Banned Books Week in the United States: Ten of the books that a memo from PEN America says have been banned for the first time, during the 2023-2024 US school year
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
Banned Books Week: PRH’s ‘Banned Wagon’ Rides Again
Open Road Integrated Media Offers Geo-Targeting to Publishers Beginning in Banned Books Week
In Canada: Censorship and Library-Patron Interest in Books
At Norway’s WEXFO: Democracy and the Freedom to Read
‘State Legislation and “Parental Rights” Rhetoric’
As the United States’ Banned Books Week opens, PEN America this morning (September 23) has issued a memo on school book bans in the American market. It highlights preliminary findings of what will be released later in the autumn as the final update of PEN’s Index of School Book Bans.
At the top of the heap of sobering details PEN’s staff is sharing today is its finding that more than 10,000 books were banned in public schools in the States during the 2023-2024 school year.’
That figure nearly triples the previous school year’s statistics, when PEN cited 3,362 bans nationwide. Three key points here, and we’re quoting PEN’s memo today to the news media:
- “About 8,000 book bans were recorded in [the states of] Florida and Iowa, largely because of state laws. Several school districts outside of Florida and Iowa also banned heightened numbers of books this school year, such as the Elkhorn Area School District in Wisconsin, which banned more than 300 titles for several months.”
- “In part because of the targeting of sexual content, the stark increase includes books featuring romance; books about women’s sexual experiences; and books about rape or sexual abuse as well as continued attacks on books with LGBTQ+ characters or themes, or books about race or racism and featuring characters of color.”
- “Our numbers are certainly an undercount, as stories of book bans often go unreported. These numbers also do not account for the many reports of soft censorship, including increased hesitancy in book selection; ideologically-driven restrictions of school book purchases; the removal of classroom collections; and the cancellations of author visits and book fairs.”
As in past years, PEN’s staffers write, “There are two key pressures behind the school book ban movement: (1) State legislation, and (2) The influence of groups that espouse ‘parental rights’ rhetoric to advance pro-censorship advocacy goals.”
Coordinated campaigns by a vocal minority of groups and individual actors, the new guidance from PEN says, place “undue pressure” on school boards and districts, resulting in a chilled atmosphere of overly cautious decision-making regarding the accessibility of books in public school libraries. Attacks on literature in schools persist “despite the unpopularity of ‘parent’s rights’ groups and polls that show broad opposition to school book bans.”
PEN has a 2o24 Banned Books Page on its site with recommendations for taking action, and that page can be found here.
The Struggles in Various States: A Helpful List
Publishing Perspectives readers are familiar with how frequently the US book-banning crisis is playing out at the state level. Many of the most compelling court actions undertaken by publishers, often coordinated and supported by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) under Maria A. Pallante‘s leadership.
It’s usually these state-based legal frays—in both copyright infringement and censorship efforts—that have shaped the efforts of the political right to overtake what’s referred to by the International Publishers Association (IPA) as the “trinity of freedoms” that undergird publishing: the freedom to publish, the freedom to read, and freedom of expression.
Those concerns, as they manifest themselves in the States, match and/or mirror similar concerns in the broader world of publishing.
It’s difficult even for Americans as well as for our international readership to keep up with the multiple censorship efforts being addressed by the AAP and publishers, and today’s notes from PEN offer a useful quick list of the confrontations now in play and anticipated to become active in the coming school year.
They include, per PEN:
“Iowa’s Senate File 496, which took effect in July 2023, requires all materials to be “age-appropriate”—a definition that prohibits any description or depiction of a “sex act.” The law has been interpreted to ban books with any content related to sex or gender in books. It also contains “Don’t Say Gay” copycat [of Florida legislation] provisions censoring discussions of LGBTQ+ identities in the classroom. To date, Senate File 496 has led to thousands of book bans during the 2023- 2024 school year, compared to 14 bans from 2021-2023, before the contested law was in place.
“Florida’s House Bill 1069 created a statutory process for book banning. The law, which went into effect in July 2023, requires that any book challenged for “sexual conduct” must be removed during the review process. The law, and state guidance building on it, has been linked to a significant rise in book bans during the 2023-2024 school year.
“The state of Utah banned 13 books statewide as of July, in accordance with the newly enacted House Bill 29. The law is the most extreme state book-banning bill currently in place, enforcing what PEN America has dubbed a ‘No Read List’ in schools across the state. According to the letter of the law, once any three districts find a title to be ‘objectively sensitive material,’ it must be banned in all schools. House Bill 29 is expected to result in significant book bans during the 2024-2025 school year.
“The state of South Carolina passed Regulations 43-170 this summer, prohibiting books with sex-related content and giving the state board of education power to ban books statewide. We expect the number of bans in South Carolina to rise in the 2024-2025 school year as districts implement the newly passed state regulations.”
“The state of Tennessee’s House Bill 843 expands the ‘Age-Appropriate Materials Act’ of 2022 and will also likely lead to an uptick in the state’s school book bans. The law, which took effect in July, now requires schools to remove books that contain nudity, ‘excess violence,’ or sex-related content. It further empowers a state commission to evaluate certain challenged titles and ban books statewide.”
“Books Newly Banned in the 2023-2024 US School Year
PEN America’s memo today cites these as titles banned for the first time during the 2023-2024 school year in the States:
- Roots: The Saga of An American Family by Alex Haley
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
- How Stella Got Her Groove Back by Terry McMillan
- Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 by W.E.B. DuBois
- Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
- The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
- How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
- Finding Junie Kim by Ellen Oh
- Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
- Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (the 2024 recipient of the National Book Foundation’s medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters)
- Puddin’ by Julie Murphy
- Blade Runner (originally Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) by Philip K. Dick
- Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
More from PEN America on censorship activities in the United States is here.
Image: PEN America
Banned Books Week in the United States is a program of the American Library Association (ALA) and the Banned Books Week Coalition, which includes such high-profile organizations as Amnesty International, the Association of University Presses, the National Book Foundation, PEN America, and People for the American Way.
More from Publishing Perspectives on book bannings is here, more on censorship in the broader context is here, more on the freedom to publish and freedom of expression is here, more on the work of PEN America is here, and more on the International Publishers Association and its Prix Voltaire for valor in the fight for freedom to publish is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.