Students at Vandegrift High School in Leander, Texas read Y, el último hombre, an acclaimed graphic novel by screenwriter Brian K. Vaughan and illustrator Pia Guerra. The plot revolves around a mysterious plague of unknown origin that puts an end to the lives of all beings with a Y chromosome. The only exceptions are the protagonist, Yorick Brown, a young New Yorker apprentice escapist, and his pet , a capuchin monkey named Ampersand. Vaughan's successful book series has received three Eisner Awards and was adapted into a television series for Disney's Hulu platform in 2021. But in the state of Texas, the book was banned and removed from school shelves. The only opportunity students have to read it is clandestinely, through the Banned Books Club. "Right now we have about 30 members", says Ella Scott, 17 years old, one of the founders of the club, to La Vanguardia. Two years ago, Ella and her friend Alyssa began to notice that there were many books disappearing from the school library shelves. "Some were classics, but mostly missing were many of the new publications that deal with issues such as gender identity, racial discrimination, political abuse or with characters from the LGTBIQ collective." Others were dystopias like Vaughan's or Alan Moore's V de vendetta.
The case of Vandegrift High School in Texas is not isolated. During the current school year, 1,557 books have been banned from public school classrooms and libraries in the United States.
"In the last two years, there has been an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression in public education," explains Sabrina Baeta, consultant for PEN America's Freedom to Read program, which protects writers' freedom of expression. "Students have begun to organize to counterattack." In its latest report, PEN America detected 5,894 censorship attempts that resulted in nearly 3,000 titles being pulled from public schools in more than 41 states. Heading the list are Género queer, an autobiography by Maia Kobabe about what it means to be non-binary and asexual, and Ojos azules, by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Toni Morrison (1931-2019). Morrison's novel tells the story of Pecola, an African-American teenager who lives in Ohio at the beginning of World War II and feels that the only solution to her problems is to have blue eyes, the stereotype of white beauty. Both Morrison and Kobabe, along with other authors, have been marked with the scarlet letter, meaning their publications are "dangerous" and schools should reconsider having them on their shelves.
Vandegrift High School's Banned Book Club has sparked controversy in the state of Texas, but the responses have been mostly positive, Ella Scott says. "Especially from the teachers and librarians from other districts, who offered us their support by leaving us books, as well as the students themselves." They are not the ones advocating for censorship. At Vandegrift, the bans began in the pandemic. "During board meetings, some parents would come up and say, 'My kids are reading this book and I think it's inappropriate.'" Which led the district to form reconsideration committees to decide whether to keep or remove the book. "It is unfair because the students have no voice or vote. Our club seeks to promote a more equitable process, so that we can at least make our voices heard."
Although the censorship of books in schools happens all over the country, it is more present in the republican states, the most conservative. Texas used to top the list with the highest number of bans, but in the last two years Florida has overtaken it, tripling the number of bans.
"Sixteen of my books have been banned? I must be doing something right," posted on X (formerly Twitter) the writer Stephen King when he learned that works such as It, Carrie or Las cuatro después de la midnightoche were among the 300 publications banned in the county's schools from Collier (Florida). The decision came after its governor and US presidential candidate Ron DeSantis signed a law requiring school libraries to solicit community input on the materials they make available of the students The list of banned books includes A Happy World by Aldous Huxley, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. DeSantis is known for promoting other controversial laws such as the Don't Say Gay Act, which prohibits teachers from addressing topics such as gender identity and sexual orientation, or the "public safety" law, which allows Florida residents to carry weapons in public places without the need for a permit.
In response to literary censorship in Florida, activist and poet Adam Tritt created the 451 Foundation, which buys banned books and distributes them in public places. In collaboration with PEN America and Books bookstores
Students in other states have started banned book clubs like Ella Scott's in Texas. In places where the book ban does not mean any crisis or serious problem, students organize themselves to send books to other young people who do suffer from the problem seriously. "They have contacted us, asking us what they can do to feel empowered, with the ability to make decisions about their education." "These books are important - explains Baeta - and have been selected by librarians as educational and entertainment materials to which they should have access".
Emily Drabinski, president of the American Library Association (ALA, for its acronym in English), explains to La Vanguardia that the most striking thing about this wave of literary censorship "is the organized political effort that supports it". Although, according to Drabinski, "it is normal that there are people concerned about the books that are part of a library's collection", behind these attempts at censorship "there are political organizations that endorse and promote this crisis by drawing up lists of books". Some are Moms for Liberty (Mares per la Llibertat), a conservative political organization that fights curricula that mention LGBTI rights and discrimination based on race, or MassResistance, an association against "attacks" on the traditional values of family, religion and society. In his opinion, none of these organizations should be behind the selection of books in libraries: "Librarians should be the ones who make the decisions about which books are in the collection," explains Drabinski. "We are professionals. We have university degrees. We have a professional association that convenes us periodically to discuss best practices for developing collections, which we build for the communities we serve. The responsibility must be ours."
Amid the wave of censorship in conservative strongholds, laws are being enacted in Democratic states like Illinois to protect the right to read. Governor J.B. Pritzker signed legislation that "forbids banning" books, making Illinois the first state in the country to oppose the censorship crusade in Republican states. "Here in Illinois, we don't hide from the truth, we embrace it," Pritzker said in a speech about the new legislation, which will take effect Jan. 1.
In New York, the city's public libraries temporarily offered several banned titles to the public for free, allowing anyone over the age of 13 to access them through the library's app without needing to be a resident New York state.
For Ella Scott, in Texas, it is extremely frustrating that education is affected by political ends or something as trivial as a campaign. "We don't really have a political affiliation as a club. We just want these books back on the shelves so we can learn from them."
"Go ahead, ban my book. To those trying to stop young people from reading The Handmaid's Tale, good luck. You'll only make them want to read it even more," Canadian author Margaret Atwood wrote in The Atlantic magazine in February. His novel is censored in multiple states and was declared "unacceptable" by the governor of the state of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, for containing sexually explicit material. "My book is much less sexually explicit than the Bible, and I doubt the school board has ordered it banned." Atwood's book talks about resistance, the fight against oppression, masculinity, racism, injustice and violence at all levels. It is a work that has gone around the world (adapted into a television series by HBO) and one of the most acclaimed novels of recent times. Due to the repeated attempts at censorship, as a protest, the author launched a special publication of The Handmaid's Tale at Penguin Random House in 2022. Made with a flame-retardant black dust jacket and heat-protected pages, this edition is resistant to a flamethrower. "We hope that some books will be impossible to burn, that they will go underground, as the banned books went in the USSR", he said.
Ella Scott discovered the pleasure of reading from a very young age. "My father is a librarian, so we've always had a lot of books at home." What he loves most about reading is the possibility of living other lives. “Whether it's for an hour or a week, or however long it takes, they introduce new perspectives and worlds that you wouldn't otherwise be able to explore. They make you think in ways you would never be able to get to in any other way. That's why I like reading so much; it has given me the opportunity to live several lives in one."
The Vandegrift Middle School Book Club managed to get two banned titles back on the library shelves: Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir by Nikki Grimes, and Kiss Number 8 by Colleen AF Venable. "I see the light at the end of the tunnel", says Sabrina Baeta. "The amount of support and people fighting for their right to read is encouraging." However, he says that getting the books back on the shelves will be "a long and difficult battle", which will require more time than it took to remove them.
