18 Sep 2025 | Americas, News and features, United States
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 2 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled Land of the Free?: Trump’s war on speech at home and abroad, published on 21 July 2025. Read more about the issue here.
Book bans might seem like small fry in the grand scheme of the USA in 2025, but speak to those on the frontline of tackling censorship and it’s clear this is about much more than reducing library catalogues. It’s about controlling ideas.
“Why books?” Sabrina Baêta of PEN America has often asked herself. PEN is an organisation at the intersection of literature and human rights, and Baêta is the senior programme manager of its Freedom to Read workstream around schools. “If you’re controlling books, you are controlling what people know and what people have access to,” she said.
Reading, she says, is a transformative experience. And the fact that books hold vetted information carries weight. Controlling books controls the narrative.
Book bans in school and public libraries have steadily grown in the USA over recent years, often spearheaded by co-ordinated right-wing groups – groups such as Moms for Liberty, which was established in 2021 to advocate for more parental oversight of discussions and materials in schools touching on issues such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice history.
Baêta described how the group had backed Florida governor Ron DeSantis when he signed the Parental Rights in Education Act – dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law by its critics – in 2022, banning teachers from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation in primary schools. The ban was initially from kindergarten to third grade (five to eight-or-nine-year-olds), and has since been expanded.
According to news website Florida Phoenix, the Pinellas County chapter chair of Moms for Liberty said in 2023 that the group was advocating to increase the law up to 13- and 14-year-olds.
“What we’re seeing is state legislation playing a really key role in creating the censorship of these materials,” Baêta said, adding: “Three states – Utah, South Carolina and Tennessee – have mechanisms to ban books at the state level.”
The right-wing groups that often focus on individual school districts have a lot less work to do once books are being banned at state level.
Overtaking Utah, South Carolina is now the state with the highest number of mandated book bans in public schools. Its list of 22 books banned in all public schools includes Half Of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson.
In May, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill which will give school boards rather than librarians the power to oversee which new books go into schools. Moves such as this take autonomy away from experts, Baêta told Index. Librarians are well-trained and know what is age-appropriate for their students.
The Trump effect
As book bans have increased, PEN America has monitored and recorded censorship, run public awareness campaigns and collaborated with authors to stop their books being banned.
Then, as Donald Trump entered a second term as president, along came some concerning escalations.
“Book bans were called a hoax by the Department of Education, which obviously was a result of influence from this administration,” Baêta explained.
In January, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a statement about the “Biden book ban hoax”, as it dismissed 11 complaints about book removals (and six others that were pending), got rid of its book ban co-ordinator and rescinded department guidance that said book removal in schools might violate civil rights law.
“They’re staging a larger attack on what they would consider DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] content, which a lot of the book content would fall under,” said Baêta. “So, it’s just creating this atmosphere of fear and intimidation.”
Removing books about queer lives and Black history sends a “clear and terrible signal”, she said, that there is something wrong with these identities, and that young people should not be exposed to them. It also removes a vital lifeline of vetted information about difficult topics including sexism, homophobia, racism, sexual assault and grief.
From what PEN America has seen, self-censorship is becoming more common. School staff avoid putting particular books on the shelves – or don’t buy them in the first place. Author visits are being cancelled based on the author’s identity or content of their books, although that is never explicitly stated.
For researchers such as Baêta, it’s a nightmare to keep on top of – “How do you track what didn’t happen?”
Light at the end of the tunnel
While there are alarming escalations, there are also positive moves. States including New Jersey, Illinois, Maryland and Minnesota have brought in laws to ban book bans, and the Freedom to Read Act is making good progress in Rhode Island (at the time of writing). The act aims to prevent governments from removing books that they disagree with politically.
PEN America, along with publishers, authors and families, are taking bold steps, too. They have filed lawsuits in Rutherford County, Tennessee, and Escambia County, Florida, against book bans in school libraries.
“Everyone is tackling these little fires, and then we’re all working together to tackle the big fire,” Baêta said.
PEN America co-ordinates on a national level, with eyes on the overall situation. But for Baêta it’s also about uplifting grassroots groups.
Librarians, teachers, students and parents are fighting bans in their own communities. There’s the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which brings together parent-led groups, and the Texas FReadom Fighters, led by librarians.
“Librarians – who would have known they would have been our warriors?” Baêta said, describing the huge number she knows who have received death threats simply for having particular books available.
Librarians: canaries in the coal mine
This alarming situation in the USA is documented in a new film, The Librarians, which had its international premiere at the UK’s Sheffield DocFest on 18 June.
“If you can control the library, you can control the community … of course they’re coming for school librarians first,” one anonymous librarian tells the camera, before another appears in tears, aware that they are likely about to lose their job for protecting their library.
Others detail the violent threats they have received. One librarian talks about the security now installed around her home.
In one scene, librarians are pulled into a meeting about removing books that don’t conform to conservative sensitivities. One secretly records the meeting, catching directives including: “If it is not what you believe, you’d better hide it.”
The film’s director, Kim A Snyder, spoke to Index on the morning of the premiere.
“We really felt it was important to focus on the attack on our librarians themselves and as the gatekeepers, the curators of knowledge,” she said. “They see themselves as the canaries in the coal mine.”
Aggression against librarians plays out during the documentary, with right-wing individuals calling them “paedophiles” in meetings. The film follows events at librarian conferences, where safety is a real concern.
Snyder told Index that these fears were playing out behind the scenes of the documentary, too. The film was screened at June’s American Library Association conference in Philadelphia. The event drew thousands of people, and brought together the librarians from the film for the first time.
“We are definitely thinking hard about making sure everybody feels as safe as we can,” Snyder said, speaking to Index prior to the event. “The news of what happened with the political assassinations in Minnesota really rattled me, and others.” (She is referring to the two state lawmakers who were shot in their homes in June, leaving one politician dead and the other seriously injured.)
Some of these librarians, she added, have stalkers.
The film also details the risk that teachers in Florida could be charged with felonies over books in their classrooms. In Granbury, Texas, a law enforcement officer has already tried to bring charges against three librarians for what they held in their libraries.
“It’s an exposé that needs to happen… we are actually looking at a very concerted and aggressive attempt to criminalise librarians for either choosing to put out certain books or refusing to take them off the shelf,” Snyder said.
She fears this culture is being exported elsewhere, and said it not only emboldens fascist tendencies in leaderships around the world but also emboldens individuals and organised groups to be more aggressive with their messaging around book bans.
But she hopes that, on the flip side, seeing a librarian from a small town in Texas stand up and say “No” will offer a beacon of light.
Beyond libraries
Since the start of Trump’s second administration, the book banning battlegrounds have expanded beyond schools and public libraries.
When the National Park Service scrubbed the Stonewall National Monument website of the word “transgender” in February, following Trump’s executive order recognising only two genders and denying trans existence, it also removed a recommended reading list about the Stonewall Uprising. (PEN America has republished that list.)
Then, in early April, the navy removed 381 books from the US Naval Academy Library after being ordered by defence secretary Pete Hegseth’s office to review and remove any books promoting DEI. Army and air force libraries have been given the same directive. Some of the books removed from the Naval Academy included How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
Another was Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan. It is a memoir about Boylan’s life, through dogs. But it seems unlikely her Dalmatian was the cause of the upset. Boylan, who is president of PEN America, is transgender – and while the book is about her life before transition it is, in her words, “about a transgender person’s love of dogs”.
“These are America’s future officers and diplomats. These are the people who are going to be defending and representing the United States around the world,” Boylan told Index. “They need to understand that the world is a large place, and that there are people in the world who will have ideas with which they disagree.”
She explained that the federal government doesn’t have much control over what happens in most libraries, but one thing it can control is the libraries in military colleges and academies.
Why books are banned
Boylan’s memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, the first bestselling book by a transgender American, has been pulled from some school districts in Texas. And as we talk, she’s just heard that the book she co-authored with Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey, has been banned from some school districts.
“That’s three books of mine that have been deemed unsafe. And the question is, why? Are these books that advocate for violence? Are these books that argue for any kind of extreme ideology? They’re not. They’re books that simply tell the story of what life is like for someone like me,” she said.
Picoult received the unenviable accolade of having the most-banned book of the 2023-24 school year with Nineteen Minutes.
She told the UK’s Hay Festival audience last year that for the book banners, “the problem is that, on page 313, I use the term ‘erection’.”
But Boylan isn’t so sure that’s the real motivation.
“I think the real reason that book is being banned is because it’s a book about a school shooting, and to some degree the book makes a case for why we should have better control over guns in this country,” Boylan said.
In her view, books are being banned because of the doors they open in people’s imaginations.
“I can’t tell you how many times readers have said to me, ‘I always understood this abstractly, but your story enabled me to live it’,” she said. “And that’s what the people who are banning books want to prevent. They don’t want people’s hearts opened. They don’t want people to understand that there’s more than one way of viewing the world.”
But she added: “My books don’t disappear just because you ban them. The ideas in those books don’t disappear… My books are not disappearing any more than I’m disappearing.”
While the move to ban books and control the American narrative is organised and co-ordinated, it’s clear that the line of defence is, too. And as Baêta said, Americans do not want book bans.
Indeed, a pastor in The Librarians who is standing up against the Bible being used to justify book bans, says that “this can’t be America”.
“[At the] core of being American is being able to explore these different topics, speak your mind. More so than almost any other country in the world, we protect free expression, even when it’s ugly, even when it’s bad,” Baêta said.
“The censorship of any of this… it’s distinctly un-American – even though it’s being perpetrated by an American government, by American states. It is un-American.”
19 Aug 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, Scotland, United Kingdom
The head librarian at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh most likely didn’t anticipate that a public call to nominate favourite Scottish books for the institution’s 100th anniversary would ignite a national controversy. But when The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht, a collection of essays by feminist writers including JK Rowling and former MP Joanna Cherry, was voted into the top 200, it sparked a long, fierce internal debate.
The book, which critiques gender self-ID reforms brought forward by Nicola Sturgeon’s government, is polarising. For some, it represents a defence of women’s rights; for others, it feels like a rejection of trans identities and a challenge to the legitimacy of their lived experience.
Faced with this tension, Amina Shah, the National Librarian, sought an equality impact assessment. The advice was mixed. Including the book might lead to protests from LGBTQ+ staff and allies. Excluding it could be perceived as censorship. Concerns had been raised by LGBT+ staff network about the book’s inclusion, and in consultation with the chair of the library’s board Drummond Bone, Shah ultimately decided the book would not be included in the display.
That could have been the end of it. But an FOI request filed by the book’s editors brought the decision-making process into public view and turned a quiet decision into a news story.
Much of the subsequent debate has turned on language. Some headlines have referred to The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht as a “banned book” – a claim others have taken issue with. After all, the National Library of Scotland has said the book is still available in its open reading room. Others have wrongly claimed it was removed after the exhibition began in June, rather than not being part of the display to begin with.
In this kind of charged environment, misinformation spreads quickly. So let’s be clear: the public was invited to select Scottish books for the Dear Library exhibition, created to mark the centenary. Apparently 523 books were nominated and the 200 that received the most nominations would make the main display. The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht made the cut with four votes. It was the only title (as far as we know) excluded from the display after qualifying. That’s not an impartial act of curation. It’s a deliberate exception. And exceptions based on viewpoint deserve scrutiny.
At Index, we’ve just reprised our role as the UK lead for Banned Books Week. We don’t champion books because we always agree with them, or even because we find them palatable. We champion them because books must be a space where ideas – even deeply uncomfortable ones – can be explored.
In recent years, we’ve seen how frequently books on LGBTQ+ themes are targeted for removal, particularly in the United States. In the UK, too, we’ve seen troubling signs: last month a Reform MP urged libraries in Kent to remove books on trans issues. We called it out. In that case, as here, defenders said it wasn’t censorship – the books were still available, just not in the spotlight.
Curation is never neutral. What gets displayed, what doesn’t, what is “safe” enough to be seen, these are all decisions that shape the cultural landscape. These decisions matter. A book moved from the front shelf to the back is a signal.
Some say the book in question promotes “hate”. They’re entitled to that view and indeed entitled to protest its inclusion. It’s also important to acknowledge that for many LGBTQ+ readers and staff, this isn’t just a political disagreement. It’s personal and painful. In a liberal democracy though, even speech that offends or unsettles us deserves protection, especially in books, where the whole point is to wrestle with complex, often conflicting, ideas. Books that are deemed “dangerous” or “offensive” have always existed. Many are now considered classics. Others remain debated. In all cases, open dialogue – not quiet removal – is the better path forward.
Ironically, the decision to exclude the book has only amplified its reach. In what some are calling a classic case of the Streisand Effect, sales have surged on Amazon. People are talking about it more than they ever would have otherwise.
And now, the consequences have broadened. One of the exhibition’s funders is reportedly unhappy. There’s speculation that Shah could face professional consequences. That, too, would be a mistake. This is, after all, a very fraught space. Shah was clearly trying to do, with the backing of her chair, what she thought was right, balancing the concerns of staff, readers and the broader public. She was between a rock and a hard place, a damned if do, damned if don’t situation. Instead of continuing with the message that you can face professional risks either way, we should be asking how we can hold space for difficult conversations, without silencing people on either side. Because this isn’t just about one book, or one exhibition. It’s about a moment in which institutions are being pushed and pulled by opposing forces, and trying, often imperfectly, to chart a course through it all.
Ultimately, we need space for discomfort, for disagreement, and above all, for empathy. That’s how democracies grow – not by hiding books away, but by reading them, debating them and understanding why they matter.
10 Jul 2025 | Europe and Central Asia, News and features, United Kingdom
What’s one book that changed how you see the world?
Books can transform us. They open up new perspectives, help us understand lives different from our own, and spark ideas we might never have imagined. The freedom to read – to explore, question and connect through stories – is a vital part of any free and open society.
But that freedom is under threat.
Around the world, writers face censorship, imprisonment and violence simply for putting words on a page. Booksellers from Iran to Belarus, Israel to Hong Kong have been harassed and silenced. Publishers in China and Russia are being pressured and censored. In places like the USA, Brazil, Hungary and even the UK, books are being banned and pulled off the shelves in libraries because of the ideas they hold and the questions they raise.
Why? Because stories are powerful. Because reading can challenge the status quo.
Banned Books Week UK returns from 5–11 October 2025. It’s a week to celebrate the books that have been challenged, removed or silenced, and to stand with the people who write, sell and share them. Join Index on Censorship in honouring the right to read freely and the courage it takes to speak up. In partnership with the International Publishers Association and Hay Festival Global.
Get Involved!
- Booksellers and libraries are invited to host displays, organise events or highlight books that have been banned or challenged around the world.
- Writers and readers are encouraged to celebrate books that have come under fire ( globally or locally)
- Publishers and literature organisations are invited to join the campaign, whether curating online reading lists, hosting events or posting online
Email: [email protected] to take part.
About Banned Books Week UK
Index on Censorship is the UK partner for the USA Coalition, which runs ‘Banned Books Week’. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. Typically (but not always) held during the last week of September, the annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community — librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas. You can read more about Banned Books Week here: About | Banned Books Week.
Banned Books Week UK is led by Index on Censorship as a parallel campaign to Banned Books Week in the USA. It ran successfully for a couple of years prior to the pandemic and is re-launching in 2025. Index invites booksellers, libraries, literary organisations, publishers, schools, writers and any other organisations interested in getting involved with the campaign. The aim of Banned Books Week UK is to become a truly nationwide campaign. Follow us on X.
5 Oct 2023 | Uncategorized
Beijing Coma – Ma Jian
In the lead up to the Beijing Olympics, when China was on a global charm offensive, Ma Jian’s book Beijing Coma was published. Through the central character Dai Wei, a protester who was shot in Tiananmen Square and fell into a deep coma, Ma presented the other side of the country, an insecure nation afraid of its past and struggling with its present. Ma stated that he wrote the book “to reclaim history from a totalitarian government whose role is to erase it”. I raced through it, went to several book talks he gave and, given the epic proportions of the novel, even enquired about buying the film rights. They were available but I was told that was because few studios would dare take on a work so confronting. To this day the book remains banned in China and no film of it has yet to be made. We are the worse off for that. Jemimah Steinfeld
Are you there God? It’s me Margaret – Judy Blume
As the only child of an amazing single parent, books were a core feature of my childhood. A trip to the library was a joy and visits to the bookshop were a special treat. Getting lost in the pages of a book every night was my happy place and my favourite author as a teenager was Judy Blume. Blume writes beautifully and takes the reader on a journey of exploration of a teenage mind – helping you realise you aren’t alone in being challenged by new experiences and feelings. While from an Index perspective I should say that my favourite book was the one most banned – Forever (which I loved), my absolute favourite was actually Are you there God? It’s me Margaret. As the only Jewish kid at my school I related to Margaret’s internal conflict and her personal relationship with G-d. Blume remains a personal heroine and every effort to ban her books confirms why the work of Index on Censorship is so important. Ruth Anderson
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – DH Lawrence
I had to read DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover at school. I hated it. But I did enjoy the ironies that the attempted prosecution of it for “obscenity” totally undermined the state of the obscenity laws at the time and the court case reaffirmed art’s freedom to say pretty much anything it liked, as long as it was judged to be of literary merit (whatever that means). Those who tried to suppress the book only succeeded in fanning the flames of public interest exponentially, beyond who might otherwise have read it without all the hoo-ha and salacious interest whipped up around it. Public interest was the other marker of whether the book should be permitted, so in bringing the prosecution it rather ensured the inevitable failure of the case. The trial has also been highlighted as the start of societal values changing and ushering in the more permissive 1960s. None of this impacted on DH Lawrence, since he’d been dead for 30 years. Publishers had self-censored by holding off publication until Penguin Books took the plunge and British society was probably never the same again. Now, if only a book could have such a societal impact in the 21st century… David Sewell
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses was the subject of a fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, which called for the assassination of its author, Salman Rushdie. The novel is Rushdie’s masterpiece: a comic take on the life of Muhammad that also wraps in the British Indian immigrant experience, Bollywood, Sikh separatism and Hinduism. Its ambition is vast and it deserves to be celebrated as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Its legacy will live well beyond the regime which forced its author into hiding. Martin Bright
Spycatcher – Peter Wright
I was at university in London when Peter Wright’s Spycatcher was first published and Margaret Thatcher’s government banned it. Wright was a former assistant director of MI5, who was annoyed about the security service’s pension arrangements and decided to blow the whistle over its shadier activities in order to recoup some money for his retirement in Australia. In the 1980s, the workings of the security services were shrouded in secrecy and the book caused huge ripples with its stories of Soviet moles and the then advanced technologies that were being used to spy on Britain’s ‘enemies’. I still remember reading the first chapter and finding out that a nondescript building around the corner from my university department I passed every day was used by MI5 for its covert operations. As the book was not banned in Australia or Scotland, its contents gradually leaked and Thatcher’s government was forced to admit defeat and the book ban was dropped. Mark Stimpson
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Look on the shelves of certain school districts in Texas, Michigan and Florida and you’ll find an empty space where The Handmaid’s Tale used to be, after book challenges led to its removal. Atwood’s most famous book might have been published in 1985, but it still has the power to scare self-appointed censors today. The graphic novel, too, is just as excellent and just as hated by censors. In the dystopian Gilead patriarchal structures are taken to the absolute extreme. A woman’s body is not her own – she is judged by her capacity for baby-making. Even her vocabulary is closely monitored. But the way this society was created is even more concerning, with events in the novel inspired by real-world happenings. It’s a book worth reading again and again – it hit home differently when I was a wide-eyed student to how it does now that I’m a mother, and still sends the same chill in a 2023 context. Katie Dancey-Downs
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird explores complex themes of race, justice, and humanity, bringing a degree of warmth to heavy subject matter by using the perspective of child protagonist Scout Finch to invoke a sense of innocence, even while tackling difficult topics. Although the book is considered a modern classic, it has been subject to bans and challenges due to its use of profanity, racial slurs, and adult themes. The language and subject matter may make it an uncomfortable read for some, but the overriding message of tolerance and morality is both important and necessary. Daisy Ruddock
Animal Farm – George Orwell
There’s always a book you read that, when you reflect back on, has made an impression on your whole life. For me it was Animal Farm by George Orwell. I first read the book as a teenager and it made me think about the meaning behind the role of governments and the issues of right and wrong, greed and the corruption of power. When I watched the world news and saw the power and restrictions that states placed on their citizens, a book published in 1945 showed me how the world turns and how little change there can be without true democracy. Cathy Parry
His Dark Materials trilogy – Philip Pullman
The His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman made its way to me through my grandmother. This was how I often got the books that have stuck with me nearly two decades later. I wonder whether she knew what she did would be so frowned upon by those in the US states who took offence to its apparent “anti-Christian” message? His Dark Materials is glorious collection of young adult books, which snuck in complex messages without patronising the readers. In fact, it challenges and provokes the readers in a manner that sent my teenage brain racing. Also how can you not love a polar bear wearing armour? Nik Williams
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
The Ireland that I was born into was a cold house for women. There was no access to abortion, no divorce and marital rape had only recently been outlawed. Since then, public opinion has been reshaped and laws have been liberalised, largely as a result of ordinary women speaking out about their personal experiences. That’s why The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is important. It’s a rare example of a canonical work about the life of a young woman as told in her own words. The semi-autobiographical novel, which was previously banned in Ireland and remains banned in some US states, is a coming-of-age story following a young woman at odds with 1950s US society. It challenges the conventional roles of women and explores the difficult, and still tabooed, subject of mental illness. Jessica Ní Mhainín
