More than 10,000 books have been banned from public and academic libraries in the US

Book bans are growing at disturbing levels. In the 2023-2024 school year, cases jumped from 3,362 to more than 10,000, according to a report by PEN America. This organization advocates for human rights and free expression, focusing on access to literature. Florida and Iowa are leading the way in restrictions, with about 8,000 bans stemming from state laws. School districts in other states have also restricted a greater number of books this year, such as Elkhorn, Wisconsin, with 300 titles vetoed in just a few months.

The numbers presented in the study may be lower than real numbers because bans of this type are not usually reported. Also, not included are the numerous reports of soft censorship, such as ideologically motivated restrictions on the purchase of books by schools, the removal of collections from classrooms, and the cancellation of visits by certain authors and other activities linked to the promotion of reading.

“Following trends from previous years in which books were targeted for including diverse perspectives, book bans from the 2023-2024 school year overwhelmingly featured stories with people or characters of color and/or LGBTQ+ people. We also observed how cases of book bans increasingly target stories by and about women and girls and/or that include depictions of rape or sexual abuse,” says PEN America’s report.

As in recent years, there are two key factors behind this movement: state legislation and the influence of conservative groups. “Coordinated campaigns by a vocal minority of groups and individual actors 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,” research reveals.

This 2024, state legislation has also been particularly instrumental in this issue. Iowa’s SF 496, which went into effect in July 2023, bans books with any sex-related content, and has similar provisions to Florida’s law, which prevents saying the word “gay” in classrooms. Along those lines, Florida’s HB 1069 created a statutory process for banning books and demanded that any book challenged for sexual conduct be removed from the library during the review process.

Utah also passed this year the most extreme book ban law currently in effect (HB 29), which imposes what PEN America has termed a blacklist of books in schools across the state, and South Carolina voted in favor of HB 43-170 this summer, which vetoes books with sexual content and gives the state board of education the power to remove titles from schools and public libraries. Finally, Tennessee expanded the Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022 and called for the removal of books containing nudity, excessive violence, or depicting sexual acts. It also empowers a state commission to evaluate certain questionable titles.

Blacklisted authors

Efforts to suppress the right to read continue to affect a wide range of books and authors. From classic novels to stories for young people, PEN America’s School Book Ban Index this year includes books such as 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, Puddin’ by Julie Murphy, Blade Runner (do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) by Philip K. Dick, and Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns.

Ibero-American writers are not spared either. Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits and Beyond Winter; Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude; Junot Diaz’s The Marvelous Short Life of Oscar Wao; Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba; and Elena Poniatowska’s Tinisima are banned in Florida counties like Orange and Escambia.

Many of the books banned during this school year have been in the spotlight since the beginning of the book-banning movement in 2021, such as The Color Purple by Alice Walker; Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult; and The Bluest Eye and Beloved by Toni Morrison. The books of Sarah J. Maas, Stephen King, and Ellen Hopkins remain under the Scarlet Letter effect that has spread across the United States. Even Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the book that inspired the hit film adaptation currently in theaters, was spared. It has been banned in 32 school districts across the country.

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