It’s Banned Books Week, the annual event from the American Library Association (ALA) that “draws national attention to the harms of censorship.” This year, the ALA’s Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books list is once again full of books with LGBTQ content.
Book challenges are “documented requests to remove materials from schools or libraries, thus restricting access to them by others.” This year’s Top 10 list is:
- Looking for Alaska, by John Green
Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group. - Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James
Reasons: Sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, and other (“poorly written,” “concerns that a group of teenagers will want to try it”). - I Am Jazz, by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings
Reasons: Inaccurate, homosexuality, sex education, religious viewpoint, and unsuited for age group. - Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out, by Susan Kuklin
Reasons: Anti-family, offensive language, homosexuality, sex education, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“wants to remove from collection to ward off complaints”). - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
Reasons: Offensive language, religious viewpoint, unsuited for age group, and other (“profanity and atheism”). - The Holy Bible
Reasons: Religious viewpoint. - Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel
Reasons: Violence and other (“graphic images”). - Habibi, by Craig Thompson
Reasons: Nudity, sexually explicit, and unsuited for age group. - Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan, by Jeanette Winter
Reasons: Religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group, and violence. - Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan
Reasons: Homosexuality and other (“condones public displays of affection”).
Four of the books—I Am Jazz
LGBTQ content is not the only target, however. The ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) reports:
Of the Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2015 (a report OIF compiles from the media and from librarians defending books against attempts to remove them from school and public libraries), nine of the books were about diverse content. (OIF defines diverse books as books written by and about people of color, in the LGBTQIA community, who are differently abled, and in ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.) OIF data shows that attempts to remove books with diverse content are higher than ever before.
The ALA is thus launching a new initiative, Our Voices, “to promote the growth of diverse, quality content in library collections.” Our Voices will work to:
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identify small, independent, and self-published content creators in the local region
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connect with those content creators and other members of the reading ecosystem (especially independent booksellers and readers) for a conversation about diversity, quality, and the value of libraries
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develop collections of reviewed, diverse, quality content
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get these collections into the local library collection
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allow other libraries to acquire these collections.
and they are committed to equitable access, diversity, quality, sustainability (“a permanent change in the landscape of publishing and librarianship”), and preservation (“a persistent digital repository”).
Couple this with the grassroots We Need Diverse Books organization, and we have two exciting and powerful groups for change. We as parents should support them by buying diverse books if we can, checking them out from the library, and asking for more of them in libraries and schools.
I feel it is also my responsibility as a parent to prevent my own child from reading books I feel are inappropriate, or to take the time to discuss them should he encounter them anyway. To ask the library or the government to be responsible for such screening, however, would be to shirk my parental responsibilities, not to uphold them. I want him to read books about families like his own and people like him, as well as about families and people far different. I want books to challenge him, not to be challenged by others who claim they know what is best for all.
Pick up a banned book this week, then, and celebrate the freedom to read!
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