Inside the fight to ban books or keep them on shelves.
A display advertising banned books. Colette Cassinelli. CC BY-NC 2.0.
Maia Kobabe didn’t expect to become a household name, at least not in most households. Readers of Gender Queer, her bestselling graphic novel about non-binary identity, surely told friends and family with whom they felt comfortable about the emotionally rich, nuanced, and textured book. Others have a less flattering assessment. They see the book as the vanguard of a national movement to corrupt and “groom” young minds into mouthpieces of woke-speak, gender fluidity, and racial grievance. Just ask No Left Turn or Moms for Liberty, two grass-roots organizations campaigning to ban the book in schools across the country. Although Gender Queer received rave reviews, reached the New York Times Bestseller list, and garnered fans across the country, it is currently the most banned book in the United States.
As a banned author, Maia Kobabe is in good company. Eir peers on the list of newly banned books include John Green, Art Spiegelman, and even Toni Morrison, a Nobel laureate. The books range from young adult fiction to mature masterpieces, graphic novels to sweeping epics, but they all share one thing in common. They engage topics that are politically explosive.
A library advertising banned books. Ali Eminov. CC BY-NC 2.0.
Namely, they address queerness and race. According to a comprehensive report from PEN America, 41% of books targeted by banning efforts contained LGBTQ themes, and 40% centralized around characters of color facing racism and discrimination. Others were targeted for sexual content or coverage of activism. Curiously, 9% target biographies and memoirs. Among the books grass-roots organizations hope to see banned is an entry in the famous children series Who Was . . . ? about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor, the first Latina justice on the Supreme Court.
A library advertising banned books. Ali Eminov. CC BY-NC 2.0.
These grass-roots organizations, roughly fifty in number, function at the national, state, and local levels. 73% formed after 2021. This coincides with rise in headlines about Critical Race Theory in classrooms and the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill in Florida. Groups like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn were founded precisely to combat the rising prevalence of queer and racial subjects in schools. No Left Turn, one grass-roots organization, defends “American founding principles” and “family values” while advocating the reinstatement of “objective thinking.” Moms for Liberty, another grass-roots organization with 30 chapters in 18 states, asserts “parental rights” to protect their children from adult or otherwise objectionable material, claiming they are “fighting for the survival of America.”
The Supreme Court has previously ruled on such issues. The 1969 decision Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District maintains that students do not “shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Advocates against book bans cite children’s right to freedom of information, even to controversial viewpoints and topics. Those who support them claim that the books in question contain subject matter unfit for young, malleable minds. When Gender Queer mentions a brief encounter with a sex toy, some see a moment in a queer coming-of-age while others see pornography.
Even elected officials have begun to advocate the banning or restriction of certain books. In October of last year, Texas state lawmaker Matt Krausse sent a letter to schools across the state asking if they carried any books on an 850-title-long list of books that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” Political observers noted that Krausse was gunning for statewide office at the time, so his letter signals that banning or restricting access to such books could win over a conservative base.
Ironically, the books banned, such as Gender Queer, Maus, or All Boys Aren’t Blue have attained an even higher status as a result of the efforts to ban them. It is not uncommon to walk into a Barnes and Noble and see a display that says, “Read a Banned Book.” Maia Kobabe went so far as to note in an interview for Slate, “In a strange way, this is raising my profile as an author.” Perhaps there really is no such thing as bad publicity.
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. Pesky Library. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Primary among the concerns of authors, librarians, and organizations like PEN America are the availability of literature to marginalized people in hostile areas. In this arena, those seeking to ban books wield a strategic edge over those hoping to keep them available. Such is evident from the organizational efforts of No Left Turn, Moms For Liberty, and especially CatholicVote. The last of these groups organized a “Hide the Pride” event in which parents checked out LGBTQ-related books to prevent others from reading them. This crafty tactic could backfire, however. Increased checkouts of LGBTQ-related titles could signal to librarians an increased interest in them. The answer would be to buy more.
You can shop the top 20 banned and challenged books in our bookshop. Check out the titles below.
Michael McCarthy
Michael McCarthy's fiction, nonfiction, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Barzakh Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, and Prairie Schooner, among others. Currently, he is transferring from Haverford College to University of Carlos III in Madrid, Spain, where he intends to major in the Humanities. He is also seeking publication for his poetry chapbook Steve: An Unexpected Gift, written in memory of his late uncle. He can be reached at @michaelmccarthy8026.