It’s Banned Books Week. As Cases Skyrocket, 5 Things You Can Do to Help

Librarians Say the Rise in Challenges Are Not by Concerned Parents But by "Coordinated National Efforts"

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This week marks the 40th anniversary of Banned Book Week. The occasion has been marked by two bracing reports.

First, a white paper from PEN America, “Banned in the USA,’ which advocates for freedom of expression, finds 2,532 instances of book bans affecting 1,648 titles by 1,261 and 290 illustrators between July 2021 and March 2022. Worse, the authors, Jonthan Friedman and Nadine Farid Johnson, report that while many Americans think of book challenges as being led by reactive parents or concerned citizens, in fact, the large majority of campaigns are neither spontaneous nor organic.

“Rather, they 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.”

As Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of PEN America, told NPR, "While we think of book bans as the 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.”

The report identifies at least 50 groups working at local, state, and national levels, including Moms for Liberty, which was started in 2021.

The second report, from the American Library Association, which sponsors the event, finds that attempts to ban books this year are “on track to exceed record counts from 2021. Between January 1 and August 31, 2022, ALA documents 681 attempts to ban or restrict library resources, including 1,651 unique titles, were targeted. Seventy percent of those actions targeted multiple titles. “In the past, the vast majority of challenges to library resources only sought to remove or restrict a single book.”

ALA President Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada said in a statement, ”The unprecedented number of challenges we’re seeing already this year reflects coordinated, national efforts to silence marginalized or historically underrepresented voices and deprive all of us – young people, in particular – of the chance to explore a world beyond the confines of personal experience.”

As I’ve been documenting in this newsletter for much of the past year, these growing attempts are also eliciting a growing backlash among librarians, parents, and everyday citizens. Here, in the fact of the mounting campaign, are five things you can do to help:

Photo credit American Booksellers Association

1. Report a Book Banning Effort. One thing book banners depend on is the silence of book lovers. The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) estimates that it learns of only a fraction of book challenges, as low as 3%. If you hear of a challenge at your local library especially, contact the OIF. You can also sign up for their free Intellectual Freedom News newsletter or read the Journal for Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.

Photo credit Monkey Business Images via Canva

2. Join a Banned Books Reading Club. The Authors Guild, which I’ve been a member of for more than 20 years, has started a free, virtual book club held on the social reading app Fable. Each month, the Banned Books Club presents a different work of fiction or nonfiction recently barred in one or more U.S. school districts or states.

The current book they’re reading is All American Boys, by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. The novel recounts the story of high school students Rashad and Quinn, one Black and one white, and how their lives intersect after Rashad is falsely accused of stealing from a convenience store and badly beaten by a police officer whom Quinn views as a surrogate father. Other books scheduled for this fall are Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Ellen Hopkins’s Crank.

Photo credit Viator

3. Give a Teen Access to Brooklyn Public Library. This spring, my local institution, the stories Brooklyn Public Library, announced that anyone in the United States between the ages of 13 and 21 could apply for a free library e-card that gives access to 350,000 ebooks and 200,000 audiobooks. Normally these cards cost $50 for non-residents.

The library is also making instantly available at no wait such “frequently challenged” books as The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. These ebooks can be read on phones, computers, or tablets.

Photo credit Porter County Public Library

4. Attend a ‘Banned Books Week’ program. A robust number of libraries, schools, bookstores, and communities are celebrating the freedom to read across the world—including many virtual events. Here’s a list of events on the Banned Books Week calendar.

Photo credit New York Times

5. Buy a Banned Book. Bookstores across the country have responded to this upsurge in challenges with special displays of banned books. This one from Barnes & Noble features Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus, along with Harry Potter, Of Mice and Men, and Fahrenheit 451. It also includes a jigsaw puzzle and a tote bag! Bookshop.org, the creative initiative from indie sellers, has its own list featuring The Poet X and Drama.

Whatever you do, don’t remain silent. Efforts like the ones being coordinated across the country to attack the freedom to read depend on the willingness of those of us who value that freedom to remain complacent. If we don't speak up, we're contributing to the effots to deny all of us the right to decide what we read.

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Or check out my books that inspired this newsletter: Life Is in the Transitions and The Secrets of Happy Families.

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