Banned Books Week 2024 — Still Getting Banned!

The Broader Book Banning Context

This week marks another Banned Books Week — the 42nd one, if you can believe it. If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest banned books news (there’s a lot), two advocacy groups have released new reports on what’s been going on.

PEN America reports that "Over 10,000 books were banned in public schools during the 2023-2024 school year" in their latest update.

On the other hand, the American Library Association reports:

“Between January 1 and August 31, 2024, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) tracked 414 attempts to censor library materials and services. In those cases, 1,128 unique titles were challenged. In the same reporting period last year, ALA tracked 695 attempts with 1,915 unique titles challenged. Though the number of reports to date has declined in 2024, the number of documented attempts to censor books continues to far exceed the numbers prior to 2020.”

So PEN America says there are a ton of book bans, and ALA says the number is quite a bit smaller and is also declining. What does that mean? I’ve been puzzling over this significant disagreement in statistics myself. My best guess is that PEN America and the ALA are tracking book bans across different time periods, and their definition of what constitutes a "book ban" differs. Also, the ALA has been losing members during the past year because conservative states have been withdrawing their libraries from membership in the ALA. I believe the ALA’s numbers are significantly undercounted, but also PEN America’s definition of "book ban" may be broader than what people commonly understand as a “ban.”

My Own (Banned) Books

When it comes to my own novels, they continue to be banned, challenged, or restricted at a steady pace. 

I first became aware of the rising tide of book banning in the U.S. in fall 2021. Since then I have followed the news about book banning primarily through Kelly Jensen’s Literary Activism newsletter, and a year ago I started digging into news reports to count the number of times my novels have been banned, challenged, or restricted. Here are my previous updates:

When I first started counting these cases, I described them as situations in which my books were banned, challenged, or restricted. This was an attempt to be clear, but frankly, it’s wordy. The better term—one which incorporates all of these variations—is censorship. Thanks to this recent post for clarifying that. 

Censorship includes cases when books are challenged (when someone formally requests that books be banned in a school district or library system); restricted (when books require parental permission for access or are moved from a YA section to the adult section of the library); or banned (when books are removed from a school district or library system in order to suppress access to the title). Censorship also includes “soft censorship,” which occurs when books are preemptively not purchased by a school or library so as to avoid controversy or challenges. Unfortunately, cases of soft censorship are often not reported because it is done quietly or secretly, but it’s clear that it occurs.

In October 2023, I counted 44 cases of censorship against my books. By March 2024, about five months later, the number had risen to 64. This month (again, about five months later), the number has risen to 88. This means the number of censorship attempts against my books have risen steadily at about 20 cases every five months since October 2023. There has definitely not been a decline.

I track all this data in this spreadsheet:

Those 88 cases of censorship take place across 20 states, with the most in Iowa (21 cases of censorship), followed by Texas (15), Florida (11), Virginia (8), South Carolina (6), Utah (4), and Wisconsin (3). I’ve found one or two cases in Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

Six of my seven novels have been censored so far. This time I’ve added my novel Adaptation to the spreadsheet, because it was “weeded” out of a collection in Cobb County, Georgia, where Last Night at the Telegraph Club and other frequently banned books were also “weeded.” Weeding is an ongoing and legitimate process by which outdated and infrequently checked-out books are removed from libraries to make room for new titles. However, recently several cases have come to light where thousands of books, including many new books and frequently challenged ones, have been “weeded.” Adaptation is an older book (originally published in 2012) and it could have been legitimately weeded, but because it is also a queer book and is part of this much wider weeding situation, I’ve added it to my spreadsheet.

Among my novels, Last Night at the Telegraph Club continues to be the most frequently censored. As of this week, it has been censored in at least 70 cases across 18 states. Once again Iowa leads with 21 cases of censorship against Telegraph Club, followed by Florida (10), Texas (8), Virginia and South Carolina (6 each), Utah (4), Wisconsin (3), North Carolina and Pennsylvania (2 each), and one case each in Alaska, California, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee.

These are only the cases that I am aware of. I found them by scouring news articles via the Literary Activism newsletter and digging through Dr. Tasslyn Magnusson’s censorship database. I know of at least one case that I cannot find any documentation of, and I’m fairly certain that my books have been quietly removed or not purchased in other libraries across the country. That means this is an undercount. If you’re a librarian or teacher or student or you live in a community where you are certain one of my books has been censored, I invite you to contact me with that information so I can add that case to my spreadsheet. (You can reach out via this contact form.)

A Call to Action

I want to end this update with a call to action—one that should feel fairly obvious to everyone concerned about this tsunami of censorship striking communities across the U.S. 

Sometimes it can feel difficult to fight censorship, especially if you live in blue state where censorship attacks are not as prevalent (although they do still occur). It’s not easy to go to local school board or city council meetings and speak up in public to defend the first amendment. But this fall everyone of voting age in the United States has a clear opportunity to fight against censorship. 

As you all should know, we have a major election coming up in the U.S. in November. Everyone who wants to support the first amendment, which includes freedom of speech and the freedom to read, must vote Democratic up and down the ballot. The Republican-authored Project 2025 calls for the imprisonment of librarians and educators who share books that the far right mischaracterizes as “pornography.” None of the books that are being banned are remotely obscene—but they often acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ and especially transgender people, or they provide information about the actual facts of life to children and teens.

So, this November—if you are an American of voting age—if you support the first amendment and you don’t believe in censorship, join me in voting for Democrats up and down the ballot, including Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. 

Find out if you’re registered to vote and where to cast your ballot at iwillvote.com.

On a side note, I’ve already voted for Kamala Harris for San Francisco District Attorney (in 2003 and 2007), for California Attorney General (in 2010 and 2014), and for Vice President of the United States (in 2020). (I only didn’t vote for her for U.S. Senator in 2016 because I had just moved to Massachusetts.) I am very much looking forward to voting for her for President of the United States in November 2024.

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