Book censorship in U.S. public libraries and schools has surged in recent years, and this toxic wave of suppression is sweeping across the Atlantic, writes LENORE HART
“The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety net in a sane society.” – Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)
On September 2, 2023, demonstrators supporting the far-right political party Ireland First (IF) gathered at the Central Library on Grand Parade, in Cork, for an event billed as Cork Says No. Their goal: Enter the building and forcibly remove library books they deemed ‘pornographic’. This wasn’t the first organised protest by IF and their members, who previously – though unsuccessfully – had tried to shut down public libraries in Limerick. In Cork, since early summer,Central Library staff had been filmed, harassed, and verbally abused by protesters who regularly came in to object to reading materials with LGBTQI+ themes being included in the collection. The tenor of these drop-ins became so threatening and disruptive that the City Council closed the library, citing a need to protect the staff.
That year, when this third right-wing library protest was announced, a counterdemonstration by Cork Rebels for Peace and Cork Says No to Racism was organised as well, to support and protect the library’s staff and books. Over that September afternoon other individuals joined in, until the counterprotesters numbered around 300, versus about 100 for IF. Uniformed and plain-clothes gardaί kept the groups separated, and blocked IF protestors attempting to enter the building. The counterdemonstrators formed a protective cordon around the building, parting to let regular library patrons through, then locking arms again to repel hostile protesters. Also among the library’s supporters were local politicians and members of the trade union Forsa, as well as four Irish Writers Union executive committee members: Kevin Doyle, Conor McAnally, Audrey Mac Cready and Katherine Mezzacappa.
Anyone passing by that day who hadn’t read about what a controversial flashpoint libraries have become, all around the world, might’ve wondered: Cork Says No to what? Based on the signs carried by anti-library protesters, and remarks delivered by Cork Says No organisers, there’s a long list: No to anyone of LGBTQI+ orientation, which the group claims is synonymous with paedophilia. No to multinationals. No to so-called “illegal mass uncontrolled inwards migration”, which Ireland First blames on the gardaί and the Irish government. No to books with LGBTQI+ themes. No to the Cork library and its staff, whom they accuse of ‘grooming’ young people simply by allowing them to borrow books to which IF objects.
As Ireland First supporters delivered anti-refugee, anti-climate, anti-diversity speeches, the library solidarity rally participants chanted, sang, and clapped. Irish Writers Union members carried signs supporting the library’s mission. Ms Mac Cready, a former librarian, told one reporter that the IWU came “to defend Cork Central Library staying open and safe. That ideas may flow, that civilization may flourish.” Ms Mezzacappa added: “I don’t think anybody should tell anybody what they are allowed to read. . . . Libraries are important. Nobody is forcing these people to read these books.” At the time of the rally, Mr McAnally, secretary of the IWU, had been living and working in the United States for an extended period. Back in Ireland, he’d travelled to Cork to attend the counter-rally. His experience in the States had provided a far-reaching view of what such anti-book events might portend for Ireland. “This potentially is the thin end of a wedge . . . in the U.S. we’ve seen the progression of this far-right hatred, its progression into politics, into laws, into more and more clamping down, and eventually after democracy itself.
“It starts off with culture wars of this kind,” he added, “about LGBTQI+ people or other marginalised groups in society but very quickly it becomes about clamping down on information. And the first thing fascist regimes always do is try and clamp down on peoples’ access to information so that only their information gets through . . . I don’t want to see the same thing happen in Ireland.”
A Plague on All Your Library Systems
“Students . . . will see no need for upholding equal rights or tolerating diversity, having been raised on the lie of a fabled, perfect country which never actually existed”
To me, an American writer, former librarian, and member of the Irish Writers Union, the scene in front of Cork City Library looked all too familiar. In part because of the many book challenges, bans, and physically violent story-hour invasions by militant right-wingers that have been going on for years around the U.S. And, as I write this article, a week after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump has just been elected president again. After his January 2025 Inauguration, both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives will have a Republican majority. Thus ceding control to a president who has often boasted that he never reads, yet still ‘knows’ everything. One who’s promised to punish journalists simply for factually reporting on him. The president-elect also seeks to take control of, or even do away with, a number of federal agencies, including the Department of Education. He’s vowed to support the ultra-right’s drive to remove funding from public schools, support laws that restrict students’ access to books, and heavily censor what educators are allowed to teach or say in their classrooms. A ‘voucher program’ is being bandied about instead, one that would undoubtedly benefit mostly wealthier families, and private schools with a heavily Christian curriculum. All despite the First Amendment’s establishment clause prohibiting the government from establishing a State religion, or favouring or promoting one religion over another. For anyone who values America’s long, secular tradition; its free press and free public education, as well as unfettered access to contemporary and historical information, it’s heartbreaking.
There is a real danger now that the First Amendment safeguards and few channels of recourse open to those who seek to use that free access will be severely eroded. If not vanished entirely over the next four years, given that the president-elect is already putting together a Cabinet and federal department heads composed of diehard yes-men from previous White House staff, along with some grossly unqualified uber-loyalists, a few Heritage Foundation creators of the infamous Project 2025 plan, and some opportunistic billionaire donors. Some in the latter category, perhaps even more disturbingly, own online mega-forums, and are engaged in developing as-yet unregulated Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) systems. Trump will also be appointing more ultraconservative and evangelical federal judges, and possibly more Supreme Court justices as well. Those latter will still be with us long after Trump’s new four-year term has passed.
The Cork scenario resonated in particular with me also because, years ago, it was once my job to deal with similar protests and challenges to materials in a Florida public library system. That state now holds the dubious honour of having enacted far and away the highest number of book removals and bans in the country. So, I thought, as I read some Irish news articles about the Cork protests, It’s crossed the Atlantic like a virus.
Back in the 1990s, when I was public relations director of a 24-branch library system in Jacksonville, Florida, occasionally we’d receive a Challenge Form filled out by a patron. A demand that a particular book, magazine, art reproduction, or film be removed from the collection. The reasons tended to be similar: the item had somehow offended the complainant, who deemed it either ‘bigoted’, ‘blasphemous’, ‘racist’, or ‘obscene’. In response, I would research whether each complaint had merit, and report my conclusions.
Like every public library system receiving federal and state funding, ours followed the professional guidelines of the American Library Association (ALA). These include a standard procedure for thoroughly evaluating challenged materials. (A challenge denotes an attempt to remove or restrict access to materials by an individual or group, while a ban refers to their actual removal from a library’s accessible collection.) After examining the challenged item to determine why it had been acquired, I’d check its bona fides: reviews, criticism, quality of content, how it enhanced our collection’s development and served patrons’ needs. Then I’d call the Director with my findings and, finally, notify the complainant.
In the three years I held this role we received up to a dozen challenges a year, and ultimately did not remove any of the singled-out works. Not surprising, really, since all materials in the system’s main and branch locations had been selected by well-educated, experienced acquisitions librarians who knew their jobs, and kept up with the reading-material requests and research needs of our larger community. Most patrons seemed happy with this state of affairs.
Those days surely must seem like a rosy, distant Utopia now, in Florida and elsewhere in the States, for professionals on the front lines of public libraries, school libraries, and in classrooms. By 2024, the idea of a book as a simple vehicle for information and entertainment has been warped and twisted by various political interest groups and religious factions. Right-wing Republicans have not had great success in repealing most of the rights acquired over the past 60 years by minorities, women, the disabled, and LGBTQI+ Americans. So limiting or revoking access to diverse information has become their go-to, attainable method of suppression. The long-game goal seems apparent: ‘Educate’ a new generation by withholding real information, contemporary and historical. Students will then progress through the grades ignorant of, for example, American history’s darkest moments: slavery, segregation, internment camps, eugenics, institutionalised racism. Then, in the end, they will see no need for upholding equal rights or tolerating diversity, having been raised on the lie of a fabled, perfect country which never actually existed.
Since 2020, this information-suppression tactic has grown exponentially. ALA data shows that, in 2023, challenges of unique titles rose 65 per cent higher than 2022 numbers. And it’s happening not just in public libraries, but even more frequently in classrooms and school libraries. Even as public libraries faced a 92 per cent increase in challenges between 2022 and 2023, whole reading lists of classic titles in school curriculums have been recast as ‘inappropriate’, and removed.
American Library Association. Banned and Challenged Books: Banned Book FAQ. ALA website’s list of Frequently Asked Questions, with answers, about banned and challenged books.
What’s new, also, is who’s behind most recent challenges. Not so much individuals like the outraged lady who once told me the film The Last Temptation of Christ was “heresy” and she wanted it “burnt in the trash”. Rather than the single challenge forms turned in by one person, back then, most objections to books and other materials over the last half-dozen years or so have been coordinated efforts by organised, well-funded conservative groups acting on a national level.
By contacting willing local surrogates and providing them with a preset script, right-wing censors have demanded the removal of dozens – and in schools, sometimes hundreds – of titles at a time. One of the most notable examples is the ironically-named Moms for Liberty, founded by two women in Florida. That group has been responsible, at times, for about 80 per cent of book censorship nationwide. Add to this relentless barrage the sometimes-violent, in-person confrontations: heated shouting and shoving matches in school-board meetings, or property damage, threats of harm, and intimidation of library staff by challengers who invade the stacks and disrupt youth programmes.
Death By a Thousand Challenges
“. . . purges are cast as a way to protect staff from public backlash. In reality, now some school administrators are simply doing the zealots’ work for them”
Such unrelenting harassment eventually takes a toll. Currently, in about 40 per cent of cases in schools and school libraries, removals are driven by the district’s or school’s own board or administrators, in so-called ‘preemptive bans’. Ostensibly, these before-the-fact purges are cast as a way to protect staff from public backlash. In reality, now some school administrators are simply doing the zealots’ work for them. Titles that have garnered attention elsewhere are pulled before they can be challenged more locally.
For education staff the result is demoralising: Constant scrutiny of lesson plans and materials. Pressure on school librarians to justify the normal contents of a general collection. Classroom teachers forced to turn thoughtful, successful lessons into bland, truncated overviews that curtail any in-depth discussion of forbidden topics. Career teachers report disillusionment, depression, and burnout. They are sometimes told not to use even standard, district-approved curriculum materials.
Not all U.S. states report high rates of book challenges, though they can happen even in liberal enclaves. However, the last few years’ statistics show a clear frontrunner for sheer numbers: In 2023, over 40 per cent of all U.S. book challenges occurred in school districts in the State of Florida. PEN America has documented over 1,400 cases there that year, spanning 33 school districts and affecting thousands of individual titles. The next-highest occurrence was in the Southwest (Texas, 825) followed by the Midwest (Missouri, 333), the West (Utah, 281), and in the Northeast (Pennsylvania, 186).
The Place Where Free Access to Information Goes to Die?
“Teachers and professors who stray from State-approved talking points in the classroom can face huge fines, arrest, and even jail time”
In the war on knowledge and information, buzz words are nuclear weapons. One popular pejorative term often seen in online debates and memes, or heard in school-board meetings in conservative American communities favouring book bans is ‘divisive concepts’. That includes, apparently, anything pertaining to the history of slavery, segregation-era “Jim Crow” laws, or any mention of race relations since 1619. Also anathema is the whole ‘Woke agenda’ – a vague conservative category that seems to include any moderate or liberal social concepts. Another popular gripe that’s often tossed about is Critical Race Theory (CRT), a course of historical study only available in some post-graduate university programmes. This fact hasn’t deterred Florida and other states from ostentatiously banning it from being taught in their elementary schools.
Nationwide, the top three reasons given for book challenges are race, gender identity, and sexual content. In public libraries in conservative states, staff have been accused of ‘grooming’ kids or of ‘pushing porn’ on them. Governor Ron DeSantis, who likes to call Florida “the place where Woke goes to die”, falsely claims the State’s only banned books were “violent, pornographic, or inappropriate”.
PEN America. Book Bans Are No Hoax: Here are the Facts. PEN debunks DeSantis claims that there are no Florida book bans.
He and his political cronies have decimated Florida’s education curriculums and school libraries, all the way from Kindergarten to the university level – including the State’s once top-rated honours college in Sarasota. At all levels instructors have been forced to pull thousands of books from classroom shelves so they can be examined by glacially-paced, conservative ‘assessment committees’ before they might be reinstated. So far, only a few hundred titles have reemerged. Teachers and professors who stray from State-approved talking points in the classroom can face huge fines, arrest, and even jail time.
A Chilling Effect on Writers Around the World
“Classics by Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, and Toni Morrison are still frequently being banned in Florida and across the U.S.”
These constant efforts by U.S. state and county governments to control or suppress literary content have also inevitably affected American writers and publishers. In Florida, attempts have been made to force privately owned bookstores and other book outlets to not carry State-challenged titles. Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and other Big Five presses have filed suit against Florida, arguing its book-ban laws violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of free speech. They also contend the State’s censorship methods result in the automatic removal of books without consulting a trained professional – a teacher, professor, or librarian – to determine the accuracy, much less the merit, of individual challenges. In some cases, the simple phrase ‘made love’ has been deemed reason enough to remove all copies of a book from a school or library, without considering context.
So many challenges have been filed in Florida, especially by people who have no children attending its schools, it has resulted in a logistical nightmare that even the ardently anti-Woke Governor DeSantis couldn’t ignore. In April 2024, he signed into law a new bill limiting the number of book challenges individuals would be allowed to make at one time. Specifically, residents without a child in the school system are now limited to ‘only’ one book challenge per month. At an event touting this new legislation, he said, seemingly without any irony, “Schools are not there for you to go on some ideological joyride at the expense of our kids.”
Classics by Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway, and Toni Morrison are still frequently being banned in Florida and across the country, though. Newer targeted titles tend to have LGBTQI+ or race-related themes, or are historical works dealing with slavery, the segregation era, and the Civil Rights movement.
Harper’s Bazaar: “Banned Books List.” Animated graphic depicting all titles banned in America, state by state.
Examples of books pulled from the shelves, in 2023, include Young Reader biographies of baseball legends Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, who are Black and Hispanic Americans, respectively. But books about White American ballplayer Ty Cobb remained on the shelves. Some frustrated Florida parents have also joined the publishers’ lawsuit, too, saying the State’s book bans have harmed their children’s ability to learn.
Over the first seven months of 2024, ALA also tracked over 414 attempts in the U.S. to censor public library services (including adult programmes and children’s story hours) and materials, with 128 individual titles targeted. A decrease from the 619 attempts made during the same months in 2023, when 1915 unique titles had been challenged. Still, book challenge numbers remain far higher than in all the years prior to 2020.
American Library Association. Banned and Challenged Books: Banned Book FAQ. ALA website’s list of Frequently Asked Questions, with answers, about banned and challenged books.
And, as Trump takes office and begins to implement the campaign-trail promises that pandered to his far-right base, it’s likely that funding for most public programmes will decrease. And that punitive federal and state laws seeking to control, censor, and possibly eliminate vital arteries of information such as public libraries and schools will proliferate. And with so many Trump-appointed federal judges, and a Supreme Court mostly well-disposed toward his agenda, to date, it’s likely censorship attempts will not just continue but be enacted, remain, and grow over the next four years, with the blessing and support of a Republican-majority Congress and White House.
Like a Virus, Book Censorship is Contagious
“Censorship, book challenges, and book bans deeply affect not just the targeted authors, but writers worldwide. A chilling underlying message gradually becomes normalised “
Political and social trends have always tended to gradually spread beyond their original borders. In the last two decades that process has been greatly speeded up by online tropes, internet memes, AI-generated deepfake videos, and deceptive ‘independent’ news-reporting sites. Prior to and during the protest events in Cork and Limerick, the exact same sorts of physical threats, wording of derogatory epithets, and intimidation tactics that proved successful in the U.S. were employed by local right-wingers like Ireland First.
In the UK, 82 per cent of librarians have noted a significant rise in the number of individual requests for removals of books and other materials – most often of titles with LGBTQI+ themes. In the wider EU, no books have been officiallybanned outright by the various States, at least recently. But EU member Hungary has adopted some censorship practices similar to Florida’s, excluding LGBTQI+ content from school curriculums and sex-education programmes. Privately owned Hungarian bookstores also face close scrutiny by President Viktor Orban’s Conservative Christian government: the country’s second-largest bookstore, Lira, was recently fined 3,200 Euros for daring to display, in the children’s section, a Young Adult graphic novel from the popular Heartstopper series. Leaders of the Budapest-based bookstore chain have vowed to fight the fine.
Outside the EU, even though their country’s constitution forbids censorship, the Russian government redacts whole sections of books deemed controversial. They also order bookstores to conceal those books’ covers with brown paper or plastic wrappers. An ‘Expert Council’ examines all books for compliance with the government’s restrictive legislation. Presses that publish works which the Putin regime deems obscene, particularly those Russian law labels ‘LGBTQI+ propaganda’, face heavy fines and even closure. Russian authors face penalties, too. Those who speak out against the war in Ukraine, for example, often find their books have been removed from library and bookstore shelves. Farther eastward, in Asia, the Indian government has demonstrated a high rate of book banning. Hong Kong and China regularly censor books to shield the Chinese Communist Party from criticism, removing titles with democratic themes or information on independence movements from libraries and bookstores.
The Borgen Project. Book Banning and Censorship Across the Globe. Blog entry on the effect of book bans worldwide.
Censorship, book challenges, and book bans deeply affect not just the targeted authors, but writers worldwide. A chilling underlying message gradually becomes normalised: Whatever may be written about, or read – even by adults – can be monitored, controlled, and ultimately taken away. This growing authoritarian trend can also negatively impact authors’ publication opportunities and thus their livelihoods.
Some Readers and Authors Are Fighting Back
“Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.” – German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, in his 1821 play, Almansor
What, then, can be done to protect the rights of readers and authors, and preserve the free flow of information? In August 2024, six major U.S. publishers, the Authors Guild of America, and several bestselling authors joined a group of Florida students and parents in filing a federal lawsuit against the State. It challenges the constitutionality of two vague, overly-broad Florida statutes which the plaintiffs contend have resulted, so far, in the improper removal of hundreds of titles from the State’s public school classrooms and libraries. The lawsuit contends that, under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, authors’ works are protected, so they and their publishers have the right to disseminate those constitutionally-protected books, as well. The student plaintiffs, the suit adds, have a First Amendment right to be able to access and read those published, protected books, unhindered by such unconstitutional mandates from the State.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY article on August group lawsuit against Florida book removal statute.
But growing book bans have also inspired actions by individual writers and readers. In May 2024, in response to Florida’s many book challenges and bans, novelist and three-time National Book Award finalist Lauren Groff opened her own independent bookstore in Gainesville, Florida, where she’s lived since 2006. On opening day about 3,000 people showed up to listen to author readings and buy books.
In some U.S. states, High School students can’t access the texts they need for courses like Advanced Placement Psychology or African American History, much less the books they want to read for recreation and personal information. Lately, in a number of states, even younger students are pushing back in various ways: starting Banned Book reading clubs, or coordinating walkouts and school-board meeting protests. For example, in Landisville, Pennsylvania, students from a local Middle School staged a walkout during classes to protest the school district’s policy recommending the removal of books with any sexual or LGBTQI+ content. Some of the volumes targeted have been part of the curriculum for years. The Eighth Grade student who organised the walkout quoted Laurie Hulse Anderson’s Young Adult novel Speak: “Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.” Another student predicted that, if school book bans continue, “The children of the future will know very little about what the real world is like.”
The American Civil Liberties Union. Fight For Free Speech.
The Authors Guild of America has more suggestions for individuals who want to do something to fight book bans and censorship around the world. See more here: The Authors Guild of America. Stop Book Bans Toolkit. Steps readers and writers can take to help stop book bans.
Meanwhile, one hopes the mania to suppress information does not escalate to the level predicted in an admonition from Almansor, an 1821 play written by German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine: “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.” That is, “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.” Heine’s quote proved eerily prophetic when his own books were indeed publicly burned, about a century later, in Nazi Germany.
