Books written off for entire generation in banning spree

Maia Kobab’s graphic novel Gender Queer has for a third successive year topped a list of works threatened with removal from libraries, schools and universities.

Books banned in certain states or targets of the wrath of the new censors on display at the Hoboken Public Library in New Jersey last month. Picture: AFP

Two years after Maia Kobabe published a graphic novel called Gender Queer, about an adolescent journey of self-discovery, the author received word that protests had broken out at a public meeting in northern Virginia where officials decided to remove it from school libraries.

It was later reinstated, but the row in Fairfax County was only the beginning of a story in which Gender Queer was at the centre of fights over children’s books that have erupted in school board meetings, statehouses and courts all over the US.

For the third year in a row ­Kobabe’s graphic novel was the most frequent target of efforts to remove books from libraries, schools and universities last year, according to a report by the American Library Association. The ­organisation said the number of books targeted rose from 2571 in 2022 to 4240 last year.

Most of these “challenges” sought to remove several titles from collections, many “using lists of titles drafted by organised pressure groups seeking to empty ­library shelves of all books they deem inappropriate for young readers”, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the association’s office for intellectual freedom, wrote.

Kobabe recommends Gender Queer for readers in high school and above but added, in an article in The Washington Post in 2021, that “the truth is, the readers I primarily wrote it for were my own parents and extended family. When I was first coming out as nonbinary, I kept getting responses along the lines of, ‘We love you, we support you, but we have no idea what you are talking about’.”

The book Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe has been classified by the Australian Classification Board as ‘unrestricted’.

Second on the list was All Boys Aren’t Blue, a collection of autobiographical essays by the journalist George M. Johnson and then This Book Is Gay, by English writer Juno Dawson. Nearly half the challenged books deal with gender, sexuality and race, but others were targeted “simply because they touch on sex”, Ms Cald­well-Stone said.

The Bluest Eye, by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, was sixth on the list. The same concerns apparently drove education officials in Clayton, Missouri to remove an ­illustrated edition of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

Tom Bober, head of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and co-ordinator of district libraries for Clayton County, said a state law passed in 2022 imposing a fine of up to $US2000 ($3020) or up to a year in jail for giving “explicit sexual material” to students had caused him to reconsider keeping the graphic novel.

“There’s a depiction of a rape scene, a handmaid being forced into a sexual act,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s literally one panel of the graphic novel, but we felt it was in violation of the law in Missouri.”

Similar bills have been proposed in more than a dozen states, making librarians, long protected from legal action, targets for prosecution.

Moms For Liberty, an influential group in conservative circles, has been at the forefront of efforts to challenge some books. According to its website, the group reviews books for “objectionable content, including profanity, nudity and sexual content” so that parents “can make informed decisions”.

A report by the Heritage Foundation titled Project 2025, which aims to offer a blueprint for a second Donald Trump presidency, argues that books that propagate “transgender ideology and sexualisation of children” have no claim to First Amendment protections.

“The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned,” it says. “Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.”

But some groups championing free-speech protections for writers have also been accused of seeking to stop the circulation of books by conservative authors. In 2021, the American Booksellers Association issued an apology after including Abigail Shrier’s ­Irreversible Damage in a list of ­titles for shops to stock amid complaints that it promoted transphobia. In a post on social media, Shrier complained of being targeted by “the book-banning left”.

The Times