Attempts at banning books in US reach record high –Report

Requests for books to be removed from United States shelves surged to a record high in 2022, with most of the titles “targeted for censorship” relating to LGBTQ issues and minorities, according to data released by the American Library Association (ALA) on Thursday. The nonprofit reported a total of 1,269 individual “challenges”—demands to restrict or remove one or more books—filed across the country last year. This eclipsed the previous record of 729 challenges set in 2021, the highest number since the ALA began tracking such data in 2003.

The ALA noted that the vast majority of the challenged titles were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color. “Overwhelmingly, we’re seeing these challenges come from organized censorship groups that target local library board meetings to demand removal of a long list of books they share on social media,” said Deborah Caldwell‑Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, in a statement. According to the association, more than 2,500 individual books were “targeted for censorship” in 2022, up from around 1,900 in 2021. Children’s books comprised 86 percent of those titles, and over half (58 percent) were books taught in or available at schools.

Caldwell‑Stone described the bans as “a direct attack on every person’s constitutionally protected right to freely choose what books to read and what ideas to explore,” adding that the aim of the challengers is to suppress the voices of groups traditionally excluded from national conversations, such as LGBTQIA+ individuals and people of color. US conservative leaders have intensified efforts to reshape education, seeking to eliminate teachings they claim promote a progressive agenda on race and gender identity. In recent years, Toni Morrison’s classic novel *Beloved*—the 1988 Pulitzer Prize‑winning work that explores the traumatic legacy of slavery through the story of a free Black woman haunted by her past—has been a frequent target of these censorship campaigns.