There have been more than 4,000 book bans in U.S. public schools this year, a dramatic increase over the previous school year, PEN America announced.
The literary nonprofit issued a report, Banned in the USA: Narrating the Crisis, which found that the number of book bans in schools in the first half of this school year has already eclipsed the number of bans in the entire previous school year.
The book bans are not just confined to a handful of areas. PEN said that it tracked bans in 42 states and that they are happening in both conservative and progressive districts. Many of the targeted books discuss “women, sexual violence, and rape,” as well as “race and racism, LGBTQ+ and especially transgender identities.”
Florida dominates the nation in the volume of school book bans; the state was responsible for 3,135 of the bans so far. It is distantly followed by Wisconsin, which recorded 481 bans, 444 of which came from one parent’s challenge in one school district.
Sabrina Baêta, PEN’s Freedom to Read program manager, said in a statement, “Book bans are targeting narratives about race and sexual identities and sexual content writ large, and they show no sign of stopping. The bans we’re seeing are broad, harsh, and pernicious—and they’re undermining the education of millions of students across the country.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
