(New York) Attempts to censor and restrict books continue to escalate, according to the American Library Association (ALA).
Posted yesterday at 9:53 a.m.
The numbers for 2022 are already approaching last year’s total, which was the highest in decades.
Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, says she “has never seen anything like it.”
She points out that nowadays organizations are launching campaigns against a list of books they have never even seen or read.
The ALA counted 681 book challenges for the first eight months of the year against 1,651 different titles. For the whole of 2021, there were 729 disputes against 1651 books.
Since the ALA relies on media accounts and library reports, the actual number of disputes is likely much higher, according to the Association.
Banned Books Week
Friday’s announcement is coordinated with Banned Books Week, which begins Sunday across the country. According to a document published in April, among the books most often targeted are Maia Kobabe’s autobiography, Gender Queer, about her sexual identity, as well as Lawn Boy, Jonathan Evison’s novel about the transition to adulthood told by a young homosexual.
“We see this trend continuing in 2022, LGBTQ book reviews,” said Ms.me Caldwell-Jones, adding that books on racism, such as Angie Thomas’ novel, The Hate U Give, are also frequently contested.
Banned Books Weeks is led by a coalition of writing and free speech organizations, including the National Coalition Against Censorship, the Authors Guild and PEN America.
Conservative attacks on schools and libraries have proliferated across the country in the past two years, and librarians themselves have been harassed and even forced out of their jobs. A college librarian in Denham Springs, Louisiana, has filed a lawsuit in court against a Facebook page that called her a “criminal and pedophile.”
Voters in Jamestown, a community in Michigan, have also supported drastic cuts to local libraries related to books on the LGBTQ subject.