The censorship stories have been coming hard and fast this week. The most prominent one is the Supreme Court deliberating on a Maryland case that would allow parents to opt their kids out of classes that mention the existence of LGBTQ+ people. Justice Neil Gorsuch claimed the picture book Pride Puppy! prompted readers to look for bondage imagery in the illustrations—because apparently a leather jacket is bondage now. Right now, the Supreme Court seems poised to side with these parents.
But that’s not the only story. We’ve also got the results of a study on the impacts of book bans on library circulation, a documentary about students who fought book bans and won, censorship at the Naval Academy, banned books returned to shelves, and more.
While Kelly Jensen is off this week, the rest of the editorial team is filling in to cover censorship news! The first story is from S. Zainab Williams, the next two are from Rebecca Joines Schinsky, and the final two are from Erica Ezeifedi.
An association of parents and teachers under the moniker Kids First (the naming conventions of these groups is something else, but I digress) is suing Maryland’s largest school system to allow them to opt students out of classes on days where books with queer characters and themes are being discussed. They’re arguing that the books violate their right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. One member of Kids First decided she needed to help found a private school that wouldn’t “brainwash kids with these ideas.” This person apparently doesn’t know what brainwashing is because incorporating books about LGBTQ+ people into a broader curriculum ain’t it.
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People are watching this case and have real concerns about the implications of a vote in favor of Kids First. “Some legal scholars said that accepting the logic of the Maryland parents’ arguments would have broad consequences for the ability of public schools to manage their curriculums, citing cases in which parents unsuccessfully challenged course materials on evolution and the Big Bang theory and storybooks about wizards and giants,” Adam Liptak writes in the New York Times piece (this takes me back to season 4, episode 16 of Abbott Elementary, BUT I DIGRESS).
New Study Explores the Impact of Book Bans on Library Circulation
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and George Mason University have published a new study about the impact of book bans on the consumption of banned books, and the results might surprise you. Using book circulation data from a “large library content and services supplies to major public and academic libraries in the United States” about the top 25 most-banned titles, found that:
- Book bans increase the circulation of banned books by 12% compared to a control group. That is, book bans lead to a Streisand effect rather than having a chilling effect on readership.
- The effect spills over to states without bans and is only slightty lower (11.2% increase).
- The increase in readership centers on books related to race, gender, and LGTBQ+ issues.
- Book bans expose new readers to inclusive content; on average, children read banned books 19% more than the control titles after a book banning event.
- Circulation of banned books increases in red states that have book bans and in blue states regardless of book ban status.
(This feels like a good time to remind you that, regardless of circulation and readership numbers, book bans are not good for authors. If you’re working on a “well, actually” with a positive spin about book bans, just stop.)
The findings above might lead you to wonder: if book bans are driving increased engagement with the very content activists claim to be trying to protect children from, why do they continue to pursue book bans? Follow the money. The study also looked at political messaging and donations and found that Republican politicians in red states saw an estimated 30% increase in donations under $500 after book ban events.
One more time for the folks in the back: it’s not about the books. As Book Riot’s Kelly Jensen reminds us, “books are an easy, on-the-ground, tangible target” that far-right groups have used as a thin end of the wedge in their pursuit of suppressing representations of and information about race and LGBTQ+ issues. Does it matter to conservative politicians that kids are actually reading more banned books? Not if their coffers are full and their voters are turning out.
These Students Fought Book Bans…and Won
Elizabeth Foster is one of the three student activists featured in the new documentary Banned Together, which captures the aftermath of a 2022 book ban in Beaufort, SC and the greater context of book banning efforts nationwide. In a terrific new piece for Teen Vogue, Foster recounts how she fought censorship in her hometown, and won. She and her fellow student activists get it.
The book-banning movement is about something so much bigger than books. The same movement started by attacking Critical Race Theory as a proxy for targeting Black and brown students. Queer and transgender students — like my own brother — were added to the list of demonized identities as far-right extremists came after their stories in schools and libraries. And now the Trump administration is coming after higher education by utilizing unconstitutional fear tactics to dismantle DEI programs and deport international students who challenge its policy positions.
I had a chance to see Banned Together recently before interviewing the producers for the Book Riot Podcast, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. May these bold young people’s efforts succeed.
Jinny Amundson, the co-owner of Old Fox Books in Annapolis, Maryland and retired Cmdr. William Marks are working together to provide a selection of the nearly 400 books that were taken off the Nimitz Naval Academy library shelves. Marks started a GoFundMe meant to cover the cost of buying books and shipping them to Amundson’s bookstore, where they can be picked up by Naval Academy Midshipmen free of charge.
“These are some of the smartest, most dedicated students in the whole world. Many of them, a month from now, will be commissioned officers leading our Navy and Marine Corps. While in the same breath, we’re telling them that they can’t read a book in the library,” Marks said.
The GoFundMe has already received more than 700 donations and raised over $48,000. Both Amundson and Marks have commented on how the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area has been so supportive of their project, which they’ve dubbed “Operation Caged Bird.”
Ryan Holiday, a writer and philosopher who has given lectures at the US Naval Academy several times since 2019, was set to give a presentation at the Academy, but was stopped an hour before he was scheduled because of the slides that referenced the removal of 381 books from the Nimitz Library.
“I said I couldn’t do that,” Holiday recalled. “I couldn’t have spoken in front of these midshipmen about courage and about doing the right thing, and then remove, I think, a very reasonable objection to a very egregious concept.”
Holiday’s presentation was centered on US Naval Academy graduate James Stockdale, a Medal of Honor recipient who was stationed in Vietnam, and who studied Marxist theory to better understand the (at the time) opposition.
“The larger point that I was trying to make is that you have to be able to think critically if you’re going to be a leader,” Holiday added. “Because if you’re not thinking for yourself, you are, by definition, not leading.”
Holiday continued, “If you can’t be trusted around Stacey Abrams’ memoir or Maya Angelou, you probably have no business being a Navy SEAL or holding an assault rifle or flying a fighter jet.”
Rejoice! For two books that were challenged in Alabama were voted on by the library board to remain in their appropriate section. Interestingly enough, both of the books in question—Grown by Tiffany Jackson and Sold by Patricia McCormick—deal with young girls being exploited.
Alabama Public Library Service had said that the Fairhope library should move the books from the Young Adult section to the Adult section because they were “sexually explicit,” but on Monday, the Fairhope Public Library board voted to keep the books where they are, even though it could mean a funding cut. Luckily, because of the library’s $1 million budget and the $46,000 raised in a week for the library by the anti-book banning group Read Freely Alabama, the library is not as vulnerable to state cuts.
The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.
This week, we’re highlighting a post that had our Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz feeling a type of way. Now, even five years after it was published, Vanessa is still salty about American Dirt. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
Picture it: The United States, January 2020. A book with a pretty blue and white cover is making the rounds on the bookish internet. The blue ink forms a beautiful hummingbird motif against a creamy background, a bird associated with the sun god Huitzilopochtli in Aztec mythology. Black barbed wire, at once delicate and menacing, cuts the pattern into a grid resembling an arrangement of Talavera tiles. The package is eye-catching, ostensibly Mexican in feel, and evocative of borders and the migrant experience.
The book tells the story of a bookstore owner in Acapulco, Mexico, who is forced to flee her home when a drug cartel murders everyone in her family except for her young son at a quinceañera. She and the boy are forced to become migrants and embark on a treacherous journey north to the U.S. border, evading the cartel and befriending fellow migrants along the way. The book is being lauded not just as the “it” book of the season but as the immigration story. It gets the Oprah treatment and is praised by everyone from Salma Hayek to the great Sandra Cisneros, who called it “the great novel of Las Américas.”
It’s been over five years, and this book is still the bane of my existence.
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