Calling US book bannings ‘tragic for young people,’ PEN America, four days before the 2024 US elections, cites a one-year 200-percent increase in such censorship.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

See also:
IPA International Publishers’ Congress: Jennifer Clement on Censorship, ‘a Threat to Democracy’
Censorship: PEN America Sees US Book Bannings Triple

Jodi Picoult: ‘A Call for Alarm’

Given a preview earlier in the autumn, PEN America‘s Banned in the USA: Beyond the Shelves report is a devastating snapshot of the world’s largest book market being wracked by proliferating censorship, usually driven by issues of race and/or sexuality.

The report has been released today (November 1), four days before what may be the most consequential United States presidential election in the modern era, a grueling race with many battles fought on the field of cultural divisions.

Among its top-line findings, PEN’s latest study reveals:

• A record 10,046 book bans in public schools in the last school year
• A 200-percent rise in bannings over the previous school year
• The US states of Florida and Iowa record numbers of book bans during the 2023-2024 school year with more than 4,500 bans in Florida and over 3,600 in Iowa “due to laws in both states that censor books in public schools”
• Banning targets:  4,231 unique titles
• Dealing with the impact: 2,877 authors, illustrators, and translators
• The most commonly banned book: Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes from Simon & Schuster

Since 2021 when its Banned in America series of reports was inaugurated: PEN America’s team says  it has counted close to 16,000 instances of book bans in public schools.

For a reflection of the sensitivities and insecurities of the would-be oppressors behind these bans, in a subset of 1,091 books banned in two or more school districts, PEN’s team finds the bannings “overwhelmingly include books with people and characters of color (44 percent) and books with LGBTQ+ people and characters (39 percent).”

Reflecting on her Nineteen Minutes being the most commonly banned book, the author Jodi Picoult is quoted in the report saying:

“Having the most banned book in the country is not a badge of honor—it’s a call for alarm. Nineteen Minutes is banned not because it’s about a school shooting, but the because of a single page that depicts a date rape and uses anatomically correct words for the human body.

“It is not gratuitous or salacious, and it is not—as the book banners claim—porn.

“In fact, hundreds of kids have told me that reading Nineteen Minutes stopped them from committing a school shooting, or showed them that they were not alone in feeling isolated.

“My book, and the 10,000 others that have been pulled off school library shelves this year, give kids a tool to deal with an increasingly divided and difficult world.

“These book banners aren’t helping children. They are harming them.”

The report also found that books are increasingly being censored that depict topics that “young people confront in the real world,” PEN’s team points out, “including experiences with substance abuse, suicide, depression and mental health concerns, and sexual violence.”

Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, says, “This crisis is tragic for young people hungry to understand the world they live in and to see their identities and experiences reflected in books.

“The passage of time when you’re in 6th grade or 11th grade is very fast—with much to learn about. What students can read in schools provides the foundation for their lives, whether critical thinking, empathy across difference, personal well-being, or long-term success.

“The defense of the core principles of public education and the freedom to read, learn, and think is as necessary now as ever.” 

Publishing Perspectives readers—and members of the International Publishers Association (IPA)—often couch their discussions of the American bannings and other such censorship efforts in a rising number of non-US settings as violations of, and threats to, the “trinity of freedoms”: the freedom to read, the freedom to publish, and the freedom of expression.

This is clear in the upcoming IPA International Publishers Congress (December 3 to 6) agenda, in which programming will include this rising challenge, with PEN International president emerita Jennifer Clement, who points out, “Book banning is a global problem, which is growing.

“At PEN International, we cite Belarus, Brazil, China, Hungary, the Russian Federation, the United States—where books seem to be more dangerous than bullets—and Turkey as places where the practice is becoming a scourge.”

The new PEN America report includes state-by-state book-banning mapping and a look at what it refers to as an “Emerging Trend: Soft Censorship Expansion.”

In describing “soft censorship expansion,” the report’s authors write, “The movement to ban books in public schools does not stop at book bans themselves; ‘quiet’ or ‘soft’ censorship can also silence specific authors, viewpoints, and books with diverse representation.

“Soft censorship is when fears of real censorship may cause educators and librarians, school administrators, and school boards to self-censor or suppress speech well beyond what may have been banned or prohibited.

“Forms of soft censorship occur when “materials are purposefully removed, limited, or never purchased at all despite it being a title that would serve a community.”

An example of this is in the Cobb County School District, a suburb of Atlanta, “where it was reported that more than 1,600 books were weeded or removed from libraries. The list includes dozens of popular or recently-acquired titles with sex-related content, diverse representation, and many frequently-banned titles.

“Interviews with the superintendent illuminated the district’s intent to remove any and all books with sex-related content, through bans or weeding. When asked about the district’s process behind weeding or removing books, the superintendent said;. ‘It has 100-percent to do with the books containing sexually explicit, graphic content.”

Support for the new PEN America report comes from donors including the Endeavor Foundation, The Spencer Foundation, Henry Luce Foundation, and the Long Ridge Foundation.

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More from Publishing Perspectives on book bannings is here, more on censorship in the broader context is here, more on the freedom to publish and freedom of expression is here, more on the work of PEN America is here, and more on the International Publishers Association and its Prix Voltaire for valor in the fight for freedom to publish is here.

Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.