Banned Books Week 2024

It's the end of Banned Books Week, which celebrates banned and challenged books. My archive in the category is here. Last year, we looked at how an extremely small number of individuals drive a majority of book challenges.

The American Library Association's list of the most challenged books always has some continuity with previous years, and as usual, LGBT content is a frequent reason for challenges. Even more troubling than that, though, is the massive increase in both challenges and the number of targeted works:

ALA documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship in 2023—a 65% surge over 2022 numbers—as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources. Pressure groups focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023.

Of the record 4,240 unique titles targeted for censorship, the most challenged and reasons cited for censoring the books are listed below.

1. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe
Number of challenges: 82
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

2. All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson
Number of challenges: 71
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

3. This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson
Number of challenges:71
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, sex education, claimed to be sexually explicit

4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
Number of challenges: 68
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQIA+ content, rape, drugs, profanity

5. Flamer by Mike Curato
Number of challenges: 67
Challenged for: LGBTQIA+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit

6. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Number of challenges: 62
Challenged for: rape, incest, claimed to be sexually explicit, EDI content

7/8. (tie) Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Number of challenges:56
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity

7/8. (tie) Tricks by Ellen Hopkins
Number of challenges: 56
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, drugs, rape, LGBTQIA+ content

9. Let's Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan
Number of challenges: 55
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, sex education, LGBTQIA+ content

10. Sold by Patricia McCormick
Number of challenges: 53
Challenged for: claimed to be sexually explicit, rape

On its censorship by the numbers page, the ALA provides a neat interactive map (also embedded below) that shows which states have had the most book challenges over 10 years. Unsurprisingly, Texas and Florida have been the worst.

The downloads page compiles some of the ALA data and charts in poster formats, including the very interesting one below:

We've covered censorship in the U.S. fairly extensively over the years, and it's often interesting to read and discuss challenged books. I'm not going to delve into the works or statistics above this year, though. As it happens, my reading this year has included two banned books, but they weren't banned in the United States (as of yet; at least one would not be popular with the banning crowd). I've been reading more international comic books, including works by Moebius (Jean Giraud) and by Alberto Breccia, who was born in Uruguay but grew up and worked in Argentina. In 1968, Alberto Breccia and writer Héctor Germán Oesterheld started a series of comic book biographies about influential Latin American figures. The first one was Life of Che (Vida del Che), about Che Guevara, published mere months after his death. The second was Evita, the life and work of Eva Perón (Evita, vida y obra de Eva Perón), about Eva Peron. The Che book was banned and had copies seized and destroyed by the military dictatorship that called itself the "Argentine Revolution." As a result, Oesterheld halted the Eva Peron project. Unfortunately, he was later "disappeared" in 1977 along with his four daughters and their husbands by Argentina's last military dictatorship; all were presumably murdered. Alberto's son Enrique Breccia, a comic book artist himself who contributed to the Che book, saved the original artwork and scripts for both books, and eventually the Che book was republished and the Eva Peron book was published as originally conceived.

Alberto Breccia, who Frank Miller cites as a major influence, experimented with style often, so much so that, going by just the artwork, it would be easy not to realize that the black and white, pencil-and-ink artist of most of his works also produced the colorful and often grotesque artwork of 1984's Dracula or the black and white ink and watercolor artwork of 1983's Perramus. For Life of Che, Breccia used woodblocks, which creates an impressionistic feel, especially when paired with Oesterheld's script, which jumps about in time, shifts perspective, and often uses fragmentary text.

Life of Che isn't always easy to follow if you're not familiar with at least the broad strokes of Che Guevara's life, but Oesterheld and Breccia's original audience would know it. In terms of aesthetics, I thought the piece was bold, innovative and memorable. Reading more about the history of its publication and its creators made it even more interesting, and made me want to learn more. Good art can do that. I'm still working my way through Breccia's other available major works, but if you appreciate unconventional comic books/graphic novels, you'd probably find his work intriguing.

It's been observed that authoritarian regimes recognize the power of art, because they seek to control and ban it. The list of countries that have persecuted, imprisoned or "disappeared" writers and artists is sadly long. The United States, despite its other stains, has at least mostly avoided the more violent forms of artistic censorship. Its history does include the Hollywood blacklist, which meant jail time for some and the loss of careers for many more. Comic books were targeted during roughly the same era due to a scare campaign sparked by Fredric Wertham's shoddily researched book, Seduction of the Innocent. And the U.S. has engaged in plenty of other censorship, even if it's avoided the low bar of "Hey, we didn't send that writer to the gulag to die." Contemporary U.S. censorship efforts, overwhelmingly driven by conservative individuals and groups, remain harmful and troubling. But as with all activism, it's good to pause occasionally to enjoy what we're fighting for. This week, we're celebrating reading a good book or comic book or enjoying some other form of artwork.