American Library Association's New Book Censorship Data Released in Advance of Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week launches Monday, September 19, 2022, and the American Library Association (ALA) has launched the newest numbers on e-book challenges in a brand new subject report. Pulling from data reported on to ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF), information protection, and public information, the info present a marked enhance in censorship and 2022 is on monitor to have the very best quantity of cases of e-book bans since ALA started protecting document.

Among the highlights of the report together with:

The challenges reported to ALA in 2021 represented the very best quantity of tried e-book bans since ALA started compiling these lists greater than 20 years in the past. Eight months into 2022, e-book challenges are on monitor to exceed 2021’s rely.
681 makes an attempt to ban or limit library sources in faculties, universities, and public libraries, in search of to take away or limit 1651 completely different titles in 2022. In 2021, there have been 729 makes an attempt to censor library sources, focusing on 1597 books.
70% of the 681 makes an attempt to limit library sources focused a number of titles. In the previous, most challenges to library sources solely sought to take away or limit a single title.
OIF documented 27 cases the place police reviews had been filed towards librarians over books on library cabinets.

This new report is the primary from ALA to immediately deal with the foundation causes of the rise in e-book bans throughout the nation. From the report:

Several associated actions contributed to this surge in censor- ship. Organizations like Moms for Liberty and No Left Turn in Education supplied sources together with goal lists, speaking factors, and planning paperwork supporting e-book challenges. Conservative suppose tanks such because the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation superior mannequin laws and insurance policies focusing on “divisive concepts” and “critical race theory” in curricula and libraries. Republican PACs supported the election of pro-censorship candidates to highschool and library boards. Fringe concepts from MassResistance and QAnon had been normalized via right-wing media shops, politicians, and algorithmic elevation on social media websites.

It is refreshing to see the group identify some of the large gamers in the censorship sport; sadly, the report nonetheless doesn’t deal with the place or how these teams are being funded and the direct strains from these teams to comparable ones launching campaigns in ALA’s early censorship monitoring years.

ALA launched their prime ten most challenged books for 2021 again in April. The new report provides extra context to their knowledge: examples of censorship towards a number of of essentially the most challenged, alongside the quantity of reviews indicating a title. They are as follows:

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe: 120 challenges
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison: 67 challenges
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson: 64 challenges
Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez: 36 challenges
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas: 32 challenges
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie: 28 challenges
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: 25 challenges
This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson: 24 challenges
Looking for Alaska by John Green: 24 challenges
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews: 23 challenges
Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin: 22 challenges
Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson: 22 challenges
Drama by Raina Telgemeier: 18 challenges
Melissa by Alex Gino: 18 challenges
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris: 18 challenges
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel: 16 challenges
This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely: 14 challenges
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi: 14 challenges

It is crystal clear books by/about queer individuals and other people of shade proceed to be targets for censorship. It can also be clear that books are a straightforward goal; these actions are supposed to stir the ethical panic and encourage additional marginalization of these teams of individuals.

The new report additionally highlights challenges to Pride shows this yr. According to their knowledge, 27 challenges had been made towards such shows this yr, and the report contains tales from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Arkansas (although absent from the report is that coordinated efforts like Catholic Vote’s “Hide the Pride” helped spur such challenges and the disappearance of queer books from libraries).

The subject report ends with a letter from James LaRue, Executive Director at Garfield County Library District (CO) and library marketing consultant, contextualizing the why of timing:

There are two broad dimensions of this second in time. The first is private. As I’ve written elsewhere, traditionally most materials challenges fall into these provided to kids between the ages of 4 and 6 (image books) and 14 and 16 (YA novels). These are instances of transition in their lives, and a few dad and mom grow to be overprotective of their kids’s innocence, reflecting their very own insecurities and fears. It’s an emotional actuality amplified by present fears and considerations associated to the pandemic.

The second is political. Many of the challenges to supplies are immediately linked to the speaking factors of at this time’s conservative motion. According to these main these political actions, crucial race idea (taught in no public college in the United States) is an element of a “woke” and “divisive” risk, masks mandates are insupportable restrictions on private liberty, parental rights are sacrosanct, and public establishments and credentialed consultants are basically suspect. One wonders if the timing of these legislative and anti-institutional efforts, particularly given the dissemination of lists by politicians (such because the 850 titles disseminated by Texas state Rep. Matt Krause), isn’t primarily meant to awaken a base and win midterm elections. Informing that political push is a demographic shift. After a interval marked by liberal social change—the election of a Black president, the Black Lives Matter motion, the authorized and public acceptance of same-sex marriage, the better visibility of LGBTQIA+ individuals—sure teams fearful of a loss of privilege and standing are engaged in an ethical panic.

It might also be that an excessive amount of time in social isolation has made us all extra confused and fewer civil.

While each are true, neither goes far sufficient to denounce the political motion and darkish cash funding these initiatives. Likewise, library staff and educators are going through focused harassment by such censors in a approach that undermines their credibility {and professional} abilities, sources, and background. This shouldn’t be about social isolation nor in regards to the age teams in query. It is about gaining energy and retaining white supremacy in all sides of public life, fueled by a far-right Christian nationalist motion that has been steadily gaining traction since earlier than the Trump administration.

The report doesn’t contact on different censorship occurring in public or college libraries associated to programming, nor does it contact on the ever-growing downside of quiet/silent censorship taken in response to concern of potential challenges.

ALA’s report, whereas a step ahead from earlier public communications that shied away from naming the direct causes of the present censorship local weather, nonetheless fails to account for the true breadth of books beneath assault. Their numbers embrace direct counts, in addition to counts in media reviews, and even a fast perusal of the weekly hyperlinks right here present a quantity a lot larger. And whereas the report presents some actions individuals can take to counter censorship, what they provide is nothing that’s new. At instances, the use of pictures throughout the report undermines the severity of the messages being conveyed:

For readers and professionals simply wading into the world of e-book censorship, ALA’s new useful resource is a superb place to start. But for these seeking to do extra or search actual assist from the group for this ongoing and escalating actuality–which incorporates bodily threats of hurt and violence to library staff on the entrance strains in states throughout the nation–the report is nowhere close to sufficient.