LibGuides: Virtual Displays: Resources about Book Censorship

The American Library Association (ALA) is the oldest and largest library association in the world, and each year the organization compiles data regarding book challenges from reports filed by library professionals in the field and from news stories published throughout the United States. Because many book challenges are not reported to the ALA or covered by the press, the 2022 data compiled by ALA represents a snapshot of book censorship throughout 2022. A challenge to a book may be resolved in favor of retaining the book in the collection, or it can result in a book being restricted or withdrawn from the library.

ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than 20 years ago. The unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022 nearly doubles the 729 book challenges reported in 2021. Censors targeted a record 2,571 unique titles in 2022, a 38% increase from the 1,858 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2021. Of those titles, the vast majority were written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community or by and about Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color. (ALA Censorship by the Numbers)

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner) by Sherman Alexie
Call Number: 813.6 A384
ISBN: 9780316013680
Publication Date: 2007-09-12
Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.
Awakening by Kate Chopin
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781722524470
Publication Date: 1899
First published in 1899, this compelling novel shocked readers with its honest treatment of female marital infidelity. Audiences accustomed to the pieties of late Victorian romantic fiction were taken aback by Chopin's daring portrayal of twenty-eight-year-old protagonist Edna Pontellier and her struggle to negotiate love and motherhood. She is a woman trapped in a stifling marriage who seeks and finds passionate physical love outside the straitened confines of her domestic situation This sensuous book tells of the woman's abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threatened to consume her. The novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Aside from its unusually frank treatment of a then-controversial subject, the novel is widely admired today for its literary qualities. It is hailed as a work that is beautifully written, and uninhibited in its treatment of infidelity. Few novels have plumbed the psychology of a woman in search of self-discovery who turns away from conventions and becomes involved in an illicit relationship with the perception, artistry, and honesty that Kate Chopin brought to The Awakening.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Call Number: 813.54 M882bl
ISBN: 9780452282193
Publication Date: 2000-04-26
From Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison comes the story of a young black girl who longs to be like the blond, blue-eyed children that America loves-a novel "so charged with pain and wonder that it becomes poetry" (The New York Times).
Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
Call Number: 811.6 G671c
ISBN: 9780593465066
Publication Date: 2021-12-07
The luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, her poems shine a light on a moment of reckoning and reveal that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Call Number: 362.82092 W159
ISBN: 9780743247542
The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Call Number: 813.54 A887
ISBN: 9781328879943
Publication Date: 1986
The Handmaid's Tale is not only a radical and brilliant departure for Margaret Atwood, it is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States, now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its world, with bizarre consequences for the women and men of its population. The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment's calm façade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions. The Handmaid's Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best
The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman; Oprah Winfrey (Foreword by)
Call Number: 811.6 G671
ISBN: 9780593465271
Publication Date: 2021-03-30
The instant #1 New York Times bestseller and #1 USA Today bestseller Amanda Gorman's electrifying and historic poem "The Hill We Climb," read at President Joe Biden's inauguration, is now available as a collectible gift edition. On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe with her call for unity and healing. Her poem "The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country" can now be cherished in this special gift edition, perfect for any reader looking for some inspiration. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this remarkable keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.
The Hunger Games (Hunger Games, Book One) by Suzanne Collins
Call Number: 813.6 C712
ISBN: 9780439023481
Publication Date: 2008-10-01
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun... In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Call Number: 813.6 H829
ISBN: 9781594480003
Publication Date: 2004-04-27
The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son of his father's servant, The Kite Runner is a beautifully crafted novel set in a country that is in the process of being destroyed. It is about the power of reading, the price of betrayal, and the possibility of redemption; and an exploration of the power of fathers over sons: their love, their sacrifices, their lies. A sweeping story of family, love, and friendship told against the devastating backdrop of the history of Afghanistan over the last thirty years, The Kite Runner is an unusual and powerful novel that has become a beloved, one-of-a-kind classic.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781613123065
Publication Date: 2012-03-15
The New York Times bestselling novel that inspired the hit film! This is the funniest book you'll ever read about death. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. But on the first day of his senior year, Greg Gaines thinks he's figured it out. The answer to the basic existential question: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? His strategy: remain at the periphery at all times. Keep an insanely low profile. Make mediocre films with the one person who is even sort of his friend, Earl. This plan works for exactly eight hours. Then Greg's mom forces him to become friends with a girl who has cancer. This brings about the destruction of Greg's entire life. Fiercely funny, honest, heart-breaking--this is an unforgettable novel from a bright talent, now also a film that critics are calling "a touchstone for its generation" and "an instant classic."
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Call Number: 813.52 S821of and ebook
ISBN: 9780606002004
Publication Date: 1992-01-01
In Depression-era California, two migrant workers dream of better days on a spread of their own until an act of unintentional violence leads to tragic consequences.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Call Number: 813.54 L478
ISBN: 9781455538966
The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books: 2010-2019

These and many more can be found currently on display at the Fr. Leonard Alvey Library!

Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)

Why search here?
Designed for academic institutions, this database is a leading resource for scholarly research. It supports high-level research in the key areas of academic study by providing journals, periodicals, reports, books and more on a variety of subject areas.
Academic Search Complete includes up to date magazine, trade, and journal publications related to this topic. With its wide coverage, this database can assist scholars in making connections across the curriculum.

JSTOR

Why search here?
The database includes core journals in economics, history, political science, and sociology, as well as in other key fields in the humanities, social sciences, ecology biology, ecology, mathematics, and statistics.
JSTOR provides access to over 25,000 results on the topic. These results range from primary source coverage on book bans in the 1960s and 1980s to present day which can help give scholars an overview of how such efforts have evolved over time.

Newspaper Source (EBSCO)

Why search here?
Newspaper Source provides cover-to-cover full text for hundreds of national (U.S.), international and regional newspapers. In addition, it offers television and radio news transcripts from major networks.
This database has news coverage about book banning ranging from 1985 to present day from countries around the world.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context

Why search here?
Gale's Opposing Viewpoints In Context is the premier online resource covering today's hottest social issues, from capital punishment to immigration to marijuana. This cross-curricular research database supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts classes.
This database has a specific topic page dedicated to Book Banning that puts various viewpoints and resources from many different formats into conversation with each other so that readers can shape their own opinions regarding the topic.

The American Library Association

The American Library Association (ALA) is the primary professional library organization in the United States. The group is headquartered in Chicago, IL and it's mission is to "provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance and ensure access to information for all." (via the ALA Strategic Directions)

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)

The largest division of the ALA that is specifically geared towards academic libraries and library workers. The ACRL " develops programs, products, and services to help those working in academic and research libraries learn, innovate, and lead within the academic community." (About). The Fr. Leonard Alvey Library at Brescia University is part of the ACRL.

Banned Book Week 2023: Let Freedom Read

Each year the ALA releases a report about censorship efforts across the country as well as a list of most challenged books of the year. This year's Banned Book Week (10/1-10/7) theme is "Let Freedom Read". Visit this site to see the full report and lists of the most challenged books over the years. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see the 100 most challenged books from each decade: 1990-1999, 2000-2009, and 2010-2019!

Freedom to Read Foundation

The Freedom to Read Foundation (FTRF) is a non-profit legal and educational organization affiliated with the American Library Association. FTRF protects and defends the First Amendment to the Constitution and supports the right of libraries to collect - and individuals to access - information. (About)

Office for Intellectual Freedom

Established December 1, 1967, the Office for Intellectual Freedom is charged with implementing ALA policies concerning the concept of intellectual freedom as embodied in the Library Bill of Rights, the Association’s basic policy on free access to libraries and library materials. The goal of the office is to educate librarians and the general public about the nature and importance of intellectual freedom in libraries.

PEN America

"PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

Over the past 100 years, PEN America has advocated for free expression, defended writers and artists at risk around the globe, and fought censorship in the United States and abroad. Our cause has been made all the more urgent by the current wave of book bans and censorship in schools."

Unite Against Book Bans

United Against Book Bans is a national campaign to protect the rights of everyone to access information. Leveraging the reach of a national coalition, we connect, support, and mobilize people to fight book bans in their communities and states.

In order to raise awareness about efforts to ban or censor books, we'd like for you to share with us about your favorite banned books. You can share with us the title of the book(s), why you liked it/think others should read it, and/or your favorite quote from the book(s). Please fill out this form if you are a current Brescia student, faculty, or staff member to do so: https://forms.office.com/r/rwvF23DBSp

We will be sharing responses to this here on this page and in the library so be sure to check back in later!