by Martha Payne, AWC Madrid
Censorship is as old as writing, and over the centuries, efforts to challenge access to ideas contained in books have been met by people and institutions prepared to defend intellectual freedom.
- The United Nations upholds intellectual freedom as a basic human right through Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- The American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom provides training, support for addressing challenges to materials, programming, policies, services, as well as public awareness about censorship and banned books.
- PEN America, a part of PEN International, works to ensure that people everywhere have the freedom to create literature, to convey information and ideas, to express their opinions, and to access the views, ideas, and literatures of others.
- In 1982, a plurality of the Supreme Court held that local school boards may not remove books from school libraries simply because they dislike the ideas contained in them, citing students' First Amendment rights, in the fractured decision Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico.
Nevertheless, US librarians contended with so many book challenges in the early 1980s they created Banned Books Week, an annual opportunity for the literary and library community to raise awareness about commonly challenged books and First Amendment freedoms.
The impact of censorship on communities
Since 2020, censorship in the US has shifted from local or community-wide challenges into a highly politicized culture war with serious consequences for all those involved: librarians, educators, authors, and the communities they serve. Many library workers are being threatened in person or on social media, and some have quit their jobs after being harassed for opposing book bans. A few have been fired after refusing to remove books. Stories such as those found in Amanda Jones’s That Librarian or Kim Snyder’s documentary film The Librarians detail the physical and mental toll on school and public librarians who speak out against censorship.
All parts of a community are adversely affected by these polarizing public battles. To address this, Unite Against Book Bans mobilizes 200 partner organizations and tens of thousands of individual supporters to connect and advocate in their communities for the right to read and to defeat attempts at every level of government to censor reading material. They provide easy-to-share Book Résumés detailing each title’s significance and educational value, for use by teachers, librarians, parents, and community members who choose to resist. They also provide a toolkit for community advocacy, legal assistance, and legislative support.
Diverse books create stronger readers: what the research shows
Research continues to show that access to diverse and representational books improves reading performance, enhances comprehension, expands global awareness, and fosters critical thinking. In 2023, First Book Research & Insights released the results of a national pilot study revealing the positive academic impacts of diverse books. Some of the key findings of this longitudinal study will come as no surprise to educators. After teachers added diverse books to their classroom libraries:
- Students’ reading scores increased, with the greatest gains by the lowest scoring students.
- Classrooms that added bilingual titles and titles representing the LGBTQ+ community had the greatest improvements in student reading scores and reading engagement.
- Collective student reading time increased by 4 hours per week on average.
- 70% of educators reported that their students more often choose books that feature characters that look like them (books that serve as mirrors).
The hidden costs of censorship
Book bans impact authors and publishers, too, with direct financial loss from book sales or library licensing and, less directly, by conscious or unconscious creative suppression. “Facts & Fiction,” a report written by Freedom to Read Program experts at PEN, examines the content of 3,743 unique titles banned during the 2024-2025 school year. In previous years, PEN America highlighted the effort to purge stories and books that discuss race and racism, LGBTQ+ people or characters, people or characters of color, and sex from our nation’s schools. In this most recent report, the researchers found a surge in the banning of nonfiction titles that are educational or informational books for young people—textbooks or reference texts on a wide range of subjects. Of the 1,102 nonfiction titles banned, 52% contained themes of activism and social movements, the most commonly banned topic within nonfiction titles. Students’ critical thinking abilities are enhanced by reading multiple viewpoints, an important tool when young people are exposed daily to dis- and misinformation through social media and AI.
One example of pushback against censorship occurred in 2023, when Lauren Groff, best-selling novelist and three-time National Book Award finalist, and her husband Clay Kallman decided the time had come to open an independent bookstore in Gainesville, Florida, where they could feature some of the nearly 9,000 books that had been removed from Florida’s school libraries in response to state legislation. The Lynx bookstore, with the motto “Watch us bite back,” prominently displays frequently challenged books and hosts a Banned Book Club.
How can we, as concerned individuals, resist censorship and book banning?
- Buy and read a banned book, recommend it to others in your network, then donate it to a school or library.
- Support organizations such as those listed above in the US or The Index on Censorship in the UK.
- Speak out in support of the freedom to read. In June 2026, US Senator Jim Banks introduced a nationwide censorship bill that uses broad concepts including “sexually oriented material” and “gender dysphoria” to threaten educational funding for books about health, science, and art. It also censors the stories of LGBTQIA+ people and prohibits references to transgender people. Reach out to your Senators to let them know you support the freedom to read, and share your opinion on S. 4925.
Photo courtesy of canva.com
Sources:
- United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Resolution 217 A (III)). United Nations.
- Island Trees Sch. Dist. v. Pico by Pico, 457 U.S. 853 (1982).
- Banned Books Week. About. Retrieved July 25, 2026.
- Jones, A. (2024). That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America.
- Snyder, K. A. (Director). (2025). The Librarians [Film]. Independent Lens; PBS.
- First Book Research & Insights. (2023). The impact of a diverse classroom library. First Book.
- Facts & Fiction: Stories Stripped Away By Book Bans (Pen America, May 2026)
- Alter, A. (2024, May 10). Book Bans Are Surging in Florida. So Lauren Groff Opened a Bookstore. The New York Times.
