Contesting Obscenity: Book Challengers and Criminalizing Literature
Abstract
Book challenges have long been a regular part of library and school operations. “Book challenges are requests by members of the public to remove, relocate, or restrict books from or within institutions” (Knox 2015, 3). At base, the book challenger sees some information contained in a book as dangerous and seeks to make it harder to access. In recent years book challenges have exploded in frequency, escalating rapidly in 2021. This was driven increasingly by national conservative activist groups attempting to purge what they perceived as dangerous information from the public sphere.
References
American Library Association and Association of American Publishers. 1953/2004. “The Freedom to Read Statement.” https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/freedomreadstatement.
American Library Association. 2022. “Top 10 Most Challenged Books List.” https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10.
Bechdel, Alison. 2006. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Mariner Books.
Birmingham, Kevin. 2015. The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Penguin.
Boyer, Paul S. 2002. Purity in Print, 2nd Ed. University of Wisconsin Press.
Cain, James M. 1937. Serenade. Vintage.
Caldwell, Erskine. 1933. God’s Little Acre. University of Georgia Press.
Chbosky, Stephen. 1999. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. MTV/Pocket Books.
Crum, Brooke. 2022. “North East ISD Removes More than 100 Books after Review of Lawmaker’s List.” San Antonio Report, 15 March. https://sanantonioreport.org/north-east-isd-removes-more-than-100-books-review-krause-list/.
Cruz, Kathy. 2022. “GISD to Review Books for Possible Removal from Schools.” Hood County News, January 22. https://www.hcnews.com/news/gisd-to-review-books-for-possible-removal-from-schools/article_f176f014-7886-11ec-b821-afc0d47071d4.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist.
Dawson, Juno. 2014. This Book is Gay. Hot Key Books.
Dowland, Seth. 2015. Family Values and the Rise of the Christian Right. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Ellis, Danika. 2021. “All 850 Books Texas Lawmaker Matt Krause Wants to Ban: An Qnalysis.” Bookriot, November 5. https://bookriot.com/texas-book-ban-list/.
Evison, Jonathan. 2018. Lawn Boy. Algonquin Books.
Gaffney, Loretta M. 2014. “No Longer Safe: West Bend, Young Adult Literature, and Conservative Library Activism.” Library Trends 62(4): 730–39.
Green, John. 2006. Looking for Alaska. Speak.
Hartman, Andrew. 2015. A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. University of Chicago Press.
Herman, Didi. 1996. The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right. University of Chicago Press.
Higgins, Chris and Sarah Kay LeBlanc. 2021. “Iowa Senator Calls for Felony Penalty for Distribution of ‘Obscene’ Materials in Schools.” Des Moines Register, November 19. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/education/2021/11/20/book-ban-debate-iowa-senator-calls-for-felony-penalty-obscene-materials-schools/8667630002/.
Johnson, George M. 2020. All Boys Aren’t Blue. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Jones, Chris. 2021. “Activist Group Trains Parents on How to Get Books Removed.” KUTV, November 18. https://kutv.com/news/beyond-the-books/activist-group-trains-parents-on-how-to-get-books-banned.
Judin, Nick. 2022. “Ridgeland Mayor Demands LGBTQ+ Book Purge, Threatens Library Funding.” Mississippi Free Press, 25 January. https://www.mississippifreepress.org/20068/ridgeland-mayor-demands-lgbtq-book-purge-threatens-library-funding/.
Kenton, Maxwell. 1958. Candy. G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
Knox, Emily. 2013. “The Challengers of West Bend.” In Libraries and the Reading Public in Twentieth-Century America, 200–214. University of Wisconsin Press.
Knox, Emily. 2014. “’The Books Will Still Be in the Library’: Narrow Definitions of Censorship in the Discourse of Challengers.” Library Trends 62(4): 740–49.
Knox, Emily J. M. 2015. Book Banning in 21st-Century America. Rowman & Littlefield.
Knox, Emily J. M. 2017. “Indoctrination and Common Sense Interpretation of Texts.” Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy 2(2): 11-22.
Kobabi, Maia. 2019. Gender Queer. Oni Press.
Kois, Dan. 2022. “The Obscenity Pivot.” Slate, August 10. https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/book-banning-republicans-gender-queer-obscenity-supreme-court.html.
Krinjak, John. 2021. “Round Rock, Leander ISDs to Not Receive Federal Funds over ‘Inappropriate’ Books.” Fox7 Austin, December 14. https://www.fox7austin.com/news/round-rock-leander-isds-to-not-receive-federal-funds-over-inappropriate-books.
Miller, Henry. 1961[1934]. Tropic of Cancer. Grove Press.
Moynihan, Don. 2021. “Making Public Jobs Impossible: How the Culture Wars Came to Your Local School.” https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/making-public-jobs-impossible.
National Council of Teachers of English. 1981/2018. “The Students’ Right to Read Statement.” https://ncte.org/statement/righttoreadguideline/.
PEN America. 2021. “Educational Gag Orders.” https://pen.org/report/educational-gag-orders/.
Powe, Lucas A. 2000. The Warren Court and American Politics. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Price, Richard S. 2021a. “Navigating a Doctrinal Grey Area: Free Speech, the Right to Read, and Schools.” First Amendment Studies 55(2): 79–101.
Price, Richard S. 2021b. “Banning the Breakaways.” Adventures In Censorship (blog), October 22. https://adventuresincensorship.com/blog/2021/10/22/banning-the-breakaways.
Rosky, Clifford. 2017. “Anti-Gay Curriculum Laws.” Columbia Law Review 117: 1461–1542.
Rowell, Rainbow. 2013. Eleanor & Park. St. Martin’s Press.
School Library Journal Research. 2016. “Controversial Books Survey.” School Library Journal. https://s3.amazonaws.com/WebVault/SLJ/SLJ_ControversialBooksSurveyReport_2016.pdf.
Smith, Lillian E. 1944. Strang Fruit. Mariner Books.
Stone, Geoffrey R. 2017. Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from Amrica’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century. Liveright.
Stone, Tanya Lee. 2015. A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl. Wendy Lamb Books.
Strub, Whitney. 2010. Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right. Columbia University Press.
Telgemeier, Raina. 2012. Drama. Graphix.
Walker, Alice. 1982. The Color Purple. Penguin Books.
Werbel, Amy. 2018. Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock. Columbia University Press.
Wheeler, Leigh Ann. 2013. How Sex Became a Civil Liberty. Oxford University Press.
Wiggins, Christopher. 2022. “GOP Prosecutor Denies Wanting to Go After Librarians Over LGBTQ+ Books.” Advocate, August 11. https://www.advocate.com/politics/2022/8/11/gop-prosecutor-denies-wanting-go-after-librarians-over-lgbtq-books.
Winsor, Kathleen. 1944. Forever Amber. Penguin Books.
Zimmerman, Johnathan. 2002. Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools. Harvard University Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5860/jifp.v7i4.7747
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
© 2024 OIF