10 of the Most Banned Books (and What We Can Learn From Them)

Gender Queer: Banned Books Week

The most frequently banned or challenged category of books in 2021 is overwhelmingly LGBTQ+ books aimed at teenagers, and the most challenged of these is Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir, according to the the American Library Association. At issue are the book’s LGBTQ+ themes and “explicit images.” Gender Queer was banned in dozens of school libraries across the country, and denounced as “likely illegal” by Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina (who knows full well it isn’t illegal).

It’s an easy book for people to challenge because A) there are drawings, so you don’t have to read a bunch of dang words to get angry, and you can share it easily on your Facebook; B) Kobabe uses gender neutral “Spivak” pronouns (e/em/eir), and which pronouns people prefer is a very important issue to our nation’s conservatives; and C) It’s about a trans person, the current most-hated-target of the Right.

What we can learn: The faux-panic over Gender Queer is part of an organized effort. According to the ALA, calls to ban books generally aren’t cases of a local parent becoming alarmed at something their kid is reading, but is instead part of a larger political movement. “The moral panic isn’t about kids: it’s about politics. Organizations with a political agenda are spreading lists of books they don’t like,” ALA President Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada said.

from Lifehacker https://ift.tt/wxWO5NA

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