Most Challenged Books of 2020

It is National Library Week and that means the list of frequently challenged books from 2020 is released. The Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) of the American Library Association tracks all book challenges that libraries across the country report to OIF. While it is likely that only a minority of challenges are ever reported to the OIF, the list still provides us a snapshot of leading concerns with library collections. I didn’t know what to expect from the list this year given that the pandemic forced many libraries into closing for a time and then providing limited services. Yet there is always controversy over what the library holds. The 2020 list shows how library challenges are often wrapped up in broader political dynamics.

The only real surprise was the lack of queer-inclusive books on the list. The trend over the last few years has been for challenges to queer-inclusive books to dominate the list, as seen in 2019. This year, however, only has one title: George by Alex Gino. The story of a trans girl in fourth grade who is finding her place, George has been on the list for the past five years since it was published and it has been number 1 for three years running. Given the rise of transphobic activism from the Christian Right this is not surprising. Challengers targeting trans inclusive literature have long seen it as an evil plot to convert all the “normal” cisgender children. The fact that queer-inclusive titles have left the list is not a sign that such works are necessarily receiving fewer challenges but that other concerns have taken precedence for a time.

The 2020 list is representative of the white grievance politics that former President Trump exemplified and amplified. In attacking diversity training and “critical legal studies,” Trump and the Republican Party he leads push the narrative that any engagement with American racism is itself inherently racist. The true story, to them, of American greatness is how we overcame the evils of racism to create a world where racism is only the problem of a few misguided individuals. It is especially important, they stress, to recognize that there is no such thing as structural racism in society. So Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give and Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely’s All American Boys have returned to the list. The Hate U Give is particularly popular in high school English classes and optional reading lists but both books have long been attacked for the supposed “anti-police” views they present. Something Happened in Our Town, one of only two newcomers to this list, drew the ire of Minnesota’s police union’s executive director because “[l]anguage in this book leaves the impression unchecked that police officers routinely pull over, arrest, and kill [B]lack people without consequence.” Depiction of police violence against Black people thus presents, to police, a false narrative. Stamped by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds is the other new arrival to the lit and appears to be based on the same concerns that to white conservatives it presents a “selective” vision of racism. Also the author’s (I assume Kendi’s) politics are noted as one reason to remove.

Two classics have reappeared on the list that are typically presented as stories of leftwing knee jerk reactions. I still have never tracked down a challenge to Of Mice and Men but I have a couple for Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. To the best of my knowledge, this is nearly always challenged in English curriculum rather than library collections. The knee jerk reaction, and I have one example, will argue for its removal solely based upon the use of the N word repeatedly. Most challengers simply point to isolated passages or words to justify their challenge and this is no more convincing. The more interesting challenges to Mockingbird, to my mind at least, are those who critique its privileged place in the curriculum. The other challenge I have makes this literary case, in addition to concerns about the N word, against Mockingbird arguing that it is a white savior story that presents Black people as essentially without agency in battling racism. This critique is far more interesting than most challengers and sadly I don’t have the body of evidence to dig into it Some schools have reported dropped it in favor of other stories. One of the more interesting ideas that I saw from a teacher on Twitter was to combine Mockingbird and The Hate U Give to explore themes around agency and state/societal racism and oppression.

The OIF’s word cloud offers intriguing details. Having researched book challenges for a while certain books immediately come to mind for certain words. LGBTQ still takes a prominent position and I love that “glorifying gay marriage” still pops in here even if relegated to the edge. We can see the white grievance politics play out pretty heavily here. Black Lives Matter pops large; last year I wrote about a twitter thread complaining about a school’s reading list where the parent seems to have accused any book about a Black character of being BLM inspired or “critical race theory.” This then wraps into the idea of “anti-police” because to the practitioners of white grievance politics, the police are the apolitical, non-racist protectors of (white) America and thus depicting them acting badly is dangerous. Such ideas represent a political viewpoint that is divisive and pubic institutions such as libraries must present only the apolitical and non-divisive information that religious and political conservatives consider to be acceptable.

None of this is surprising. As educational institutions, libraries and schools are naturally part of the debates over who we are as Americans. The difficulty is in resisting these attacks especially where they come from the halls of government. The defeat of Trump removed that lever but a number of state legislatures are considering laws that in effect outlaw the teaching of diversity, equity, or other “divisive” concepts. These are nonsensical in the strictest sense but interpreted as white conservatives do what they mean is that we must teach students that America is a land of justice where a few regrettable instances of bad actors, you know like brutally enslaving tens of millions of people over hundreds of years, have been corrected today to form a perfect union. We can only hope these kinds of bizarre ideological lies are defeated and never implemented and resisted where they pass.