Banned Books Week 2022: ‘Unprecedented’ Challenges A Political Fight

ACROSS AMERICA — School officials at 138 school districts in 32 states were among those challenging and banning books in what a Banned Books Week 2022 report called an “unprecedented fashion.”

The report from PEN America, a New York-based literary and free expression nonprofit advocacy group, highlights how challenges to books have become a political issue nationwide. A majority of the targeted books focus on sexual identity, race and racism.

The report, “Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools,” said the majority of book bans weren’t “spontaneous, organic expressions” of concern by parents and citizens, but rather “reflect the work of a growing number of advocacy organizations that have made demanding censorship of certain books and ideas in schools part of their mission.”

Students are losing access to literature “that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship,” Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America’s Free Expression and Education Programs and the lead author of the report, said in a news release.

That’s “especially harmful to students from historically marginalized backgrounds, who are forced to experience stories that validate their lives vanishing from classrooms and library shelves,” he said.

From July 2021 to June 2022, local officials banned 2,532 books by 1,261 authors, 290 illustrators and 18 translators, according to the report. The districts 138 school districts that banned books represent 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students.

The most frequently banned books were “Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe” (banned in 41 districts), followed by “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson (banned in 29 districts) and “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez (banned in 24 districts).

The list of banned books also includes bestselling titles that are the basis of mainstream movies (“The Hate U Give,” “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) television series (“Thirteen Reasons Why,” “Looking for Alaska”), and a Broadway show (“The Kite Runner”).

The most banned authors include Nobel laureate Toni Morrison and winners of the Booker Prize, the Newbery Award, the Caldecott Medal, and the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

In the past, books were primarily banned because they contained profanity, portrayed violence or, as with the case of the Harry Potter series in the early 2000s, because they portrayed wizardry.

Efforts to ban books circulate online with parents sometimes requesting a book be reconsidered or banned without having read it, but after seeing a post on social media, Friedman told CNN.

“From my place in the world, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told The Washington Post. “A parent will stand up, do this impassioned speech about obscenity in school libraries in Virginia, and it goes viral on Facebook.”

PEN America identified 50 groups, many that formed in the last year, that have led the charge to ban books at the national, state and local levels. They include local groups on Facebook and other social media to established conservative groups, including Moms for Liberty, which started in Florida, the No. 2 state for book bans, and now has 200 chapters.

Moms for Liberty, which started in Florida and has about 200 chapters around the country, is “linked directly” to 20 percent of the book bans enacted in the last school year, the report said.

The estimate was based on publicly available information, based appeals made by parents or community groups at school board meetings, as well as informal or formal requests that books on library shelves be reviewed. Moms for Liberty’s influence was likely far wider, the report said, noting that in 30 percent of the bans, similar language or tactics were used.

Other national groups identified in the report are pursuing broader agendas.

“Some of the groups espouse Christian nationalist political views, while many have mission statements oriented toward reforming public schools, in some cases to offer more religious education,” according to the report.

Friedman told CNN some groups formed around “anger fomented against schools during the pandemic” as a result of school closures, mask mandates and vaccine protocol. Others “have been around for a long time and have now moved into putting pressure on schools in new ways or with new success.”

PEN America acknowledges the right to organize and advocate under the First Amendment, but said it is concerned with how those principles are being applied to restrict and ban books.

“While we think of book bans as t he work of individual concerned citizens, our report demonstrates that today’s wave of bans represents a coordinated campaign to banish books being waged by sophisticated, ideological and well-resourced advocacy organizations,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel, said in a news release. “This censorious movement is turning our public schools into political battlegrounds, driving wedges within communities, forcing teachers and librarians from their jobs, and casting a chill over the spirit of open inquiry and intellectual freedom that underpin a flourishing democracy.”

A report last week from the American Library Association said efforts to censor books this school year are on track to surpass last year’s count. From Jan. 1-Aug. 31, it tracked 681 attempts to ban or restrict “library resources” in K-12 schools, universities and public libraries nationwide.

Schools, bookstores and libraries around the country are sponsoring local events during the 40th Banned Books Week, which continues through Saturday, with a special focus on the recent sharp rise in book bans. The theme of this year’s observance is “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.”

Texas led the country with 801 bans in 22 school districts, followed by Florida with 566 bans in 21 districts and Pennsylvania with 457 bans in 11 districts.

Also, from the report:

• 674 titles (41 percent) explicitly address LGBTQ+ themes, or have protagonist or prominent secondary characters who are LGBTQ+, including 145 titles with transgender characters or stories;
• 659 titles (40 percent) contain protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color;
• 357 titles (22 percent) contain sexual content of varying kinds, including novels with some description of the sexual experiences of teenagers, stories about teen pregnancies, sexual assault and abortion, as well as informational books about puberty, sex or relationships;
• 338 titles (21 percent) directly address issues of race and racism;
• 161 titles (10 percent) have themes related to rights and activism;
• 141 titles (9 percent) are either biography, autobiography or memoir; and
• 64 titles (4 percent) include characters and stories that reflect religious minorities, such as Jewish, Muslim and other faith traditions.