A year ago last March I stood up in front of my local school board and spoke in defense of an award-winning trans-centered middle school book and the teacher who read it to her class. My voice was one among nearly a hundred passionate speakers, many of whom were high school students, and it was inspiring to witness their determination and activism in support of inclusion in my community.
Nonetheless, it was incredibly hurtful to hear some adults in the room refer to books about LGBTQ+ kids as “vile indoctrination,” and transgender as “a controversial political and social ideology.” The author’s parents happened to be in that school board room, and his mother gave a mic-dropping speech in defense of her son and the value of his book – exactly what any mother who loves their child would do – and exactly what every parent who spoke for inclusion and representation in our schools’ curriculum and classroom libraries did. Because when you stand for freedom in this country, you stand for the freedom to read, the freedom to think, the freedom to be, and any limitation or censure of those freedoms is no freedom at all.
The teacher who chose a trans-centered ghost story to read to her class, the author and his parents, the students and their families who spoke at the board meeting – they’re not ideologies, they’re people – people with feelings that can be hurt, people with livelihoods that can be impacted, people with minds and hearts and souls. They’re people with human rights, civil rights, and the freedoms that living in America guarantees, and their personhood is not less than anyone else’s, and certainly not less than the bigots trying to ban the book and fire the teacher, for being young or trans or an LGBTQ+ ally.
I designed a variation of “I Read Banned Books” after that school board meeting which places the Pride flag within the letters of “Banned.” Black and brown are deliberately included in that flag because along with LGBTQ+ books and authors, Black and brown-centered and authored books are among the most banned in school classrooms and libraries. But there is no visual representation for the depictions of sexual content, or swearing, or drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. Nothing that declares that experiences of gun violence, rape, or domestic abuse can be found within, despite the fact that these are very real situations people – kids – face every single day. The groups who challenge books – Moms for Liberty has a playbook for book banning – use “protecting the children” as their battle cry, and they rely on buzzwords like “indoctrination,” “pornography,” and “critical race theory” as their justification.
A woman in Texas – a former teacher and mother – ran for the school board because she believed the claims that her district was teaching Critical Race Theory, never mind that CRT is a college-level interdisciplinary field focused on the relationships between social conceptions of race and ethnicity, social and political laws, and media. She won her school board race, and then spent the next six months diving into the curriculum of the district, where she found, unsurprisingly, no evidence that Critical Race Theory was being taught in their schools. When she brought that fact up to the far right group that had encouraged her to run on a book-banning platform, she was ignored, and then finally shunned and denigrated for not following the playbook.
I shouldn’t, perhaps, be so surprised that the Texas school board member actually took the time to read the curriculum, but honestly, I’m surprised when anyone who proposes book bans has actually read the books they’ve decided are dangerous. From July to December, 2023, more than 4,300 books were removed from schools in 23 states. Florida, in a shocking twist (read the sarcasm) had the highest numbers, with 3,125 books across 11 school districts banned, including dictionaries and encyclopedias, for depicting or referring to sexual contact. 20% of all banned books in this country depict rape or sexual assault, and with the horrifying statistic that 1 out of every 6 women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime, those books are absolutely relevant to people’s lived experience. Providing access to social emotional learning and a sense of connectedness to others is among the most effective means of preventing teen suicide, according to the CDC, which means that inclusive books about a wide range of characters, situations, and circumstances can literally save lives. Seeing someone in a book who looks like you, loves like you, feels like you do about the challenges they face can normalize the things that can otherwise isolate us. We’re not quite so alone when we connect with people, or barring an actual conversation, when we read someone else’s words who has imagined what it feels like to be us.
That “someone” is an author, who very often pours their own lived experience into the stories that connect us and confront others, and the challenges to those books can feel very personal and hurtful. Obviously, book bans are economically harmful in the suppression of sales, but they can also prevent publishers from buying an author’s future work if it’s seen as controversial or problematic. The children’s picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, by Grace Lin was removed from schools in Pennsylvania simply for centering an Asian main character, a character who was deeply personal to its author. Grace Lin has used this to take a stand against “diversity and inclusion” lists, and instead, pushes to integrate all books into lists based on reading level, genre, and age-appropriateness.
Today I moderated a panel with six other authors about book bans, and fantasy/romance author Elizabeth Hunter said one of the most impactful things of the event. “The safest place anyone will ever experience anything is on the pages of a book.” Imagine that - life is full of sex, drugs, violence, love, hate, racism, identity, highs and lows. We, as readers, can experience things through words on a page without ever having to try them out in real life, and through those armchair experiences we can think about what fits and what doesn’t, what’s possible and what isn’t, what’s intriguing, and what isn’t for us. The event was Book Bonanza, a massive author/reader event in Texas organized by Colleen Hoover and her incredible team. The event raises tens of thousands of dollars for charity every year, and has positively impacted hundreds of youth and school literacy programs.
Colleen Hoover’s books are written for mature teens and up, and yet they remain some of the most banned books from high school libraries in the country. In one South Carolina district, Lolita was returned to high school library shelves while Colleen’s book, It Ends With Us, soon to be a feature film, was permanently banned. In the past three years, the book banners have shifted their focus away from books they say promote Critical Race Theory and have transferred it to LGBTQ+ authors and characters, citing sexual content and “political gender ideology indoctrination” as their reasoning. The top 10 most challenged books in the U.S. in 2023 are all claimed to be sexually explicit, with 7 of the 10 containing LGBTQ+ content. Even the threat of a book challenge can be enough to keep it off the shelves of a library in this climate of internet bullying and public trolling of librarians and teachers. Frankly, we as a society don’t pay librarians and teachers enough to put up with the kinds of bullying I’ve seen from self-righteous book banning adults, so I’m not surprised when library shelves remain mostly empty of anything deemed even remotely controversial.
In nearly every banned book case that makes it to court, judges are finding book ban laws to be unconstitutional, and California and Illinois have both passed anti-book ban laws, but we remain mired in a freedom-to-read crisis in this country. Each year sees a record number of book challenges at a time when mental health concerns dominate conversations in every school district, serious considerations of suicide are higher than 50% among LGBTQ+ youth, and public education is under attack. Authors who strive to be inclusive and to give readers a chance to see themselves in their stories risk economic and emotional hardship when they do, and publishers have begun to back away from hard topics and controversial characters as a bad investment.
A statement I’ve heard more than once from a middle school teacher is that if they could indoctrinate students in anything it would be to wear deodorant, and having spent just enough time teaching middle school English to understand how challenging it is to create curriculum out of a book, I can guarantee that teachers cannot be impetuous in their choices of literature. It’s hard to reach some kids with books, so having the widest possible selection in a classroom library or school library can mean the difference between becoming a lifelong reader and one who reads just enough to get by. But maybe that’s the point of book bans? Books are full of ideas and thoughts and possibilities, and when people have ideas and can see possibilities beyond their own experiences they’re far less easy to indoctrinate with ideologies of intolerance and hate.
Sigh. How about this – I won’t tell you what you and your kids can read, and you won’t try to control what me and mine do.
As a parent I’m particularly concerned about censorship in schools. I wish there was a book box for kids that had age appropriate books along with activities or topic suggestions that parents and their kids could discuss together to broach these topics. Does anyone know if this already exists?
I’d like to know what psychological disorder this behavior falls under. It’s fear, homegrown, insidious fear. Fear of shame because what if they pick up a book and recognize themselves. They, the fearing, will have to come to terms with their otherness and self-hatred and who wants to do that.