(New York) Maia Kobabe’s autobiography, “Gender Queer,” tops the American Library Association’s (ALA) list of “challenged books” for a third year in a row.
Kobabe’s coming-of-age story was published in 2019 and received the Library Association’s Alex Award for Best Young Adult Literature. But the book has since been at the heart of debates over library content, with conservative organizations such as Moms for Liberty arguing that parents should have more power to determine what books are available.
Politicians have condemned Gender Queer and school systems in Florida, Texas and elsewhere have banned it. Last December, police in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, responded to a complaint from a tutor about the book by showing up and searching for it in a class of 8e year.
The ALA released its list Monday, along with its annual report on the state of America’s libraries.
“Some advocacy groups have made Gender Queer a lightning rod, argued Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. People try to shut down the conversation about gender identity. »
Many books in the ALA top 10 had LGBTQ themes, including the following four works Gender Queer : All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and Flamer by Mike Curato.
The other books on the list have all been cited for being sexually explicit, including The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Tricksby Ellen Hopkins.
“These books are out of reach for some people just because they talk about sex,” Ms.me Caldwell-Stone.
In March, the ALA reported that bans and attempted bans in 2023 had again reached record levels since the association began tracking complaints in the early 2000s. More than 4,240 books in school libraries and public were targeted, compared to the record of 2,571 books recorded in 2022.
Most of the challenged books – 47% – have LGBTQ and racial themes.
The ALA defines a challenge as a “formal written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of their content or appropriateness.”
The association bases its conclusions on media accounts and librarian reports, but believes that many protests are ignored and that some books are removed by librarians in anticipation of protests.