When a Fox News debate between governors Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom entered its education portion, DeSantis pulled out a prop: a page from the book Gender Queer, which he said was “pornography” aimed at children. The memoir, which...
When a Fox News debate between governors Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom entered its education portion, DeSantis pulled out a prop: a page from the book Gender Queer, which he said was “pornography” aimed at children. The memoir, which is about the author coming out as nonbinary, isn’t just targeted in Florida: it’s the most banned book in American public schools.
Book banning is on the rise across the country. The current surge started in Florida in 2021, when the passage of DeSantis’ so-called Don’t Say Gay bill prompted a flurry of bans in the name of parental rights and defeating a “woke agenda.” Now, Florida’s model has proliferated around the nation. In the past two years, 41 states and 247 school districts have implemented bans.
PEN America, a nonprofit focused on literature and human rights, has been tracking the increase. Its new report uses data from the past two school years, estimating 5,894 instances of book bans, involving 2,823 unique titles. Bans are up by 33% this year over the previous one. (PEN defines a ban as anytime a book is completely removed, or access is restricted or diminished. Bans from libraries and classrooms in a school would constitute separate bans.)
The report finds two overwhelming phenomena. One is copycat bans: Once a book is challenged in one school district, it’s more likely to be challenged in another one, even in states far away. Gender Queer has topped that list, with 67 separate bans.
The other trend is what PEN America (in a literary nod) calls scarlet letters, whereby entire author collections are targeted. After one fantasy novel by Sarah J. Maas was banned, 16 of her titles were banned this year across 36 districts.
Advocating for parental rights and anti-wokeness
Often, the rationale for banning books cites buzzwords like “student indoctrination” and “parental rights.” But “groups that are espousing parental rights are also restricting the parental rights of others,” says Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program.
And they are overwhelmingly targeting very specific content, silencing perspectives from underrepresented and minority groups. Most of the flagged books are about race and racism, LGBTQ people and sexuality. “The identities represented in the books are the thing being challenged,” Meehan says.
Book bans aren’t a new thing in America; they have appeared cyclically during periods that PEN America calls Ed Scares, such as during the 1950s McCarthyism era. But today, social media allows things to move a lot faster.
Social media is an effective tool for national advocacy groups to provide an “infrastructure of information sharing and tactics and strategy,” Meehan says. They include Florida-based organizations Moms For Liberty, Citizens Defending Freedom, and No Left Turn in Education. The groups often post flagged books on Facebook, so other chapters around the country can flag them in their own districts.
Florida, the “incubator state”
Challenging books is becoming easier. This year, Florida expanded its Don’t Say Gay Bill, meaning that any book challenged due to perceived sexual themes is removed immediately from shelves and not available during the entire review process, which can take up to a year.
“We often say Florida is the incubator state,” Meehan says. Since DeSantis made parental rights core to his agenda in 2021, other states have copied his legislative playbook. Iowa mimicked Florida’s law allowing the immediate removal of books challenged as sexually explicit, but took it further: It’s been using Chat GPT to find multiple books to challenge at a time.
At the debate with Newsom, DeSantis continued to tout this agenda—with the help of Gender Queer as a prop. PEN America has debunked his claim about the book, saying it doesn’t meet the legal definition of pornography. DeSantis, meanwhile, pushed back against the accusation of an abundance of book bans, but Florida’s own Department of Education says it has removed around 300 books in the past year. (The department uses the terms “removed” and “discontinued,” and a spokesperson told NBC News that “Florida does not ban books.”)
Another rule from the new version of the Don’t Say Gay bill lets people read aloud passages from a book in school board meetings. If any other attendee asks them to stop reading because they’re offended, the book is removed immediately for review. The idea is that if books aren’t fit for meetings, they aren’t fit for schools.
“It’s sad to see theatrics take over school board meetings like that,” says Raegan Miller, director of development at The Florida Freedom To Read Project, a nonprofit. She says it doesn’t make sense to read excerpts out of context. Me, Earl and the Dying Girl has been banned 35 times in the past two years, due to a passage where adolescents joke about oral sex. “When you read the book in its entirety, it’s not even something that jumps out to you,” she says. “It was such a small blip in the book.”
PEN America has joined with Penguin Random House and various authors to file a lawsuit against Florida’s Escambia County. They chose Escambia because “you could see that there was clear personal ideology at play” in the book ban decisions, Meehan says. Oral arguments begin in January, and the case could shape the future of bans in the state and beyond.
In the meantime, Meehan suggests ways in which parents can show defiance. They can raise awareness among friends and family and show up to their school board meetings to advocate for diverse and inclusive reading lists. One of the simplest things they can do is to read some of the books in question. “Really challenging some of the assumptions, and some of the rhetoric behind why these books are being challenged,” Meehan says, “is in itself a very helpful exercise.”