Giving Compass' Take:
- Eshe Ukweli reports on the communities organizing to resist book bans and safeguard literary freedom within schools.
- What is your role in organizing to reverse book bans and protect literary rights?
- Learn more about key issues in education and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on education in your area.
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Casting shadows over both public and school libraries, book bans have hit record numbers and continue to trend upward. But education experts say that despite these “bleak” realities, the power to preserve literary freedom and resist book bans still remains in the hands of concerned parents, kids and educators.
On July 10, children marched across the campus of South Carolina State University in a protest against book bans. A part of the “Why Not Young Lives” summer program, the children joined the chorus of voices from citizens across the nation pushing back against literary suppression. Research and legal experts say this community resistance to book bans, along with legislative initiatives in states like Illinois and Minnesota to ban book bans, illustrate the rocky state of literary rights.
As Book Bans Increase Nationwide, Communities Resist
In 2022, Sabrina Baêta was hired to track budding book bans for a three-month study at PEN America, a nonprofit organization focused on free expression and literary and human rights. Now, two years later, the project has turned into a department, and Baêta is a program manager on its Free Expression and Education team. What started out as the independent removal and restriction of books by local and state officials across the country has turned into the “coordinated” efforts of groups advocating for censorship, Baêta told The 19th. District-level restrictions influence politicians and state legislation and “supercharge” this movement, Baêta said, which has led to an increase of book bans in blue and red states alike.
PEN recorded 5,894 instances of book bans over the course of the last two school years. The number of these bans not only increased by 33 percent each school year but spread across 41 states and 247 public school districts. Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Tennessee had the highest number of book bans according to “Banned In The USA: Narrating The Crisis,” a report released by PEN America in April.
Read the full article about resisting book bans by Eshe Ukweli at The 19th.