While students in the Netherlands find more explicit books like ‘Turkish Delight’ unchallenged on their reading lists year after year, libraries in the U.S. have seen a spike in efforts to ban books. The New York Times reported (July 6, 2022) that this reflects "a clash over whether and how to teach children about issues like LGBTQ rights and racial inequality. The [American Library Association - ALA] tracked 1,597 books that were challenged in 2021, the highest number since the organization began tracking bans 20 years ago."
Journalists Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter go on to interview multiple librarians in the U.S., who tell the reporters that they feel scared and threatened for doing their jobs. “There were comments about library staff, calling us groomers and pedophiles and saying we needed to be fired, we need to be jailed, we needed to be locked up, that all the books needed to be burned,” says former librarian Tonya Ryals, who quit her job as the assistant director of a public library in Arkansas. “It got to a certain point where I thought, do I want to live here? Is this something I can subject myself to?”
Traditionally, these challenges would come from both the left and the right. Concerned parents or community members might approach library staff to discuss a title: they either object to LGBTQ characters or to the use of racial slurs in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). "Those quieter confrontations continue today, librarians said, but conflicts around books have drastically escalated", according to the NYT article. Members of extremist groups might show up at school board meetings, and people are being investigated by police for threatening library staff.
In 2021, most of the targeted books were about Black and LGBTQ characters, according to the ALA. Books might also be challenged for sexually explicit content, or because of what is perceived to be outdated language, often concerning race or interaction between male and female characters.
Erasmus University Library acquired all targeted books on the 2021 list and all titles are available for loan at the library. In relation to important values as intellectual freedom and access to information the library plays a prominent role and with a strong awareness of information ethics the Erasmus University Library collected these works. These books are a valuable addition to the diverse literature collections available at the library.
These are the ten most challenged books in 2021, according to New York Times reporting:
The most challenged book according to the American Library Association, Maia Kobabe's graphic novel has been the topic of heated debate in several high school board meetings. Criticism seems to focus mostly on one panel depicting an erotic scene on a Greek urn, which some parents deem pornographic. However, sceptics point out that this is part of a growing anti-LGBTQ sentiment. As one county official in Illinois tells the Chicago Daily Herald: "The words we're hearing are not different from what we're seeing in other parts of the country with anti-LGBTQ legislation that's being pursued. And we know that this language is dangerous. It causes violence."
Kobabe, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns e, em, eir (known as Spivak pronouns), wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post responding to the controversy. Recollecting eir own journey to understanding eir identity, e underlines the importance of having access to a library with books by non-binary authors in which e could recognize eir own experience: "Queer youth are often forced to look outside their own homes, and outside the education system, to find information on who they are. Removing or restricting queer books in libraries and schools is like cutting a lifeline for queer youth, who might not yet even know what terms to ask Google to find out more about their own identities, bodies and health."
Jonathan Evison's semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel tells the story of Mike Muñoz, a young Mexican-American boy who is going though a phase of self-discovery. The book was challenged by parents in multiple high school board meetings, with complaints focusing on sexually explicit content, supposed homo-erotic content and scenes containing pedophilia. To this latter claim author Evison responded that the scene in question was an adult man recollection an experience with a fourth grader at the time he himself was also in fourth grade. One high school in Virginia had a committee review the books by both Evison and Kobabe and decided to put both books back on the library shelves. Another school however, placed Evison's book back in the library after review but decided to remove Kobabe's Gender Queer.
Journalist and activist George M. Johnson's book All boys aren't blue is a young adult 'memoir-manifesto', detailing his own youth as a queer Black man and directly addressing kids growing up in similar circumstances. The book discusses, among other topics, consent, agency, and sexual abuse. It also contains two sexual encounters and statutory rape. In Florida, a member of the school board filed a report with the Sherriff's Office, claiming the book violates state obscenity laws and stating she was particularly concerned about the book's "detailed descriptions" of masturbation, oral sex and sodomy. Even though the committee appointed to review the book deemed it 'appropriate for use', the book was banned "for now" from all schools in the county by the school's superintendent.
Out of Darkness is a historical young adult novel by Ashley Hope Pérez, which chronicles a love affair between a teenage Mexican American girl and a teenage African-American boy in 1930s New London, Texas. Themes include racism, classism and segregation, and the book contains descriptions of consensual and non-consensual sex. Central-Texas middle schools pulled the book from library shelves pending investigation as one parent complained about a specific sexually explicit scene. Responding on her Instagram, author Pérez stated: “What she’s reading from, is from a part of the book where the whole point is to capture the utterly relentless sexual objectification and racialization the Mexican American main character endures.” In Utah, the book was also removed from a school library, but returned after investigation.
The young adult novel The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas was first inspired by the police shooting in 2009 of Oscar Grant, as well as multiple police shootings that occurred in the following years. Debuting at the top of the New York Times young adult best-seller list, it remained on the list for 80 weeks. It received much critical praise and a movie adaptation followed in 2018. According to professor Khalil Muhammad of Harvard University, "The book – and to some degree the movie – has been read and will be read by students in all-white spaces, where otherwise the urgency of these issues has not affected them personally."
The book has been one of the most challenged in 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021, for containing drug-use and profanity, sexual references, and for 'containing an anti-police message'. Challenges came not only from parents or school boards, but also from a police union in South-Carolina. Responding to the criticism, Thomas said: "There’s the assumption that it’s an anti-police book, when the fact is it’s anti-police brutality," continuing, on challenges to the language: “There are books with way more curse words in them, for one. And two, there are 89 F-bombs in The Hate U Give. But there were 800 people killed by police officers last year alone.”
The young adult novel The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie tells the story of Arnold Spirit Jr., a Native American teenager growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. The protagonist decides to go the the nearly all-white public school away from the reservation, where the only other Native American is the school mascot. The book was critically praised and won multiple awards, some of which were later rescinded as Alexie was accused of sexual harassment by several women.
The absolute true diary was in the top ten of the most challenged book list from 2010 to 2021, having been target of complaints and investigation in dozens of schools. The reasons ranged from depictions of alcoholism, cultural insensitivity, profanity, sexual references, violence, and also the allegations of misconduct by the author. Not all schools eventually banned the book from libraries, but a number of them did remove the book from library shelves.
Jesse Andrew's book Me and Earl and the dying girl depicts the high-school friendships of two boys and a girl who is suffering from cancer. It was published in 2012 and a film adaptation came out in 2015, but it only entered the top 10 of the most challenged books list in 2021. The book has faced challenges because of profanity and language considered degrading to women, as well as sexually explicit scenes. The author has reacted on Twitter that these book bans are "picking up momentum" and are "fearful purity-obsessed parents and opportunistic politicians are makings kids' lives worse."
The oldest book on the list, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's The bluest eye has faced criticism since 1970 and has been on the most challenged book list for decades. Most recently, it was banned by a school board in Missouri. Morrison's debut novel has come under fire for its depiction of racism and for containing sexually explicit content, including sexual abuse and rape, making it not appropriate for school-age children according to some parents and teachers.
The bluest eye tells the story of Pecola, a young African-American girl growing up in Ohio following the Great Depression. She is consistently told that she is ugly because of her dark skin, fueling her desire for blue eyes, which she equates with whiteness. On her reasons for writing this novel, Morrison said: "I felt compelled to write this mostly because in the 1960s, black male authors published powerful, aggressive, revolutionary fiction or nonfiction, and they had positive racially uplifting rhetoric with them that were stimulating and I thought they would skip over something and thought no one would remember that it wasn't always beautiful."
With This book is gay, Juno Dawson (also credited as James Dawson until 2015) aimed to write "a manual to all areas of life for an L.G.B.T.Q. person". As Dawson told the Guardian: "I'm willing to bet there are thousands of boys and girls in single bedrooms in towns, villages, suburbs and cities who are in hiding. There will be kids who are still scared and ashamed and that's not good enough. Every child has the right to feel safe and secure in both their environment and their skin."
The book was challenged among other places in Alaska, where a petition was started to remove it from a public library for profanity and sexually explicit content. The library director declined to do so. Dawson responded to the petition saying she wouldn't mind the book being moved to a different shelf: “I love librarians with all my heart and I trust they will find an appropriate shelf to stock This Book Is Gay where younger readers can’t get to it, but those who desperately need it can".
Susan Kuklin, a photographer and writer, interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and thoughtfully represents them before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference, adding portraits and family photographs. The book has been frequently challenged for containing LGBTQ content thought to be 'anti-family' by some.
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