By Lilian H. Hill
Some of my favorite books when I was growing up were Call of the Wild (Jack London, 1903), Are you there God? It me, Margaret (Judy Blume, 1970), and A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle, 1963). They have all been banned or challenged. Other banned books include classics we read in high school including Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, 1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain, 1876), To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960), and Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954). Many have read In the Night Kitchen (Maurice Sendak, 1970), Where’s Waldo? (Martin Handford, 1987), or the Junie B. Jones series (Barbara Park, 1992-2011) to their children, and their children may have read the Goosebumps (R.L. Stine, 1992-1997) or the Captain Underpants (Dav Pilkey, 1997-2015) series. However, you may never have realized the books were so “dangerous” that they would be banned.
All of these books are on the Top 100 Banned Books
list. There are several lists of the Top 100 banned books. The
American Library Association has been keeping track through their Office of
Intellectual Freedom (American Library Association, 2019), but they have only
been doing so since 1990. Other lists such as the one found
on Wikipedia contain some of the older books I mention
here.
Why are these
books being banned?
As of 2020, reasons for banning books include:
Sexual content (92.5%)
Offensive language (51.5%)
Unsuitable for age group (49%)
Religious viewpoint (26%)
LGBTQIA+ (23.5%)
Violence (19%)
Racism (16.5%)
Use of illegal substances
“Anti-family” content (7%)
One of the silliest reasons for banning a children’s book was for encouraging poor spelling because it used silly spellings. (American Library Association, 2019)
The reason these percentages don’t appear to make sense is that books are often challenged for multiple reasons. The American Library Association (2019) estimated that more than 82% of challenges remain unreported. They compared results from several independent studies of third-party Freedom of Information Act requests documenting school and library book censorship with the information in its database.
What is the difference between a challenge and a book ban?
A book challenge occurs when a book is questioned. In response, portions of a book’s content may be redacted, its circulation restricted, or relocated to an adult section of a library. When a book that was available is removed from the collection completely, it would be considered banned (Haupt, 2022). It means a book is removed from school curricula and possibly public libraries because someone has objected to its content (VanDenburgh, 2022).
Where do these challenges come from?
Many of these challenges come not from concerned parents, but instead from advocacy organizations with a political intent. These advocacy organizations have made censorship of certain books and ideas in schools a large part of their mission. Unfortunately, many of the book challenges are by authors that have had to fight hard to be published including books by and about people of color, people who are LGBTQIA, and people who have suffered violence or abuse. Even books that provide clear and medically appropriate sex education are under attack. In other words, these are books that can help normalize human experience, represent the full range of human experience, and answer people’s questions. Friedman and Johnson (2022) comment that these actions are deeply undemocratic and that it is:
having multifaceted, harmful
impacts: on students who have a right to access a diverse range of stories and
perspectives, and especially on those from historically marginalized backgrounds
who are watching their library shelves emptied of books that reflect and speak
to them; on educators and librarians who are operating in some states in an
increasingly punitive and surveillance-oriented environment with a chilling
effect on teaching and learning; on the authors whose works are being targeted;
and on parents who want to raise students in schools that remain open to
curiosity, discovery, and the freedom to read. (para. 8)
How many of these organizations exist?
Estimates indicate that there are more than 700 of these organizations, and that more are being created. The proliferation of advocacy organizations responsible for book bans and challenges is a very recent phenomenon (Friedman & Johnson, 2022). The organizations operate at the regional, state, and national levels and are loosely coordinated in sharing lists of books to question and attack. Some organizations' members use tactics like appearing in large numbers at school board meetings, creating arbitrary rating systems for libraries, accusing school officials of providing books that are “pornographic” or that “groom” students, filing criminal complaints, or in extreme cases harassing librarians online, in public, and in their homes. There have been instances of people filing the complaints who did not have children enrolled in school.
Are these organizations acting alone?
Approximately 40% of these actions are connected to legislative initiatives or enacted legislation (American Library Association, 2019). Legislation is being enacted in multiple states including Utah, Missouri, Mississippi, Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Politicians are actively condemning critical race theory and the idea of wokeness, although there is doubt that they fully understand these concepts. The politicians are against books that center racism or discuss sexuality and gender identity.
Recent Mississippi legislation would affect a
ban on digital books that are “sexually
oriented.” It references another bill that provides an
extremely broad definition of what sexually oriented
means. The new bill is intended to protect minors from
“sexually illicit material”; however, because it will control school and public
libraries, it will also deprive adults of content. Apparently,
the inclusion of adults will be fixed but now Senate Bill No. 2346 was approved
82-32 (Pittman, 2023). Legislators argued that adults can still purchase the
books they desire, but this statement ignores people without the means
do that. And Mississippi has a lot of rural, low-income, and poor people.
So
far, the bill only references digital material, but it is easy to imagine that
it won’t take long before
print books are on the radar. The legislation has gone so far that one
Mississippi legislator wondered if they had effectively banned the Bible
(Pittman, 2023). Protestors, including the Executive Director of the Human
Rights Campaign, registered concerns about any initiative that would limit
information for young people (Pittman, 2023).
How do these initiatives relate to politics?
These actions do not stand alone. Instead, they are part of a larger social phenomenon of polarizing politics known as culture wars. The American Library Association reported that the challenges were targeted at “the voices of the marginalised… books and resources that mirror the lives of those who are gay, queer or transgender, or that tell the stories of persons who are Black, Indigenous or persons of colour.” The challenges are becoming much more frequent and Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of the free-speech organization PEN America, comments that it is “part of a concerted effort to try to hold back the consequences of demographic and social change by controlling the narratives available to young people.”
Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, the only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, believes that anyone should be able to read anything. He would prefer that children read a book in a classroom or library with informed adults who can provide guidance than read the book by themselves if they found them on their parents' bookshelves. His graphic novel was threatened with being removed from a school library in Tennessee. A local comics shop learned of the ban and sought donations to purchase remaining copies of the book to students in the U.S., shipped with a study guide written by a local teacher.
Actions of this nature should spur us all into action.
References
American Library Association (2019). Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books: 2010-2019. Retrieved https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/decade2019
Armistead, C. (2022, March 22). ‘It’s a culture war that’s totally out of control’: the authors whose books are being banned in US schools. The Guardian. Retrieved https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/22/its-a-culture-war-thats-totally-out-of-control-the-authors-whose-books-are-being-banned-in-us-schools
Friedman & Johnson (2022, September 19). Banned in the USA: The growing movement to censor books in schools. Retrieved https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/
Haupt, A. (2022, June 19). The rise in book bans, explained. Washington Post. Retrieved https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/09/rise-book-bans-explained/
Pittman, A. (2023, March 9). Ban On Library Books Depicting ‘Homosexuality,’ ‘Lesbianism’ Passes Mississippi House. Mississippi Free Press. Retrieved https://www.mississippifreepress.org/31797/ban-on-library-books-depicting-homosexuality-lesbianism-passes-mississippi-house#:~:text=Mississippi%20could%20ban%20digital%20books,Bill%20No.%202346%20on%20Wednesday
"Top 10 Most Challenged Books Lists", American Library Association, March 26, 2013. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10 (Accessed March 16, 2023) Document ID: 8417fa9e-ceff-4512-aca9-9fbc81b8bd81
VanDenburgh, B. (2022, June 29). Book bans are on the rise. What are the most banned books and why? USA Today. Retrieved https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/06/29/banned-books-explained/7772046001/
Wikipedia (n.d.). List of most commonly challenged books in the United States. Retrieved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_United_States
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