Legislators are introducing, and in some cases passing, bills that prohibit teachers from talking about LGBTQ topics in classrooms. With them, book bans are increasing all over the country, with more districts and public schools enforcing book bans against material featuring any sort of LGBTQ representation in their classrooms and libraries.
For nine months, (from July 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022) the organization PEN America collected an index of school books banned in classrooms and libraries and found 1,586 instances of individual books being banned. This occurred in 86 school districts of 26 states, affecting more than 2 million students.
According to the report, 379 titles address LGBTQ themes or have protagonists or secondary characters who are LGBTQ. In addition to LGBTQ books, 467 books have characters of color, 274 address issues of race and racism, 32 cover teen pregnancy, and 14 cover puberty.
The report found 184 bans on 143 books titles, banned in school libraries and classrooms across 38 school districts; 197 bans on 189 books titles, banned in school libraries only across 19 districts; and 474 bans on 470 book titles, banned in classrooms only across 15 districts.
PEN America also found that out of the 76 districts that have banned books, only 43 have transparent policies which either follow or are similar to the guidelines recommended by the NCAC and ALA. The rest of the districts, 33, have no public or transparent policies accessible online or “these policies fall short of established safeguards.”
The report found that the ban affected 874 different authors, nine translators, and 198 illustrators, impacting the work of 1,081 people altogether.
The most banned books include several LGBTQ books, such as Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe (banned in 30 districts), All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson (banned in 21 districts), Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison (banned in 16 districts), and Beyond Magneta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin (banned in 11 districts).
States like Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Utah, and Pennsylvania were among the list of states that ban books more often.
