OLIVIA GREENHALGH, YEAR 13

In the last year, more than 2,500 books have been banned from schools and libraries in 32 of the 50 states in the US. Most of these restrictions target titles related to themes of race, LGBTQ+, mental health, and gender.

This ‘war on literature’ – as it has been dubbed – has seen a resurgence since the COVID outbreak of 2020. Parents and groups are alleging that these novels are obscene and harmful to their children, and groups like ‘Moms for Liberty’ or ‘Awake Illinois’ advocate that parents have the right to review the ideas and subject matters that their children are taught. Some local organisations have even resorted to threats of violence. These changes aren’t happening on a federal scale, with major court cases, but by local school boards and state legislators. Schools are circumventing legal measures to remove these novels from their curriculums.

A state legislator in Texas, Matt Krause, produced a list of more than 850 books he felt cause “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” to students because of their race, or sex. 97 of the first 100 novels on the list are written by ethnic minorities, women, or LGBTQ authors.

PEN America, a group who advocate for free expression in literature, have been releasing recent reports with specific statistics of banned books. They discovered that the combined enrolment of students in the schools affected reached almost 4 million. It should be noted that these numbers come from reports submitted to the organisation, and there are likely hundreds of unreported book bans – the issue of quiet censorship is less overt, but more prevalent within local communities. Many are unaware it is happening on this scale. Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, stated: “It is part of a concerted effort to try and hold back the consequences of demographic and social change by controlling the narratives available to young people.”

Of course, banning books is by no means a new phenomenon. From book burnings under the Francoist or Hitlerian regimes, of novels which discussed provocative ideas which did not coincide with their ideological visions; to the 1926 Irish Committee on Evil Literature, where conservative Christian voices sought to cleanse literature they believed poisonous. This board banned 1,600 books in its first thirteen years. America, in the last year alone, has almost doubled that number.

You might be surprised to find one of your favourite authors among the lists of banned books, or a work that you have heard of. Only a few of them include:

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Attwood
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• The Colour Purple by Alice Walker
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
• Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Maus by Art Spiegelman
• All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Johnson
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Beloved, and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Some of these works have won Pulitzer Prizes for fiction, National Book Awards, or have been celebrated in the New York Times’ lists as best-sellers. They tell stories from the perspective of a minority voice, contain universal themes, and bring greater diversity to the canon.

When the McMinn county board of education in Tennessee voted to remove Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus, earlier this year, it made headlines. Being the only graphic novel to have won a Pulitzer Prize for Literature, it tells the story of Spiegelman’s parents’ experiences during the Holocaust. The board of education in Tennessee took issue with its use of profanity [mainly “God damn”], nudity [of a mouse] and violence, stating it was not suitable for 13-year olds’ curriculum, and removed it from schools. Since then, protest sales for the book worldwide have rocketed and organisations are funding free copies to children who cannot access a copy.

Facing censorships and restrictions, many American students have since come together to create ‘banned book club’ gatherings. Communities are joining together to protest bans of books that address issues of race, sexuality and gender. Individual teachers, librarians, and students, are petitioning one book at a time in efforts to keep them on their shelves.

Jonathan Friedman, a lead author of the PEN report, said that “this rapidly accelerating movement has resulting in more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship… The work of groups advocating and organising to ban books in schools is especially harmful to students from historically marginalised backgrounds, who are forced to experience stories that validate their lives vanishing from classrooms and library shelves.”

This wave of censorship creates food for thought, with repercussions of infringing freedom of speech, encouraging discrimination, and restricting the freedom to access information or engage in a larger discussions. The American Library Association (ALA) condemn the actions of these groups wishing to censor novels: they released a statement in 2021 which conveyed “the unfettered exchange of ideas is essential of a free and democratic society.” It is certainly a sobering discussion, and one that cannot be ignored.