Attempts to ban books doubled in 2022
Efforts to ban books nearly doubled in 2022 over the previous year, according to a report published Thursday by the American Library Association. The organization tracked 1,269 attempts to ban books and other resources in libraries and schools, the highest number of complaints since the association began studying censorship efforts more than 20 years ago.
The analysis offers a snapshot of the spike in censorship but most likely fails to capture the magnitude of bans. The report is compiled from book challenges that library professionals reported to the association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, and it also relies on information gathered from news reports.
Book removals have exploded in recent years and have become a galvanizing issue for conservative groups and elected officials. Fights over what books belong on library shelves have caused bitter rifts on school boards and in communities and have been amplified by social media and political campaigns.
With the increasingly organized campaigns to remove titles on certain topics, books have become a proxy in a broader culture war over issues such as LGBTQ rights, gender identity and racial inequality.
Of the 2,571 unique titles that drew complaints in 2022 — up from 1,858 books in 2021 — a vast majority were books by or about LGBTQ people or books by or about people of color, the association found. Many of the same books are targeted for removal in schools and libraries around the country — among them, classics such as Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and newer works such as Juno Dawson’s “This Book is Gay” and Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer.”
Book bans have affected public libraries as well as schools:
In 2022, some 60% of complaints that the association tracked were directed at books and materials in school libraries and classrooms, while about 40% of challenges were aimed at material in public libraries.
The development is worrisome for educators and librarians, who increasingly have come under fire for the books in their collections. Some librarians have been accused of peddling obscenity or promoting pedophilia; others have been harassed online by people calling for them to be fired or even arrested. Some libraries have been threatened with a loss of public funding over their refusal to remove books.
Efforts to remove books began to rise during the pandemic, often spreading from one community or school district to another through social media, as lists of books flagged as inappropriate circulated online. The movement has been supercharged by a network of conservative groups — including organizations such as Moms for Liberty and Utah Parents United — that have pushed for book removals and have lobbied for new policies that change the way library collections are formed and book complaints are handled.
Increasingly, challenges are being filed against multiple books, whereas in the past, libraries more frequently received complaints about a single title, the group said.
“What the numbers are reflecting to us is that this is a campaign,” Deborah CaldwellStone, director of the association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in an interview Thursday morning. “What we’re seeing is not the result of an individual parent speaking to a librarian or a teacher about a particular book their child is reading. We’re seeing a campaign by politically partisan groups to remove vast swaths of books that don’t meet their agenda, whether that’s a political or religious or moral agenda.”