time.com/6277933/state-book-bans-publishers/

Magnusson, T. (n.d.). Book censorship database by Dr. Tasslyn Magnusson. EveryLibrary Institute. Retrieved September 25, 2022. https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/book_censorship_database_magnusson

Miller, S. (2022). Intellectual Freedom Center Provides Support for Censorship Challenges. Council Chronicle, 32(1), 16–18. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/cc202232050 . DOI: https://doi.org/10.58680/cc202232050

“Not recommended” reading: The books Hong Kong is purging from public libraries. (2023, May 26). Hong Kong Free Press. https://hongkongfp.com/2023/05/26/not-recommended-reading-the-books-hong-kong-is-purging-from-public-libraries . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110966879.26a

op de Beeck, N. (2023, May 2). Turning a censorship controversy into a learning opportunity. PublishersWeekly.com. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/92172-turning-a-censorship-controversy-into-a-learning-opportunity.html

Parker, C. (2023, July 25). Readers can now access books banned in their area for free with New App. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/banned-book-club-app-180982592/

Pendharkar, E. (2023, June 29). How students are reacting to book bans in their schools. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/how-students-are-reacting-to-book-bans-in-their-schools/2023/06

Price, R. (2022, September 19). The power of reading, or why I do what I do. Adventures in Censorship. https://adventuresincensorship.com/blog/2022/9/17/the-power-of-reading-or-why-i-do-what-i-do

Russell, B. Z. (2022, September 23). Panel: Book-banning push is coordinated, national effort. Idaho Press. Retrieved October 2, 2022. https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/panel-book-banning-push-is-coordinated-national-effort/article_cb6606aa-3b89-11ed-be6c-67820ea458a1.html

School Library Journal. (2023, May 25). Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural Poem Restricted in Florida District After One Parent Complains | Censorship News. https://www.slj.com/story/newsfeatures/Amanda-Gormans-Inaugural-Poem-Restricted-in-Florida-District-After-One-Parent-Complains-Censorship-News

REFERENCES FOR ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY #2

Beck, S., & Stevenson, A. (2018). Teaching contentious books regarding immigration: the case of Pancho Rabbit. Reading Teacher, 72(20), 265-273. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1739

Boyd, A. S., Rose, S. G., & Darragh, J. J. (2021). Shifting the conversation around teaching sensitive topics: Critical colleagueship in a teacher discourse community. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 65(2), 129-137. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1186

Buehler, J. (2023). Voices of Young Adult Literature authors in the conversation about censorship. English Journal, 112(5), pp. 64-70. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58680/ej202332423

Collins, J. E. (2022). Policy solutions: Defying the gravitational pull of education politics. Phi Delta Kappan, 104(1), 62-63. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00317217221123654

Dallacqua, A. (2022). “Let Me Just Close My Eyes”: Challenged and Banned Books, Claimed Identities, and Comics. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy,66(2), 134-138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1250

Dávila, D. The Tacit Censorship of Youth Literature: A Taxonomy of Text Selection Stances. Child Lit Educ 53, 376–391 (2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-022-09498-5

Garnar, M., Lechtenberg, K., & Vibbert, C. (2020). School Librarians and the Intellectual Freedom Manual. Knowledge Quest, 49(1), 34–38.

Goodman, C. L. (Ed.) (2022). IDRA Newsletter. Volume 49, No. 2. Intercultural Development Research Association.

Greathouse, P., Eisenbach, B., & Kaywell, J. (2017). Supporting Students’ Right to Read in the Secondary Classroom: Authors of Young Adult Literature Share Advice for Pre-Service Teachers. SRATE Journal, 26(2), 17–24.

Hartsfield, D. E., & Kimmel, S. C. (2020) Exploring educators figured worlds of controversial literature and adolescent readers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(4), 443-451. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.989

Hlwyak, S., Ed. (2021, April). State of America's libraries 2021: Special report: Covid-19. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/State-of-Americas-Libraries-Report-2021-4-21.pdf

Ivey, G., & Johnston, P. (2018). Engaging disturbing books. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(2). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.883

Leland, C. H., & Bangert, S. E. (2019). Encouraging activism through art: Preservice teachers challenge censorship. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 68(1), 162-182. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2381336919870272

Lycke, K., & Lucey, T. (2018). The Messages We Miss: Banned Books, Censored Texts, and Citizenship. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 9(1), 1–26. 3

Matthews, C. (2018). Sexuality. Brock Education: A Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 27(2), 68-74.

Mehan, K., & Friedman, J. (2023). Banned in the USA: State laws supercharge book suppression in schools. PEN America. https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/

Metzgar, M., & McGowan, M. J. (2022). Viewpoint diversity at UNC Charlotte. Acta Educationis Generalis, 12(3), 1-12. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/atd-2022-0020

Moffet, J. (1988). Storm in the Mountains: A Case Study of Censorship, Conflict, and Consciousness. Southern Illinois University.

Page, M. L. (2017). Teaching in the cracks: Using familiar pedagogy to advance LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(6), 644-685. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.616

Pekoll, K. (2020). Managing censorship challenges beyond books. Knowledge Quest, 49(1), 28-33.

PEN America. (2022, April). Banned in the USA: Rising school book bans threaten free expression and students’ First Amendment Rights (April 2022). https://pen.org/banned-in-the-usa/#what

PEN America. (2022, Sept. 19). New report: 2,500+ book bans across 32 states during the 2021-22 school year. https://pen.org/press-release/new-report-2500-book-bans-across-32-states-during-2021-22-school-year/

Pérez, A. H. (2022). Defeating the censor within: How to hold your stand for youth access to literature in the face of school book bans. Knowledge Quest, 50(5), 34-39.

Rumberger, A. (2019). The elementary school library: Tensions between access and censorship. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 20(4), 409–421. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1463949119888491

SLJ Staff. (2023, April 20). New PEN America Report Shows Increase in Book Bans Driven by State Legislation. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/censorship/New-PEN-America-Report-Shows-Increase-in-Book-Bans-Driven-by-State-Legislation

Steele, J. E. (2020). A History of Censorship in the United States. Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy, 5(1), 6-19. https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/State-of-Americas-Libraries-Report-2021-4-21.pdf

Sulzer, M. A., & Thein, A. H. (2016). Reconsidering the hypothetical adolescent in evaluating and teaching young adult literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(2), 163-171. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.556

Vissing, Y., & Juchniewicz, M. (2023). Children’s book banning, censorship and human rights. In J. Zajda, P. Hallam, & J. Whitehouse (Eds.), Globalisation, values education and teaching democracy, vol 35 (pp. 181-201). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15896-4_12

Walter, B., & Boyd, A. S. (2019). A threat or just a book? Analyzing responses to Thirteen Reasons Why in a discourse community. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(6), 615-623. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.939

Woo, A., Lee, S., Tuma, A. P., Kaufman, J. H., Lawrence, R. A., & Reed, N. (2023). Walking on Eggshells--Teachers' Responses to Classroom Limitations on Race-or Gender-Related Topics: Findings from the 2022 American Instructional Resources Survey. Research Report. RR-A134-16. RAND Corporation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/rra134-16

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Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6(3).

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. (2022, October 20). Hydra. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hydra-Greek-mythology

Foster, M. V. (2022, August 23). NPS teacher resigns from district after sharing QR code for library access with classroom. FOX 25, Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/norman-public-schools-nps-norman-high-school-teacher-summer-boismeir-house-bill-1775-hb1775-american-civil-liberties-union-aclu-first-amendment-critical-race-theories-crt-book-ban-oklahoma-state-board-of-education-race-sex-discrimination?fbclid=IwAR0WiSTlBqucyBFZLzDIbKqrmRJ9PMOG-wKbGLihujHOBiAzidJn9I7F_Ho

Hill, J. A. (2023). Legitimate state interest of educational censorship: the chilling effect of Oklahoma House Bill 1775. Oklahoma Law Review, 75(2), 385-408.

Interactive chart. Ad Fontes Media. (2023, July 8). https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/

KOKH Staff. (2023, March 21). 'What did I do?' OSDE applies to revoke certificate of ex-Norman teacher Summer Boismier. FOX 25, Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/summer-boismier-teaching-certificate-revoked-norman-oklahoma-ryan-walters-books-unbanned-qr-code-state-department-education-brooklyn-public-library-critical-race-theory-gender-queer-

Media Bias Chart. AllSides. (2023, June 21). https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

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PEN America. (2022, August 23). For the first time, Oklahoma education officials punish two school districts for violating gag order on teaching race and gender. [Press Release]. PEN America. https://pen.org/press-release/for-first-time-oklahoma-education-officials-punish-two-school-districts-for-violating-gag-order-on-teaching-race-and-gender/

Penharkar, E. (2022, August 2). Two Okla. districts get downgraded Accreditations for violating state’s anti-CRT Law. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/two-okla-districts-get-downgraded-accreditations-for-violating-states-anti-crt-law/2022/08

Smith, J. C. (2023, June 22). School officials ‘failed to prove’ teacher violated law by helping students get books, prosecutor says. USA Today Network. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/22/no-proof-teacher-violated-oklahoma-book-law-prosecutor/70347891007/

Suares, W. (2022, August24). ‘I am a walking HB1775 violation’: Former Norman teacher discusses book ban controversy. FOX 25 Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/summer-boismier-norman-public-schools-critical-race-theory-brooklyn-public-library-qr-code-house-bill-1775-oklahoma-teacher-resigned-education-books?fbclid=IwAR2Pz72tTGDJbZrEeGEm6LYaaJb17ojMMTrztDxU_6uBvZcDD7cVIJvf5yw

Stafford, W. (2022, July 28). Two Oklahoma school districts punished for violating CRT ban. FOX 25, Oklahoma (KOKH). https://okcfox.com/news/local/2-ok-school-district-punished-for-violating-crt-ban-tulsa-public-schools-and-mustang-public-schools-accreditation-with-warning-house-bill-1775-accreditation-with-warning-accreditation-with-deficiencies

Taylor, J., & Fife, A. (2023, August 3). After a state law banning some lessons on race, Oklahoma teachers tread lightly on the Tulsa Race Massacre. The Frontier. https://www.readfrontier.org/stories/after-a-state-law-banning-some-lessons-on-race-oklahoma-teachers-tread-lightly-on-the-tulsa-race-massacre/?fbclid=IwAR1PBzCAnjyI59RRArRTNudvmJydz5hYvZghABDSLjYPoq0tmcDsYRj8Lqc . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74679-7_3

Tolin, L. (2023, January). Oklahoma teacher is still fighting book bans, now from Brooklyn.

Waters, M. B. (2018, December 31). Rethink ELA #010: Fostering student-led discussions with the TQE method. reThink ELA. https://www.rethinkela.com/2018/12/rethink-ela-010-fostering-student-led-discussions-with-the-tqe-method/

Woo, A., Lee, S., Tuma, A. P., Kaufman, J. H., Lawrence, R. A., & Reed, N. (2023). Walking on Eggshells—Teachers’ Responses to Classroom Limitations on Race-or Gender-Related Topics. Rand American Educational Panels. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA100/RRA134-16/RAND_RRA134-16.pdf . DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/rra134-16

Copyright (c) 2023 Michelle Boyd Waters, Shelly K. Unsicker-Durham

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Current Issue

Banned Books 2024: Freed Between The Lines: Home

• Book Banning in the News

Celebrate Banned Books Week Sept 22 - 28, 2024

Why Banned Books Week?

• Statement from the American Library Association
• Definitions

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Highlighting the value of free and open access to information, Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types –- in shared support of the freedom to seek, to publish, to read, and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship. The books featured during Banned Books Week have all been targeted for removal or restrictions in libraries and schools. While books have been and continue to be banned, part of the Banned Books Week celebration is the fact that, in a majority of cases, the books have remained available. This happens only thanks to the efforts of librarians, teachers, students, and community members who stand up and speak out for the freedom to read.  –-  Banned Books Week Q&A

Book Challenge vs. Book Ban

An attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. 

Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others. 

A book banning is the actual removal of those materials . 

A change in the access status of material, based on the content of the work and made by a governing authority or its representatives. Such changes include exclusion, restriction, removal, or age/grade level changes.

Intellectual Freedom

The right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.

Read Banned Books @ St. Kate's Library

Out of Darkness

In the Night Kitchen

Intellectual Freedom Issues in School Libraries

Intellectual Freedom Manual

Intellectual Freedom Stories from a Shifting Landscape

It's Perfectly Normal

The Kite Runner

Looking for Alaska

Maus I: a Survivor's Tale

Me and Earl and the dying girl

Melissa (formerly Published As GEORGE)

My Sister's Keeper

Nasreen's Secret School

Of Mice and Men

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Skippyjon Jones

Slaughterhouse-Five

Something Happened in Our Town

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

This book is gay

To Kill a Mockingbird

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books

Almost Perfect

A Court of Mist and Fury

Dear Martin

Dreaming in Cuban

Felix Ever After

The Color Purple

The 1619 Project

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Collector's Edition

All American Boys

All Boys Aren't Blue

And Tango Makes Three

The Annotated Huckleberry Finn

Beyond Banned Books

Beyond Magenta

The Bluest Eye

Book Banning in 21St-Century America

Books under Fire

Brave New World

Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets

100 Banned Books

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

Gender Queer: a Memoir

The Glass Castle

His Dark Materials: the Golden Compass (Book 1)

The Handmaid's Tale

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

The Hate U Give

A History of ALA Policy on Intellectual Freedom

The Holy Bible : Revised Standard Version, Catholic edition

The Qur'an [al-Quran al-hakim]

The Hunger Games

Freedom to read statement.

Seventy years ago, leaders from across the literary world joined together in writing to condemn attacks on free expression. The statement at the heart of that endeavor, the Freedom to Read Statement , was authored by the American Library Association and Association of American Publishers over a period of several days. It begins with this timeless observation:

The freedom to read is essential to our democracy. It is continuously under attack.     

Read the full Freedom to Read Statement.

From Unite Against Book Bans, 2024

Guide Feedback

• Guide Feedback We welcome your feedback! Use this form to suggest changes/additions to this guide.

By the Numbers 2023

Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2023

Advocacy and Activism around Banned Books

Whether by providing legal support, educational resources for parents, teachers, and librarians, or opportunities to organize on the grassroots level, there are many organizations which fight against efforts to ban books in school libraries and beyond, and many more which fight censorship more broadly.

Learn more about some of these organizations, and/or get involved, below:

• How to Fight Book Bans: A Tip Sheet for Students From PEN America
• American Library Association, Fight Censorship
• National Coalition Against Censorship & Unite Against Book Bans
• Freedom to Read Foundation
• Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF)
• PEN America, Book Bans
• Book Ban Busters
• Next: History >>
• Last Updated: Sep 13, 2024 3:58 PM
• URL: https://libguides.stkate.edu/bannedbooks24

©2024 St. Catherine University Library , St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

Book banning in the USA

• October 2022

• New York City Department of Education

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Saturday, September 14, 2024

Brandeis University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1949 | Waltham, MA

• Arts & Culture

Unveiling the unseen: Confronting book bans and educational censorship

Young-adult fiction author julian winters and dr. tanishia lavette williams discuss book censorship in an event hosted by compact..

On April 3, the Samuels Center for Community Partnerships and Civic Transformation hosted a discussion on book bans with author Julian Winters, student organizer Cameron Samuels and Dr. Tanishia Lavette Williams, a Brandeis Florence Levy Kay Fellow in Racial Justice, Education, and the Carceral State. 

Samuels is a leading activist in the movement against censorship in Katy Texas who testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2023 on the topic of banned books.  

In 2023, 4,250 different books were challenged to be banned, especially in libraries and schools, many of which included those that centered on marginalized voices or about topics related to race, religion, gender identity or sexuality. The talk, funded by COMPACT’s Maurice J. and Fay B. Karpf and Ari Hahn Peace Awards and the ENACT Educate and Advocate Grant, was planned about a year in advance.

Winters is a young-adult fiction author who focuses on Black, Indigenous and people of color and LGBTQ+ narratives. His motivation to begin writing originated from the lack of representation in his school books. As a queer Black man, he was disheartened by the lack of Black protagonists in books. When there were Black characters, they were often stricken by tragedy.  In those books, “anyone who is BIPOC or queer are just a narrative in someone elses’s narrative,” Winters said. “Those readers need to know that things like joy and growth exist … we don’t exist to be the lesson for someone else’s story.”

In the discussion, Winters credited his experience with reading as the source of his passion for writing. “That [the representation of characters with the same identity as him] was a hard weight to carry as a teen … I started writing on my own to change that narrative,” he said. “One of the greatest things in having to read those classics was that it made me angry enough to fix what I was seeing.” 

Winters explained the misconception that book bans aren’t actually preventing individuals from reading books. “Books aren’t cheap — it’s hard to watch when books are continuously pulled from [school and library] shelves,” he said. “For some that’s the only way they’re accessible.” Those who claim otherwise and are initiating the bans, he stated, are from privileged positions who have the freedom to buy a book privately at their own discretion. Young students often do not have the safe space to explore the themes of these banned books, many of which represent some part of their identity. “When you put students or readers in that position, it makes them hide away from who they are,” he explained. 

Williams touched on the impact of censorship within schools and its effects on learning. “When we censor what students can learn or read, it impacts curriculum,” she said. “This sterilization / altering of voice that has been ever present [and] it’s a moral tax that teachers have to bear.” While there are some teachers who outwardly oppose it risking legal consequences, others teach it quietly while the rest follow the regulations in place. One anonymous teacher in Texas, has a secret bookshelf in her classroom with banned books on queer and marginalized narratives. 

Williams also explained the balancing act of parents’ right to make decisions for their children and censorship. “It gets very nuanced and the law tries to make sense of that,” she said. “No matter what side we sit on, to take into consideration that every child has to go to school, every child is different and has a different upbringing, and that the child belongs to some families that also has beliefs about what that child should and should not learn.”

Winters shared his own story regarding why he believes representation is vital in literature. While he was in school, he described himself as a “very reluctant reader,” attributing this to the lack of representation in literature and shared he did not read books for himself again until his early 20s. His experiences with books taught him “who I am is wrong … I made myself smaller and smaller,” until he found books he identified with: “Books literally saved my life,” he recalls.

Winters emphasized the importance of interacting with those who are not comfortable with banned books and do not understand the issue in their censorship. While personal conversations may feel insignificant, he explains that they are the first steps to broader change. “You have to be okay with starting small; you have to be okay with being vulnerable, and then sharing these things he said.”

Samuels touched on the possibilities that they felt were represented in their school libraries. “I know that if there were books in my school library that reflected my experiences, I’m sure I would’ve been able to discover myself, learn about experiences that are also unfamiliar to me and see the world as a bigger picture, build compassion and connect with others,” they said.

Book censorship points toward a larger pattern in educational censorship that affects all Americans and can be framed as a civil rights issue. “Education is a system that touches just about everyone in this country.” Williams stated how there is a “holistic polarization” in education and explained how a diversified curriculum, such as critical race theory, is necessary to evaluate how the presence of race and racialized hierarchies in America can be examined. She further elaborated on the importance of critical race theory in schools, citing ideas such as whiteness as a property, race’s manifestation in law, and intersectionality.

Winters hopes that young writers are able to use their anger at issues they see around them. “I don’t want you to just internalize that anger. I want you to use it, to fire you to do the thing you want to do,” he said. “When the world expects you to lose … to quiet the power you already have …take that fire and let it burn.”

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Justice .

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Book Bans: An Act of Policy Violence Promoting Anti-Blackness

Book bans represent acts of policy violence that further codify anti-blackness in the DNA of America. 

Two weeks ago, the  NAACP  filed a  lawsuit  in Pickens County, South Carolina, alleging their most recent ban of Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi's book " Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You " from every school district in South Carolina is unconstitutional in that it violates the student's first amendment rights and is politically motivated. Unfortunately, the all-white  Pickens County School Board  is among a growing list of violent actors who must be stopped. They deliberately censor what literary works kids can and cannot read — and in many cases, having not read the books  themselves  before voting to ban them. What is more violent, as evidenced by the books they are banning, they choose to censor the teaching of the factually accurate history of Black people. These violent acts are rooted in an un-yielding legacy of racism, prejudice, oppression, and anti-blackness.

As a young boy growing up in rural Mississippi, I recall my aunt filling my bookshelves with books that told the factually accurate history of Black people — often signing books gifted to me for holidays and special occasions such as Kwanzaa and my birthday with the charged phrase, "Know Thy Self." These books often came with money — "…when you finish, I have $20 for you." Today, while they no longer include $20, these acts have extended to a tradition of passing books that tell and affirm the factually accurate history of Black people between us. This practice would not have been required had I attended a school that sought to teach the honesty and factually detailed account of Black people. Today that remains the reality for many Black children. And to make matters worse, far too many Black children whose families have been impacted by the history of racism and oppression won't be able to purchase books for their children — much less incentivize children to read their history as my aunt did me.

The tradition of passing books with my aunt was (and remains today) an act of love and rebellion — more profoundly, it was an act of Black liberation. My aunt was deeply critical of the lack of teaching of the factually accurate history of Black people. She was most struck by the fact that my schools intentionally shared the narratives of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. but failed to offer the narratives of Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. Thus, choosing to reject the complete, factually accurate account of Black people's history.

Books bans have increasingly become the policy tool of anti-black policy leaders who systematically perpetuate intolerance and ignorance. These attempts systematically and disproportionately impact Black youth who would benefit from the literary work's interrogation of society as they shape their understanding of their people's history.  These violent actors know the cascading effect such works would have on all youth's ability to challenge, interrogate, and ask for a better America.  For example,  many school districts nationwide have banned  " The Bluest Eye " by Toni Morrison. Morrison's work has been integral in shaping classroom conversations across America on race and prejudice. As such, these attempts to censor literature and silence Black writers are politically motivated and profoundly un-American.

This pedagogical violence, caused by actors with no teaching experience in schools, has been painstakingly done to keep the factually accurate history of Black people out of the hands of Black children. And, while in many classrooms across America, teachers have chosen not to teach the factually accurate history of America, it is now being codified through acts of policy violence today — namely, book bans! As these acts of policy violence continue to sprout up as part of intentional acts of anti-blackness in the halls of state legislatures, local school boards meetings, and even Congress, with the recent passage of the  Parents Bill of Rights , civil rights leaders must fight against the attack on Black students to keep them from learning the factually accurate history of Black people in America.

For years, this country has successfully worked to pass violent laws to maintain a permanent  caste system  to include an illiterate fraction of Black people through the passage of Jim Crow laws and literacy tests to ensure Black people could never pick up a book — much less read it to know their history. Today's book bans join the growing list of anti-black violence by a dwindling majority, insistent on keeping Black children from learning the factually accurate history of racism, prejudice, and oppression in America.

We must fight bans on books that teach the honest, factually accurate history of Black people in America most dramatically — from litigation such as the Pickens County, South Carolina case to challenging lawmakers at state capitols and school board members in local communities through both policy debates and electoral politics. As such, the NAACP is committed to preserving, defending, and protecting the factually accurate history of Black people in this country. Especially that of those who, for 400 years, through violent policy acts such as enslavement, forced migration, redlining, sharecropping, gentrification, gerrymandering, segregation, etc., have been relegated to simply existing through white supremacy. As the NAACP works to dismantle these and other acts of policy violence, we ask that you join us in this fight. The NAACP will continue to support local, state, and national efforts to fight back against book bans. Let us know how we can help you fight book bans in your local community!

• Education Innovation

Restricted Access: The American History of Book Banning | Discussion Guide

Between 2021 and 2023, PEN America and the American Historical Association (AHA) cohosted Flashpoints: Free Speech in American History, Culture and Society . This series presented the fascinating and complex history of free speech in American democracy to public audiences in cities across the country. The historical flashpoints highlight pivotal moments in which artists, activists, writers, filmmakers, and intellectuals tested the limits of free speech, challenged the public to redefine “freedom” and realized it anew for populations and causes that were at risk of having their liberties denied.

How to Use this Guide

This guide was designed to supplement the video recording of a live event for use in the classroom. The questions and prompts included here offer ideas for fostering student engagement in both secondary and postsecondary educational environments, foregrounding issues of general public interest that align with topics often covered in history, government, civics, and political science. Choose the prompts that seem best suited to the concerns and interests of your community, using them as a springboard for discussion, writing exercises, and debate or as a model for civic engagement.

Incorporating Flashpoints into the Secondary Classroom

The video recording of Restricted Access: The American History of Book Banning can help structure lessons on the First Amendment, free speech, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Movement. It will be most obviously relevant in civics and government classes, where curricula may already include the Comstock Act or in history classes which already include the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

The battles over censorship and the meaning of the First Amendment during the Gilded Age were the first sustained conflicts over freedom of speech and freedom of the press in American history. As such, they set much of the tone, methods, and philosophies that would be followed through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. This includes but is not limited to: the creation of advocacy organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); the spread of moral panics; the branding of the political opposition as sinful or as lovers of vice; and the use of the media to stir up popular support.

Although difficult to quantify, a more sexually repressed society in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century United States was a direct result of the Comstock Act—both through directly limiting the availability of information of about sex and sexuality available to many Americans, but also through the self-imposed censorship experienced by artists, authors, and publishers.

Teachers may wish to share excerpts of this video to support conversations about any of the themes outlined above. Alternately, this material might help students prepare to hold their own panel discussion about research related to a contemporary issue.

Learning Outcomes and Standards Alignment

The question of free speech in schools can orient an inquiry that aligns with the C3 Framework, especially as it applies to civics education. A lesson built around this video and subsequent discussion can address D2.Civ.2 on the role of citizens; D2.Civ.4 on the US Constitution; outcomes associated with participation and deliberation (D2.Civ.7-10); D2.Civ.12 on using and challenging laws; and D2.Civ.14 on changing societies and protecting rights.

A classroom activity asking students to organize their own panel discussion will move firmly into dimensions 3 and 4, requiring students to gather and evaluate sources; develop claims and use evidence; communicate and critique conclusions; and, potentially, take informed action.

Many states have standards in civics, social studies, or history that address free speech, the Bill of Rights, Supreme Court rulings, and/or the Gilded Age.

Restricted Access: The American History of Book Banning

On September 21, 2022—Banned Book Day—Amy Werbel, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Whitney Strub, and Laurie Halse Anderson joined moderator Ali Velshi to discuss the history of book banning and censorship in American politics, schools, and society. Such challenges to free speech are nothing new in American life. In the nineteenth century, the federal Comstock laws barred the delivery and distribution of “every obscene, lewd, or lascivious” book. Today, books that highlight race, gender, or sexuality are being removed from the shelves of schools and libraries around the country.

What is a Panel Discussion?

The format of a panel discussion, in which multiple experts gather to talk about an issue of compelling public interest, provides a model for the kind of informed, civil dialogue that teachers hope to facilitate in the classroom and that is vital to the functioning of a democratic society. Many students may be unfamiliar with this style of intellectual exchange because people argue, rather than just deliver definitive facts. Teachers or discussion leaders may wish to call attention to the fact that each panelist has devoted years to the careful and thorough study of the topic they are addressing. Note, too, how each speaker anchors their interpretation in specific examples that provide evidence to support their perspective.

Informed debate can look quite different from the kinds of sparring matches students see on the news. The panelists may agree about some ideas but not about others. Grappling productively with reasonable differences in interpretation is essential to developing a full understanding of an issue. This kind of conversation—in which experts gather to discuss their findings—is an important component in the creation of new knowledge about our society and the world.

• Is this panel discussion different from debates we see on cable news? If so, how and why?
• Can we, as a class or discussion group, engage in a civil debate in our own class discussions?

Restricted Access Video Timeline

0:00 — Introductions of Banned Books Week, PEN America, and Jonathan Friedman

7:14 — Jonathan Friedman offers an assessment of the current situation of book banning in the United States.

9:50 — André De Shields reads from Toni Morrison ’s Beloved .

21:26 — Ali Velshi introduces panelists

25:14 — Amy Werbel discusses Anthony Comstock and the early history of book banning in the United States, including an overview of the Comstock Act and its impact on American society.

34:44 — Farah Jasmine Griffin discusses the banning of Toni Morrison’s works and the impacts book banning has on democracy.

41:18 — Whitney Strub discusses the banning of books on the grounds of “obscenity,” with emphasis on how such bans harm communities that fall outside of white heterosexual norms.

51:21 — Laurie Halse Anderson discusses the evolution of book banning in schools in recent years, as well as the importance of providing young readers with books that affirm diverse perspectives and experiences.

56:30 – Moderated Q&A.

1:11:00 – Audience Q&A.

The Flashpoint: The Comstock Act (1873)

In the decades between the Civil War and the First World War, reformers embraced a variety of causes intended to improve American society. Most of this era, until about 1900, was known as the Gilded Age due to its rapid economic expansion, particularly for white middle- class Americans in the northern and western states. Partially inspired by the uneven growth of economic prosperity, the era also saw the rise of the Progressive Movement, which included a wide range of social reformers hoping to improve society, often by improving the lives of the poorest Americans. Some formed charitable organizations to support underprivileged populations, such as immigrants and the working poor. Others joined campaigns aimed at promoting morality and the purification of society. In many cities, organizations called vice societies emerged to combat prostitution, pornography, gambling, and other perceived sins. Many prominent Gilded Age philanthropists supported organizations like New York’s Society for the Suppression of Vice, which boasted large donations from the likes of Samuel Colgate and J.P. Morgan and smaller contributions from Theodore Roosevelt and J.D. Rockefeller.

During and after the Civil War, the pornographic publishing industry of New York City ballooned and quickly became the target of vice crusaders. In the early 1870s, Anthony Comstock joined the effort to destroy this industry by preventing it from using the US Postal Service to advertise and distribute materials through the country. Comstock testified before Congress in 1872 on the social dangers he and other reformers believed emerged from pornography and other sexually explicit media, including prostitution, the spread of sexually transmitted infections, abortion, and a malign influence over young Americans (what he termed the “corruption of youth”).

Following Comstock’s provocative testimony, Congress passed An Act for the Suppression of Trade In, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use in early 1873, which has since become known colloquially as the Comstock Act. This law banned the mailing of all “obscene” material in the United States but did not itself define what qualifies as “obscene.” Comstock was appointed a special agent to oversee the implementation of the act, and over the following decades he pushed for the prosecution of hundreds of cases (with mixed results) in which materials he deemed obscene were transported or believed likely to be transported through the mail. Nonetheless, the years between roughly 1873 and 1920 saw significant self-censorship on the part of publishers, authors, artists, and other producers of media due to fears that they may be prosecuted under the Comstock Act.

Before watching Amy Werbel’s discussion of Comstock (25:14), it may be helpful to discuss censorship and some of the implications of banning books and other printed materials:

• What is government censorship? How does this differ from other kinds of interventions that restrict the circulation of words and ideas (e.g., self-censorship or a publisher’s decision not to print a book)?
• What does it mean for something to be obscene? Do all people agree about what words, ideas, or images are offensive?
• What are the implications of banning obscene material without providing a definition of what is to be considered “obscene”? Have students attempt to generate a definition of “obscene” that they can all agree upon.
• Does banning every type of publication have the same impact on freedom of speech? What might the impact be of banning something that many people do consider objectionable (i.e., violations of “community standards”)?
• Why might Gilded Age reformers believe that banning certain books could improve society? Do you see similar efforts in our world today?

Obscenity and Censorship

After watching Amy Werbel discuss Comstock and the Comstock Laws, students and other viewers may find it useful to return to the questions suggested above, particularly the implications of banning obscene materials without providing a standard legal definition. In some classes, it may also be appropriate to watch Whitney Strub’s discussion of how antiobscenity laws affect some communities more than others.

Additional prompts for group discussion might include:

• Who should be able to define terms like obscene and community standards?
• Many social media companies establish community standards that restrict certain kinds of speech deemed to be harmful or offensive. In what ways are these policies similar to the ban on mailing obscene material in the Comstock Act? In what ways are they different?
• Can banning certain materials actually improve society, as some Gilded Age reformers believed?
• Was the Comstock Act unconstitutional? In other words, how did its authors rationalize the bill’s restrictions on what could be sent through the mail in light of the First Amendment’s promise that Congress would refrain from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”?
• Does the First Amendment protect forms of communication aside from “the press” (itself a vague term) and speech, such as art, performance, and education?
• How does the Comstock Act fit into the broader history of the Gilded Age? Does it challenge or conform to the other aspects of the period discussed in class?

The Legacies of the Hollywood Ten

• The Comstock Act functionally banned most forms of contraception and birth control, as such materials—along with medical and promotional literature for them—could not be sent through the US Postal Service, even between doctors. How do you think the Comstock Act might have affected the lives of American women and their families?
• Based on what you know about the United States in the 1960s, why do you think this prohibition came to an end during this decade?
• The lack of pre-existing definitions of ideas like “obscenity” and “freedom of the press” forced advocates of free speech to sharpen their arguments to defend against censors like Comstock. What is the danger of regulating something without a fixed and agreed upon definition?
• How can someone fight against an idea that is not clearly defined in order to protect one’s own civil liberties?
• The Comstock Act set the precedent for later bans on certain media, as well as government regulation of industries like radio, television, and film in the twentieth century. To what extent does the US government use regulations to restrict the form and content of media today?
• What role might the Comstock Act have had in shaping how American culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

Suggestions for Further Reading

Boyer, Paul S. Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age , 2nd ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.

Corn-Reaver, Robert. The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder: The First Amendment and the Censor’s Dilemma . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.

Sohn, Amy. The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age . New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021.

Werbel, Amy. Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock . New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Acknowledgements

PEN America would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for their generous funding, which made “Flashpoints: Free Speech in American History, Culture, and Society” possible. We would also like to thank the American Historical Association for their contributions to “Flashpoints” and the Discussion Guides. In particular, special thanks are awarded to Alexandra F. Levy, Communications Manager for the AHA; and Katharina Matro and Shannon Bontrager, who both advised on the structure and format of the guides.

Finally, thank you to this discussion guide’s principal author: Conor Howard, Editorial Assistant, American Historical Review

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Banned Books, Censored Topics: Teaching About the Battle Over What Students Should Learn

Suggestions for using recent Times and Learning Network articles, videos, podcasts, student forums and more.

By Katherine Schulten

Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. At the same time, schools are mired in debates over what students should learn about in U.S. history. In the last two years, dozens of state legislatures introduced bills that would limit what teachers can say about race, gender, sexuality and inequality.

All of this is part of a larger debate over politics in public school education. Across the United States, parents have demanded more oversight over curriculums, and school board meetings have erupted into fiery discussions.

How much do your students know and understand about these battles? To what extent have they affected your community, school and students? Why do they matter?

Below, we have collected articles, podcasts, videos and essays, from both The Times and other sources, that can help students think about these issues, and consider what they can do in response. We have also linked to our own related lesson plans, as well as to our Student Opinion forums , where your students are invited to join young people around the world to discuss their opinions.

And though we are publishing this collection during Banned Books Week , these issues are relevant far beyond one week in September. With the approach of midterm elections, for example, challenges to books and the conflicts that surround them are only likely to escalate. And, of course, all of these battles raise deeper questions about education, democracy and citizenship. We hope your students will find something in this collection that will engage them.

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