More than half of books banned during the last school year featured or were about people of color or members of the LGBTQ community, according to a report released Thursday.
PEN America, a nonprofit group that advocates for free expression in literature, released data in the fall that found more than 10,000 instances of schools or their districts removing books from school, classrooms or curriculums last year, affecting 4,218 titles. The analysis released Thursday found that those bans disproportionately affect books about certain identities, including people of color, and also more often apply to certain genres, such as history.
The analysis found that 36% of the more than 4,000 banned titles featured characters or people of color and 25% included LGBTQ characters or people. Of the titles featuring LGBTQ people, 28% featured a transgender and/or genderqueer character. One in 10 of the banned titles featured characters or people with a physical and/or learning or developmental disability, the analysis found.
“This targeted censorship amounts to a harmful assault on historically marginalized and underrepresented populations — a dangerous effort to erase their stories, achievements, and history from schools,” Sabrina Baêta, senior manager for PEN America’s Freedom to Read program, said in a statement. “When we strip library shelves of books about particular groups, we defeat the purpose of a library collection that is supposed to reflect the lives of all people. The damaging consequences to young people are real.”
Book challenges and bans — which are often spearheaded by parents and conservative activists — have skyrocketed in recent years, according to the American Library Association, which found that in 2024 the number of books challenged in libraries across the U.S. reached the highest level ever documented by the nonprofit. During the 2021 school year, PEN America found that more than 1,600 books were banned in schools, compared to the 4,218 removed from shelves last year.
For the first time, PEN America tracked the genres that were banned in schools. The top banned genres last year were realistic fiction, dystopia/sci-fi/fantasy, history and biography, mystery and thriller, educational and memoir and autobiography. Picture books and books with graphic or illustrated content made up nearly one-fifth, or 17%, of all banned books.