10 Banned Books to Add to Your Reading List
From October 1-7, librarians, booksellers, and ink drinkers of all sorts band together to promote literacy and decry censorship. If you have been following the news in the US at all for the past 3 years, you’ll know that many of the most challenged books in the recent past have to do with racial and gender identity, and that our public schools are engaged in a battle against revisionist history.
It’s not just my imagination either. The American Library Association has been tracking reports of book challenges since 1990, and the numbers have increased at an enormous rate the last 2 years. There were 729 challenges in 2021, and 1269 in 2022, compared to an average of 343 per year from 2011-2019.
Note: the dip in 2020 is likely due to the fact that traditional forums for banning books (such as school board meetings) were cancelled or otherwise sparsely attended due to the pandemic.
Some chart toppers in the 90s early 00s included books like Captain Underpants and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, popular children’s books deemed crude or scary, but divorced from the larger political landscape. More and more since then, books have been challenged for including racially and sexually diverse content. 7 of the top 13 most challenged books of 2022 include LGBTQIA+ content, and 5 are by authors of color.
Over the years, many of the challenged books have won Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, Lambda Awards, and Stonewall Book Awards. Many books are challenged decades after their publication. Sometimes books are challenged due to their insensitive or offensive content, or due to the reputation of the author.
Many of the books that make it to the most banned books list have challenging content - and I would argue, challenging content often means they should have your attention. Reading introduces audiences to diverse perspectives that they may never have considered before. Feeling uncomfortable isn’t inherently bad - it’s how we grow. Add these 10 challenged books to your reading list to help shift your perspective.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The first of several memoirs to be featured on this list, Maya Angelou’s seminal work chronicles her childhood and fledgling adulthood. From the unspoken racial caste system of a hardscrabble small southern town, to horrifying sexual abuse in St. Louis, to finding freedom in art and words in San Francisco, Angelou holds nothing back in this hard, yet hopeful, account. Caged Bird’s most frequently cited challenges are for “sexually explicit” content and “offensive language.” While I wouldn’t recommend reading this to your kindergartner at bedtime, Angelou’s honest account of her childhood is a time capsule for black personhood in the early-to-mid-20th century.
Years on the most challenged list: 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, #3 most challenged 1990-1999, #6 most challenged 2000-2009
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
How interesting that 2 years after its wildly popular television adaptation on Hulu, Margaret Atwood’s famous feminist dystopian tale would wind up on the most challenged list. In a fictional future version of the United States called the Republic of Gilead, Offred (“Of Fred”) lives a subservient life to the Commander. With declining birth rates and extreme sexual sequestration, Gilead came up with a solution: handmaids. Handmaids are the only women allowed to procreate in the new society where women cannot read, rule, or choose happiness for themselves. Banned for vulgarity and “sexual overtones,” this satirical (yet cautionary) tale imagines a world of sexual purity gone too far.
Years on the most challenged list: 2019, #37 most challenged 1990-1999, #88 most challenged 2000-2009
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
This memoir told in comic form is equal parts funny, exasperating, and comic. The daughter of an English teacher/funeral director, Alison’s childhood experiences are unique to to say the least. Bechdel learns as an adult that her father was gay, but only after his death. As an adult lesbian herself, the journey to understand her father better resulted in this unique and heartfelt graphic memoir. Now a Tony-award winning musical, Fun Home’s challenge was ostensibly for “violence,” but the LGBTQIA+ content challenges some readers. Bechdel also invented the Bechdel test for movies, a simple test that asks 3 questions: do 2 women characters have names, do they talk, and do they talk about something other than a man?
Year on the most challenged list: 2015
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
At the Catholic all boy’s Trinity school, the yearly fundraiser to sell chocolate is as sacred as God (almost literally). Every boy must participate to his fullest ability. Jerry Renault, an unremarkable freshman struggling with his mother’s recent death, runs afoul of a powerful group called The Vigils and the vindictive vice principal Brother Leon by his refusal to participate. Cormier’s unflinching imagery rubs some readers the wrong way, but his portrayal of teenage boyhood, corruption, and power is one of the most honest. Ironically, its challenges for “sexual explicit content” and “offensive language” are exactly why this book so perfectly encapsulates the teen experience.
Year on the most challenged list: 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, #4 most challenged 1990-1999, #3 most challenged 2000-2009
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
Equal parts joyful and brutal, George M. Johnson chronicles his upbringing as a black, queer boy in New Jersey and Virginia. The story covers everything from brutal beatings, to budding romance, to the pressures of toxic masculinity, to self-identification at an early age. The writing is perfectly geared towards its Young Adult audience without sacrificing any of the heart and depth required to tell such a nuanced and personal story. Published in 2020, All Boys Aren’t Blue is already on track to be one of the most challenged books from 2020-2029, as it’s been in the top 3 two years running.
Years on the most challenged list: 2021, 2022
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
12-year-old Amir has everything he could want in 1970s Afghanistan except one thing: a winning turn in the local kite fighting championship. But when his pure-hearted companion Hassan is brutally attacked, the aftereffects of Amir’s inaction follow him through adulthood and beyond. The Kite Runner contains many stories in one: a treatise on the beauty of pre-Soviet Afghanistan, an exploration of class exploitation, a heartbreaking coming-of-age tale, and a meditation on deciding whose story deserves to be told. Challenged for “promoting Islam,” Hosseini’s masterpiece paints a nuanced portrait of a region and a culture widely demonized by the western world.
Year on the most challenged list: 2008, 2012, 2014, 2017
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison’s first work is a searing, heartbreaking, thought-provoking debut that is sadly as relevant today as it was upon publication in 1970. Young Percola Breedlove feels ostracized and unloved for her dark skin and fostered parentage - so she longs for blue eyes, the ultimate source of belonging. Morrison plays with literary form and structure in really creative ways, bending timelines and perspectives to her strong and subtle will. In an interesting twist, The Bluest Eye is one of the few classics that has been more challenged over time, not less. Accounts of sexual abuse and incest in the book often draw challenges from conservative parents, but portraits the colorism and punching down in the book remain prescient 80 years after the book’s setting and 50 years after its publication.
Year on the most challenged list: 2006, 2013, 2014, 2020, 2021, 2022, #34 most challenged 1990-1999, #15 most challenged 2000-2009
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
In this searing Young Adult novel, Angie Thomas imagines the death of an unarmed black teenager from an intimate perspective: that of his best friend, Starr. After witnessing Khalil’s death, Starr begins to question the world around her: the chasm between her mostly-Black neighborhood and the mostly-white suburban school she attends, the protection the police claim to provide versus the Black relationship to the police, and the choice between using her voice or staying safe. Another fairly recent addition to the list, this acclaimed book-turned-movie (now series) nonetheless continues to face continued challenges for “indoctrination” and “anti-police rhetoric.”
Year on the most challenged list: 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
A beautiful, deeply affecting portrait of 4 women, The Color Purple explores what “sisterhood” means on three fronts: familial, collegial, and romantic. Told through a series of letters, the book follows a young woman named Celie over 20 years and her relationships with the women in her life, from her beloved sister Nettie to her admirable friend Sofia to the glamorous Shug Avery. All four women are broken by the men who take advantage of them, and made whole again by the strength of their relationships to other women. Despite being a National Book Award winner and a Pulitzer Prize winner, the physical and sexual abuse rampant in the story have caused many challenges since its publication.
Year on the most challenged list: 2007, 2009, #17 most challenged 1990-1999, #17 most challenged 2000-2009
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
For all of her young life, Jeannette Walls’s father promised to one day build them a Glass Castle. But the family dreams were hampered by her father’s rampant alcoholism and her mother’s complete disdain for the domestic. Shuttled from untenable home to untenable home, the siblings were forced to fend for themselves. Yet, their life had a certain wonder and poignant beauty. You feel the dizzy, mercurial pull of the Walls family throughout the novel - simultaneously horrified by their lack of basic resources and entranced by the freedom and creativity. Despite only reaching the top 10 once, this book was one of the most challenged of its publication decade for “explicit language” and “sexual content.”
Year on the most challenged list: 2012, #17 most challenged 2010-2019
