The 10 Most Banned Books in America

In this beautifully illustrated memoir, Kobabe (who uses e/em/eir pronouns) charts eir journey of self-discovery from adolescence to adulthood. Along the way, Kobabe navigates confusing questions about sexuality and gender identity, then ultimately comes out as gender nonbinary. E faces familiar teenage problems, like the agony of crushes and dating, along with confusing challenges like menstruating as a nonbinary individual. In 2021, Gender Queer was the most challenged book in the country, with objectors describing its candid discussion of gender fluidity as downright “pornographic.” In an op-ed at The Washington Post, Kobabe movingly defended the vitality of books like Gender Queer, writing, “Queer youth are often forced to look outside their own homes, and outside the education system, to find information on who they are. Removing or restricting queer books in libraries and schools is like cutting a lifeline for queer youth, who might not yet even know what terms to ask Google to find out more about their own identities, bodies and health.”

Johnson’s effervescent, unapologetic “memoir-manifesto” chronicles the joys and challenges of growing up Black and queer. Johnson lays bare the darkest moments of their young life, from the bullying they suffered to their molestation by a family member, while also remembering moments of arresting beauty, from flea-marketing with their grandmother to experiencing young love. All Boys Aren’t Blue has been targeted for LGBTQ content, profanity, and, once again, “sexually explicit” material; in Florida, a school-board member filed a criminal report, arguing that the book’s inclusion in school libraries violated obscenity laws. “Books with heavy topics are not going to harm children,” Johnson told Time. “Children still have to exist in a world full of these heavy topics, and are going to be affected by them whether they read the book or not. Having [this] book, though, gives them the tools, the language, the resources and the education so that when they are having to deal with a heavy topic, they have a roadmap for how to handle it.”

Dawson’s warm and wise “instruction manual” for growing up LGBTQ covers a vast range of topics, from coming out to flirting to the ins and outs of gay sex. Candid and uncensored, it’s an edifying, informative work packed with voices from across the gender and sexual spectrums. Bans and challenges to the book cite its “sexually explicit” material, as well as its efforts to provide sexual education (which is exactly the point). “Who else does removing these books from libraries hurt except LGBTQ teenagers?” Dawson asked in an op-ed. “Taking This Book Is Gay out of a school isn’t going to stop young people figuring out their identity, but it will leave them without a valuable resource.”

Published twenty-five years ago, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a seminal classic of young-adult literature. In a series of letters to an unknown friend, an introverted teenager confesses the highs of his freshman year—first kiss, first girlfriend, first experience behind the wheel—along with the traumatic lows, like the suicide of his best friend and the death of his aunt. Perks has been widely banned for decades, with challengers citing its “sexually explicit” content, as well as rape, drugs, and profanity. But where it remains on shelves, the book has saved lives. In 2013, Chbosky told the National Coalition Against Censorship that he’s received thousands of appreciative letters from young readers around the globe, some of whom credit his novel with inspiring them to decide against suicide. “Every time this happens, I just think about that one kid in the community who could really use the book,” Chbosky said.

In this autofictional graphic novel, Curato introduces Aiden Navarro, a Filipino teen who’s long been bullied about his weight and his race, as well as targeted for “being gay.” Aiden is certain he isn’t gay, but during the summer between middle school and high school, everything changes. At scouting camp, Aiden is in his element—but there are new bullies there, and meanwhile, he can’t stop thinking about his friend Elias. Flamer is a moving story of self-discovery and self-acceptance, but bans have targeted the book for “LGBTQ content” and “sexually explicit” material. “What was shocking to me is that people care more about banning the book than trying to protect children’s physical lives in this day and age of mass shootings,” Curato told PEN America.

Morrison’s visionary first novel is the painful and poignant story of Pecola Breedlove, an abused and unloved Black girl, pregnant by her own father, who suffers relentless oppression and cruelty in her rural Ohio town. Pecola wishes desperately for blue eyes, convinced that conventional white beauty is the ticket to a better life, but she soon finds her mind colonized to the brink of madness. In 1970, The Bluest Eye put Morrison on the map as a once-in-a-century writer of preternatural gifts; in the decades since, it has remained a mainstay on banned-books lists, with states citing “offensive language” and “sexually explicit material” as justification for excluding it from academic curricula. But The Bluest Eye is a groundbreaking text with an important place in the American canon. Saturated with sorrow and charged with wonder, it remains an indelible study of trauma, shame, and internalized racism.

Told in verse, Tricks traces five teenagers struggling through turbulent adolescences, facing problems like sexual violence, drug abuse, and conversion therapy. Their stories converge in Las Vegas, where each character is drawn into the underworld of selling sex. Parents have condemned the novel as “sexually explicit”; they’ve also cited drugs, rape, and LGBTQ content in their efforts to ban the book. “It’s unthinkable that a handful of people have been allowed to remove any books from library shelves, to decide for everyone else what is or isn’t appropriate reading material,” Hopkins wrote in a blog post for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of South Carolina, where she holds the distinction of being the state’s most frequently banned author. “As for protecting our kids, I often say ignorance is no armor. Knowledge is their absolute best weapon, and books are among the safest spaces to gather information.”

Awkward teenager Greg Gaines plans to make it through high school by keeping a low profile and making mediocre movies with his best friend, Earl, but everything changes when his mother forces him to befriend Rachel, a classmate with leukemia. As Greg makes a movie about Rachel’s life and traces her deteriorating health, he’s forced to reconsider the wisdom of living on the sidelines. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a gutting, unflinching novel: Rachel doesn’t get better, and Greg doesn’t fall for her. Parents slammed the novel as “pornographic” and degrading to women, but teens fell hard for it—so much so that it was adapted into a feature film. “Anyone calling it pornographic has no idea what that word means,” Andrews tweeted. “I guarantee you, no one has ever been, or will ever be, sexually aroused by this book. It’s berserk to me that I even have to say that.”

Let’s Talk About It is an illustrated guide to sex designed for teens, featuring comprehensive information about essential topics like orgasms, masturbation, and birth control. But it’s also so much more. Moen and Nolan expand their purview from the body to the soul, offering wisdom about rejection, jealousy, body image, and other matters of the heart. The book has been challenged for “sexually explicit” material and LGBTQ content, but the authors insist that even if teens are forbidden to read Let’s Talk About It, they’ll find that same material elsewhere. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Moen said, “Teens are on the Internet and they’re coming into contact with all of this and way more. Our philosophy is you can either give them a book that’s been reviewed and approved by multiple professionals in the sex education and health fields, or you can give them a phone and let them figure it out for themselves on PornHub.”

Sold is the National Book Award–nominated story of Lakshmi, a thirteen-year-old girl who leaves her rural Nepalese village to work as a maid in India, only to discover that she’s been trafficked into sexual slavery. McCormick interviewed real women in India and Nepal to craft this poignant fiction, but it’s nonetheless been widely banned due to rape and “sexually explicit” material. In an op-ed in The New York Times, McCormick wrote, “That’s what is consistently missing in the national conversation about book banning: the voices of those children and teenagers who see their experiences in print and finally realize they aren’t alone. And the ones who, fortunately, are not suffering such trauma, but who now have a window into the lives of their peers who do. We talk at them. And we talk about them. We try to control what they can read, think, and do. What we don’t do is listen to them.”