I asked this rhetorical question in the title because it baffles me that anyone thinks book-banning is good. I hear “book banning”, and it makes me think of the Soviet Union or the Nazis or other authoritarian regimes. Who is eager to be counted in their august company?
PEN America keeps track of book bans nationwide and recently came out with a list of all the book bans in the US from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. They published this list using Sheet, a Google online spreadsheet app that works a lot like Excel. It is a fascinating though depressing document.
Texas has a prominent place on this list of shame. There were 801 book bans in Texas, out of over 2500 nationwide. As far as I can tell looking at this spreadsheet, all of the book bans are done by school districts. I didn’t see any county or municipal library systems listed, but it’s a lo-o-o-ong list—I may have overlooked some.
I’m not going to try to understand or psychoanalyze the book banners; let’s just say that they are degenerate fascists and leave it at that. Instead, I wanted to look at the book banned in Texas schools.
PEN characterizes the bans as library bans, classroom bans, or both. If you are in one of these school districts and want one of these books, I have links to my online bookstore so you can buy a copy.
Here are some of the titles (and the school districts that banned them):
47 by Walter Mosley. This book is banned from the classrooms in Keller Independent School District, just north of Fort Worth. As far as I can tell, it’s the only Walter Mosley book banned. So students: I heartily recommend Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books.
After by Amy Efaw must be double evil—it was banned by two Texas school districts, Granbury Independent School District (a little bit southwest of Fort Worth) and North East Independent School District, which is in San Antonio.
Afterworlds by Scott Westerfield is a science fiction novel. I have no idea what the objection to it may be. The same school districts that banned After also banned Afterworlds. Maybe they just don’t like books with “After” in the title.
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely was banned by three school districts: Granbury, North East, and Katy ISD. Katy is a suburb of Houston and I have family that currently attend their schools. These three districts seem to hate books, or else have lots of local Nazis there who like to challenge them.
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson. OK, not only is the author of this memoir gay, he’s also black! That’s two strikes against him, according to the seven school districts in Texas that banned it. It is banned in Katy and North East (of course) but not Granbury, weirdly enough. The other districts are Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District (another suburban Houston ISD), Denton Independent School District (north of Dallas and Fort Worth), Klein Independent School District, Lamar Consolidated Independent School District (Klein and Lamar ISDs are also in the suburbs of Houston), and Tyler Independent School District (in the town of Tyler in East Texas).
All the Things We Do in the Dark by Saundra Mitchell. Banned by two of our champion censors, Granbury and North East.
Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher. I think you can see from its Stonewall Book Award why our old pals in Granbury and North East banned this one.
An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz. This one got it in the neck from Klein and North East ISDs.
Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Anne Frank, Ari Folman, and David Polonsky. This is proof to me at least that the book banners of Katy, Texas, are straight up Nazis.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Banned in Klein and Granbury ISDs.
And I’m still in the A’s! I will have to split this post up. I know most of my readers are here in Texas so I want you all to know about the books your fellow Texans are banning. The anti-reading lobby is strong here. And they will continue to be strong, unless we vote out the Nazis (i.e., the Texas Republican Party), so make sure you are registered to vote. You can check your voting status here.
And you can buy copies of the books, supporting the authors and making them available to whomever wants to read them. (And any book you buy through my bookstore, I get a tiny cut from.)
As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.” That’s the future the book banners are working to bring to Texas.