In the 2023-2024 school year alone, more than 10,000 book bans affecting thousands of unique titles were proposed throughout the country by individuals or groups like Moms For Liberty. Many of the targeted books are repeatedly challenged or banned, like “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky or “Looking for Alaska” by John Green. And it’s not just new or recent releases that are targeted; sometimes the challenges and bans are calling out books that have been around for generations, like “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee or “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison.

But authors aren’t sitting by watching challenges and bans pile up; many are speaking out against these bans, including some of the most banned authors in the country.

New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult, who’s written nearly 30 books, currently holds the title of having written the most banned book in American classrooms for the 2023-2024 school year with her 2007 novel, “Nineteen Minutes.” The book centers around a school shooting and its aftermath from multiple perspectives. The novel also includes a date-rape scene, which includes the word “erection,” that occurs more than 300 pages into the story.

“They started targeting — they meaning Moms for Liberty — what they called mature content or anything that they deemed sexually inappropriate. And that was where ‘Nineteen Minutes’ fell into the mix,” Picoult said. “They were not banning it because it is about gun violence; they don’t really care about that. They were banning it because of page 313.”

Picoult says book-banners often cherry-pick passages as evidence to support their cause, which she says undermines what she and other authors are doing when they write full-length narratives.

“You are negating the context of why we included that in the text and also the overall message and every other bit of that book that is meant to make a reader feel or learn or understand,” Picoult said.

But for some authors, it’s not just their words that are called into question. Author and cartoonist Maia Kobabe’s award-winning graphic novel, “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” has topped the banned-books list for years because of both the content and pictures featured in the book, which details eir personal exploration of gender and sexual identity (Kobabe uses gender-neutral Spivak pronouns: e, em and eir.)

Eir work has been called obscene by book-banners due to the frankness exhibited throughout the memoir. But Kobabe says the level of honesty and transparency in “Gender Queer” was essential to the book.

“I wanted to write this book so that the people who I know and who love me can understand where I’m coming from and that we can have a relationship based on authenticity and truth,” Kobabe said. “Writers are so careful and thoughtful; we spend months and sometimes years considering a passage or word or a phrase or, in my case, one image. And pictures have power and I know that, which is part of why I use them.”

And some books that are in the cross-hairs of challenges and bans are decades old. Celebrated Chicana author Sandra Cisneros says she’s been facing pushback against her 1984 novel, “The House on Mango Street,” since the 1990s, despite the fact the book is taught in schools and universities and considered a contemporary classic. “The House on Mango Street” is so beloved that several stage adaptations have been performed, including a recent opera adaptation.

Cisneros said she’s willing to speak with those who deem her book as inappropriate because she wants to understand more about their reasoning.

“I want to know how something I wrote with so much love — on behalf of my students who I love — how this could be offensive,” Cisneros said. “It was written to help, and to help heal them.”

That healing echoes a sentiment she learned from fellow poet and friend Joy Harjo: that books are medicine.

“I think libraries are like drugstores, pharmacies, and you are drawn to books that help serve whatever ails you — it’s going to nourish you at a certain time when you need that story,” Cisneros said. “But if it’s not your prescription, that doesn’t mean you burn the pharmacy down.”

This episode is part of Unbound Pages, a year-long series exploring the anti-book-banning movement in America. To hear all the stories, visit GBHNews.org/UnboundPages.

Guests

  • Jodi Picoult, New York Times best-selling author, whose work includes the banned book, “Nineteen Minutes”
  • Maia Kobabe, award-winning author and cartoonist of the banned graphic novel,  “Gender Queer: A Memoir”
  • Sandra Cisneros, celebrated Chicana poet and author, whose work includes the banned book, “The House on Mango Street”