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For Banned Books Week 2022 PEN America staged events across the country and released a shocking update to our Banned in the USA report, providing the first comprehensive look at the landscape of book restrictions and challenges in the 2021-2022 school year. The report details more than 2,500 bans, affecting 1,648 titles and nearly 4 million students in 32 states.

Behind each number is a story. The readers who will not see themselves in books. The authors no longer invited to speak in schools. The librarians called “groomers” or “pedophiles” in their communities. The teen who said reading a banned book “made me decide to stay alive one more day, to try one more time.” Others who won’t get that chance.

Banned Books Week is over, but PEN America’s work has just begun. We will track bans and educational gag orders that are sweeping state legislatures. We will provide resources for authors, parents, students, and librarians. But we can't do it without you.

Read on for reflections from authors and readers, as well as tips for what you can do to help #FreeTheBooks. 

ON BANNING: AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

Ashley Hope Pérez says “It needs to be shocking every time”
Ashley Hope Pérez, Out of Darkness
“When we take away the books that hold space for those difficult conversations, we’re really taking away the resources young people need to navigate realities that they still have to confront, whether or not that book is there.”
READ MORE ››

Varian Johnson asks if bans “are meant to keep a certain segment of the population down”
Varian Johnson, The Parker Inheritance
“Any time a book that features someone who looks like you is banned, it says that you’re not worthy. You don’t deserve to exist. Right? Your life is not important. That’s wrong and it’s dangerous.” 
READ MORE ››

Kyle Lukoff asks supporters to “act as though this is of desperate importance, because it is”
Kyle Lukoff, Call Me Max
“People like me have always existed and will continue to exist, regardless of the books that we have access to. So the question is whether we are going to exist in a world where our lives can be lived openly and with pride and joy, or lived in the furtive shadows of the underworld where we have often been relegated.” 
READ MORE ››

Kalynn Bayron calls challenges to books like hers “clearly homophobic”
Kalynn Bayron, Cinderella Is Dead
“This story might show someone that they’re not alone. And isn’t that what we want? Don’t we want our young readers to feel that they are not alone, that they are seen, that they are worthy of love and respect no matter who they are or where they come from, or who they love, or what they look like?” 
READ MORE ››

A READER REFLECTS

The Danger of a Single Untold Story
“When the sudden uptick of book banning began during the pandemic, it became clear to me that a few of my favorite authors’ works would see the guillotine. So I wasn’t entirely surprised when Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun was challenged and banned from a classroom in Michigan.”

Read editor, writer, and book critic Keishel Williams's reflection on the banning of Half of a Yellow Sun ››

TAKE ACTION: #FREETHEBOOKS

PEN AMERICA IN THE NEWS
New York Times: At Pen America, a Complicated Centennial for Free Speech
Literary luminaries gathered in Manhattan to celebrate the organization at a moment when many see support for free speech eroding across the political spectrum.

LA Times: School book bans surged this year, per PEN America report
The PEN America report, released Monday, documents more than 2500 book bans across 32 states during the 2021-2022 school year. 

NPR: New report finds a coordinated rise in attempted book bans
Throughout the 2021-22 school year, more than 1,600 book titles were banned, according to a new report by the group PEN America, which advocates for freedom of expression.

CNN: At least 50 groups coordinated to ban books in the last year
At least 50 groups have recently played a role in the evolving movement to have books removed from schools, a new PEN America analysis shows.

#VelshiBannedBookClub and PEN America go deep on Banned Books Week 
PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel joined MSNBC's Ali Velshi for a meeting of the #VelshiBannedBookClub, to discuss PEN America's report on the state of book banning in the U.S.
  
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