Book bans increased by 33% in the 2022-23 academic school year in the United States with 3,362 cases of book bans as compared to 2,532 cases in the previous year. A book ban is defined as any action that restricts access to or removes a book from classrooms and libraries, whether permanently or temporarily while the book is being challenged. While the majority (70%, PEN) of U.S. residents and parents oppose book bans by the school board (64%, NPR) and state lawmakers (69%, NPR), the practice continues and appears to be growing momentum.
Within this issue, a major concern is the challenging of books that have themes or characters relating to gender and sexuality. Specifically, as of April 2023, 41% of challenged or banned books had content relating to LGBTQIA+ identity and themes and the #1 banned book was Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, which explores the main character’s gender and queer identity. Moreover, book bans came disproportionately from Florida, which accounted for 40% of the year’s bans. This statistic is upsetting but not surprising given Florida’s recent restrictions on the teaching of gender and sexuality in their public schools.
Book bans and burning are often reminiscent of censorship from controlling, discriminatory societies, as seen in the nonfictional Nazi party and the fictional society of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. If you’d like to learn more, I recommend reading these two articles from NPR on the recent book bans this past year!
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/21/1200725104/book-bans-school-pen-america
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/25/1172024559/book-bans-spike-biden-culture-wars-lgbtq-gender-queer-libraries
https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/