Librarian Sabrina Jesram arranges a book display during Banned Books Week at a public library branch in New York City on September 23, 2022.
Ted Shaffrey/AP/AP
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Ted Shaffrey/AP/AP
“Banned books” is one of the headline terms commonly used by news media, including NPR, for stories about surge in book challenges across America
The American Library Association has launched its annual event Banned books week 1982. Some books were banned club. Countries that have introduced or passlaw that’s called a book ban. Meanwhile, many of those fighting to remove books from school libraries are not fans of book bans.
Book censorship has been going on for a long time century. But what does banning a book really mean today? The answer depends on who you ask. Here are some definitions from those entrenched in the issue:
Kasey Meehan, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Read program (speaking at a video press conference in April): “We define a book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content its results where a previously accessible book is completely removed from the list available to students or where access to a book is limited or reduced. PEN is perhaps a bit unique and that’s the opposite of ALA [American Library Association] and some other books, of which we include those that have been removed pending review as a ban. We include that information because we know the book is being reviewed. As long as they are removed from student access, those books can be removed for weeks, months, even years as we have seen in some cases.”
NOTE: The American Enterprise Institute has excluded the PEN America definition. ONE learn AEI conducted for the Institute for Educational Freedom reviewed PEN America’s 2021-2022 “banned books index” and found that “74% of the books” listed as banned “were listed as available in the same counties where PEN America said the books were sold are prohibited.”
Emily Drbinski, president of the American Library Association: “A ‘book ban’ is the removal of a book from a library because someone believes it is harmful or dangerous. A ‘challenge’ is when someone objects to a library item, program or service. ‘Review’ is the formal process that libraries must undertake to determine whether a book meets the library’s selection criteria. We reserve ‘book bans’ for… a book that meets that criteria when it has been completely removed from the collection. … You often find that those books, they get challenged and then they go through a review process and sometimes they get pulled and banned and other times they reappear on the shelves. I think sometimes our policymakers and many people who are active in the pro-censorship movement, they don’t fully appreciate or understand the fact that many Americans, a lot of them, don’t have access to books in any other way except through their library, through their school, or a public or academic library.”
Joe Grant, a self-described “concerned parent and grandparent living in Eldersburg, Maryland”: “I think [the term book ban is] is designed to provoke and disrupt constructive dialogue about age-appropriate content. It could be a dog whistle used to incite anger against those who oppose restrictions on pornography in public school libraries. … You can’t really ban anything, you know, physically today because you have the Internet and you have PDFs. And so the term book ban is almost obsolete.”
Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Islam is not extremist (banned in Malaysia in 2017): “When [a book] prohibited, it is not available, so selling it is not legal. That is the meaning of the book ban. … I was arrested at Kuala Lumpur International Airport… After 18 hours of being detained by the Malaysian religious police, I was released… The bookstore could not sell [Islam Without Extremes] in Malaysia. My book is not available… There may be some regime that even goes after people who own a copy of the book… I don’t think there is a literal ban on books in the US. When a book is banned, the authority literally says that the book is not legal. … Sometimes people use hyperbolic language to express their thoughts about a particular issue, and that can be a problem. And that divisive rhetoric then makes things worse. So you can’t reasonably agree on some reasonable common ground and people get more and more bitter and angry with each other. That in itself becomes a big problem for a democracy, not just people’s differing views on certain issues.”
Mona Kerby, Master’s Degree in School Library Coordinator from McDaniel College in Westminster, Maryland: “To me, ‘banned’ is a book that’s not on the shelf. But I can definitely see the different meanings of that word, and that’s why a discussion of ideas is always so enriching. …Sometimes when I have questions about the materials, those moments become great opportunities for parents and I to discuss. And we both learned. So, respecting each other’s opinions and listening to others’ opinions is not a bad skill to have.”
This story has been edited for radio and digital by Meghan Collins Sullivan.
