Reading Under Censorship:
Life in the Age of the Book Ban
"I t makes you second guess pretty much every interaction,” says Emma Davis, a librarian in Hoover, Alabama. “Every time a patron walks up that I don’t recognize, especially with a book list, I assume it’s not going to go well.”
Davis has worked at the Hoover Public Library for eight years. While her library has avoided the brunt of recent censorship efforts, she says the fear is constant. “We’re flying under the radar right now,” she adds, “but any given day, we all know it could happen.”
In recent years, the U.S. has seen a sharp increase in efforts to restrict access to certain books. Since 2021, almost 16,000 instances of book bans have been recorded throughout the country in public schools and libraries. According to the charity PEN America, this marks a level of censorship not seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s.
Davis says that the onslaught of challenges to books has led many librarians to leave the profession entirely. She mentions a friend of hers who she helped get a job at a county library. “She loved her job as that teen librarian so much,” says Davis. However, after refusing to take certain books off the shelf, she was forced to leave her role. “It didn’t even last three years before that was no longer her career.”
What are book bans?
A book ban can take many forms and typically begins when a book is challenged by a parent, community group or politician. These challenges may stem from concerns about a book’s language or themes, especially concerning depictions of race, gender, or sexuality.
In some cases, school administrators respond by removing the book from libraries or curricula. In others, bans are enacted under pressure from lawmakers or government officials, who may pass legislation or issue directives targeting specific content.
Marteen Zwiers, an assistant professor in contemporary and U.S. history at the University of Groningen, says that book bans can be traced much further back than 2021. “The United States has always had a history of censorship,” he explains, noting that even before the American Civil War, Southern states banned abolitionist literature and enforced a gag rule to suppress anti-slavery discourse. “What’s happening right now is not something that just dropped out of the air,” he says. “It has a very long history.”
Zwiers compares this gag rule to the resurgence of book bans today, particularly those targeting LGBTQ+ content and critical discussions of race. He says that when society becomes more inclusive, there is often a cultural backlash. “People start to feel that their identity is at stake and that they need to defend it” he says, “And where do you do that? With your children, because you want to teach a new generation to be aware that their rights are at stake too.”
“The whole point of a library is to have something for everyone... We have plenty of books I disagree with — but we still buy them”
~ Emma Davis
One of the groups which advocates for the removal or restriction of books in public schools is Moms For Liberty. Emily Jones, the chair of the Alabama chapter, says “public schools should really and truly mirror the values and the belief systems of the community that they serve.”
Jones is a resident of Jackson County in Alabama, a largely conservative area of the state. She says that her organization has been working with Alabama legislators to expand current policy, which declares all texts dealing with “gender ideology” be prohibited for pupils in grades kindergarten through grade five. This legislative expansion would apply the current restrictions to all grades in the public school system.
“It really is not about restricting access to any particular book or genre. It's about putting power back in the hands of parents,” Jones says. She equates the proposed bill to an executive order that was issued by President Trump earlier this year which labels topics of transgender rights, white privilege and unconscious bias as “anti-american” and “discriminatory”.
For Jamie Harker, a professor in literature and gender studies at the University of Mississippi, the bans targeting LGBTQ+ literature are attempts to further marginalise queer people. “It’s always been a kind of play of the larger culture to frame anything that talks about queer life in any way as pornographic or harmful to children… It’s disheartening to see it revamped and revived, but it’s not new.”
She sees the attempts at banning books as a direct attack on queer life, especially considering the disproportionately high suicide rates among queer youth. “All this stuff makes it harder for queer youth to make it to adulthood…it feels like the cruelty is part of the point across the board”.
Harker also notes how ineffective book bans are in the digital landscape, owing to the fact that younger generations are more likely to self-publish books and fanfiction online. “What they're doing is hateful and harmful and ill-advised and futile because they are not going to get rid of [queer literature].”
She says that new queer literature is constantly being published, more than even she can keep up with. “The books they're targeting are ten plus years old. There have been thousands if not hundreds of thousands of books published since then,” Harker says.
Hope for the future
In spite of the ongoing book challenges, librarians like Davis are still optimistic about their libraries’ ability to offer a valuable service to everyone. “One of the things that makes us all feel better is when a teen comes in and they want to read a book and we have it and they're excited about it…. That makes it worth it”
By Sophia von Seebach & Sam Maguire