Over the past nearly two years, Republican politicians have pushed to remove books about the history of racism and LGBTQ identities from school library shelves. A new report by PEN America, a nonprofit focused on free expression rights, shows that these book bans in the U.S. have reached their highest levels yet.
According to a report out April 20, the nonprofit calculated 1,477 instances of individual books banned during the first half of the 2022-23 school year, involving 874 unique titles— about 100 books being banned a month—up from 1,149 instances of book banning from January to June 2022. PEN America defines book banning as the removal of a book that was previously available, or reducing access to a book, either temporarily or permanently. Since the organization started tracking book bans in July 2021, it has recorded more than 4,000 instances, involving 2,253 unique titles and affecting 182 school districts in 37 states and millions of students. Most of the bans are occurring in states including Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina.
“This fall, we’ve seen more instances of books being banned than in prior semesters,” says Kasey Meehan, Program Director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read initiative and lead author of the new report titled “Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools.” The purpose of the report is “to continue to raise awareness and alarm that book banning is, in fact, happening.”
Read more at Time.