PEN: Cover to Cover – An Analysis of Titles Banned in the 23-24 School Year

2025/03/06 Leave a comment

Cover to Cover

Of note:

In the 2023-2024 school year, there were more than 10,000 instances of banned books in public schools, affecting more than 4,000 unique titles. These mass book bans were often the result of targeted campaigns to remove books with characters of color, LGBTQ+ identities, and sexual content from public school classrooms and libraries. As book bans reached an unprecedented high in the last school year, PEN America sought to further understand the impacts of this censorship – the identities, content areas, genres, and types of books that are being erased from America’s public schools.

In November 2024, PEN America previously reported on the content of titles that had experienced two or more bans (1,091 titles); here, we include a more comprehensive analysis of all 4,218 titles banned during the 2023-2024 school year. 

What have we found? 

Book bans are not a hoax.

How do we know?

  • Certain identities are being removed from library shelves en masse. During the 2023-2024 school year, 36% of all banned titles featured characters or people of color and a quarter (25%) included LGBTQ+ people or characters. Of titles with LGBTQ+ people or characters, over a quarter (28%) feature trans and/or genderqueer characters.
  • Erasure of identities is pervasive within banned illustrated and graphic-heavy titles. For example, 73% of all graphic and illustrated titles feature visuals with LGBTQ+ representation, of people or characters of color, or that address race/racism. More specifically, 64% of banned picture books have pictures or illustrations that depict LGBTQ+ characters or stories.
  • For all the inflammatory rhetoric about “explicit books,” only 13% of banned titles had “on the page” descriptions of sexual experiences, compared to 31% with “off the page” sexual experiences. Overall, 40% of banned titles include sexual experiences (some contained both “on” and “off the page”). 
  • Books banned during the 2023-2024 school year overwhelmingly address violence (65%), death and grief (55%), and abuse (43%); all very real human experiences.

Source: Cover to Cover

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Paul: PEN America Has Stood By Authors. They Should Stand By PEN.

2024/04/30 Leave a comment

Agreed. Money quote: “I prefer to stand by PEN America and by all its members, though perhaps quite now, who would wish to see PEN’s mission upheld and strengthened rather than dismantled. Who does it really serve to keep tearing things down?”

All strong institutions stand to benefit from internal dissent and external pressures. But too often, recent efforts to reform institutions have meant reconstituting them in ways that distort or fundamentally undermine their core mission.

Nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, university departments and cultural institutions have ousted leaders and sent their staffs into turmoil in pursuit of progressive political goals. In the wake of the 2016 election and the 2020 murder of George Floyd and in a rush to apply sweeping “In this house we believe” standards unilaterally, organizations have risked overt politicization, mission drift, irrelevance and even dissolution. And now the war in Gaza is ripping its way across American universities.

The latest target is PEN America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to free expression by journalists and authors. Last week, after an increasingly aggressive boycott campaign by some of its members, PEN canceled its annual World Voices Festival, which was conceived by Salman Rushdie and was to mark its 20th anniversary in May. This followed a refusal by several writers to have their work considered for PEN’s annual literary awards. The ceremony awarding those prizes was also canceled.

An open letter sent to PEN America’s board and trustees and republished on Literary Hub, now the de facto clearinghouse for pro-Palestinian literary-world sentiment, accused the organization of “implicit support of the Israeli occupation” and of “aiding and abetting genocide.” It demanded the resignation of PEN’s longtime C.E.O., Suzanne Nossel, and current president, Jennifer Finney Boylan. According to its 21 signatories, mostly up-and-coming authors, “among writers of conscience, there is no disagreement. There is fact and fiction. The fact is that Israel is leading a genocide of the Palestinian people.”

In response and in keeping with its mission of independence and free expression, PEN America accepted the writers’ willingness to voice their conscience. It has also made clear that there is room for more than one point of view on what constitutes genocide and on the current conflict in Gaza.

“As an organization open to all writers, we see no alternative but to remain home to this diversity of opinions and perspectives, even if, for some, that very openness becomes reason to exit,” PEN America stated in an open letter to its community.

That doesn’t mean PEN’s critics are without a point. I have also heard dissent from inside PEN that the organization has not been as strong in its advocacy for Palestinian writers since Oct. 7 as it has been for Ukrainian writers since the Russian invasion. I have seen internal letters describing this disparity in detail. Those grievances may well be legitimate, and PEN should respond appropriately, advocating on behalf of all writers caught up in conflict, repression and censorship, regardless of geopolitical circumstance.

But for those advocating that PEN America reform itself in the service of a single political agenda, the organization’s efforts to accommodate a range of views count against the organization. “Neutrality,” the authors of the most recent letter contend, “is a betrayal of justice.” Nothing short of total capitulation will serve their purpose. And they are conducting an intimidation campaign among other members and authors to join their ranks or shut up about it. According to PEN leaders, writers have expressed fear in openly supporting the organization in the onslaught of this latest campaign.

Since 2006, I’ve been one of PEN America’s 4,500-plus members, which includes writers, journalists, activists and professionals involved in the world of letters. I joined well before I joined The Times, after the publication of my second book, a liberal critique of the effects of online pornography, which met with a certain amount of pushback. As a freelance journalist and author who covered politically sensitive topics, I appreciated the protection PEN America offered. PEN takes a firm stand, for example, against online abuse, something every working journalist today experiences to one extent or another. PEN is also firmly committed to fighting book bans in schools, libraries and prisons, something that grew increasingly relevant to me when I became the editor of The New York Times Book Review.

Of course, these conflicts are minor compared with a war in which lives are at stake. But whatever my personal views on the Middle East, I don’t expect or even want all its members to conform to my brand of politics.

PEN brooked dissent before. In 2015 it honored the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after its members were brutally attacked and in spite of opposition from some of its members. I appreciate that the organization has named a prominent transgender writer and activist as its president even if I do not share all her views when it comes to gender politics. I don’t have to agree with everything PEN does; in fact, I prefer that I don’t agree, because that opens me up to protection in kind from members who may not agree with me on all issues.

Even if we’ve grown inured to organizations losing their way under political pressure, we shouldn’t be indifferent to the potential consequences. Especially now that there are so few truly independent organizations left.

According to its charter, PEN “stands for the principle of unhampered transmission of thought within each nation and between all nations, and members pledge themselves to oppose any form of suppression of freedom of expression in the country and community to which they belong, as well as throughout the world wherever this is possible.” I prefer to stand by PEN America and by all its members, though perhaps quiet now, who would wish to see PEN’s mission upheld and strengthened rather than dismantled. Who does it really serve to keep tearing things down?

Source: PEN America Has Stood By Authors. They Should Stand By PEN.

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PEN: Educational Gag Orders-Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn and Teach

2021/11/10 Leave a comment

Significant:

Today PEN America released a report on an alarming trend mounting across the country to impose legislative limitations on teaching and learning on topics including race, gender, and American history. In the first nine months of 2021, 24 state legislatures introduced 54 bills that would restrict teaching and training in K-12 schools, public colleges and universities, and/or state agencies and institutions. Eleven of those bills have become laws in nine states. These bills reflect raging debates underway in communities across the country that came to a head during last week’s gubernatorial election in Virginia and are dominating discussions in school boards and faculty lounges nationwide.

For those concerned about the impact on the higher education sector, 21 of the bills introduced or pre-filed explicitly apply to colleges and universities. Of these, 16 explicitly impose restrictions on academic courses or curricula, and 10 explicitly address training for college students or employees. Ten bills explicitly targeting academic college-level teaching are pending or have been pre-filed for 2022.

This legislative wave followed the mass protests that swept the United States in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and the reckonings initiated to come to grips with the lingering legacy of racial injustice.
Efforts to delve into and more thoroughly address the role that slavery, race, and racism play in American society implicate complex questions relating to history, politics, and human relations. Rather than engaging in reasoned debate on these critical issues, the bills and laws documented in our report seek to shut down discourse through legislative fiat. We label these measures “educational gag orders,” a reflection of their censorious effect that imposes viewpoint-based constrictions on what can be discussed in American classrooms.

PEN America calls on all those who believe in free speech to oppose these efforts to silence discussion and debate through force of law.Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach examines these bills in depth. Many would punish educators, colleges, schools, and districts that dare to cover excluded topics. The report documents how these bills and laws have already had a chilling effect on campuses and in classrooms across the country, on both open discourse and academic freedom, and risk further muzzling vital societal discourse on racism, sexism, and the complexities of American history.

Educational Gag Orders: Legislative Restrictions on the Freedom to Read, Learn, and Teach examines these bills in depth. Many would punish educators, colleges, schools, and districts that dare to cover excluded topics. The report documents how these bills and laws have already had a chilling effect on campuses and in classrooms across the country, on both open discourse and academic freedom, and risk further muzzling vital societal discourse on racism, sexism, and the complexities of American history.

Source: https://b46674ee0d922ea3560b2c63b8d5fa34.tinyemails.com/21e22508c148a3777f075d12b9411cca/8e7676d24e8e81dc149a24f1e883a04d.html

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Art Spiegelman: Je Suis Charlie—But I’m Not Pamela Geller

2015/05/08 Leave a comment

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman on the differences between Charlie Hebdo and Pamela Geller. One of the best:

I think that’s when my brain short-circuited. Because superficially, it seems like, well, the same thing is happening in Texas. But it’s not. It’s the anti-matter, Bizarro World, flipside, mirror-logic version of what Charlie Hebdo is about.

The American Freedom Defense Initiative is racist organization. It’s exactly the nightmare version that the writers who were protesting the PEN award thought Charlie was. But Charlie is an anti-racist, political magazine that does not have an agenda that consists of wanting to bait or trouble Muslims.

Pam Geller’s organization is intentionally trying to start war of culture with Islam by saying that all Muslims are terrorists under the surface, and we’re going to prove it. Do the group members deserve free speech protection? Of course. But they’re hiding behind that banner with things that have very little to do with free speech and a lot to do with race hate.

Je suis Charlie, mais je ne suis pas Pam Geller. She and her dim-witted, ugly organization deserve the protection of the free speech mantle that they wrap themselves in. But would I ever give them a courage award? Hardly. Would I ever want to be in the same room with them? No. Do I wish they would stop? Yes.

The PEN writers who protested the event were projecting similar motives and attitudes onto Charlie Hebdo. Dismissing it as French arrogance is quite arrogant. Dismissing it as crude and vulgar is something that makes me suspicious of how cartoons are viewed by the writers who didn’t have enough respect for these images to understand them on their own.

…. I’m stuck having to agree with my bête noir friend Pam Geller that it would be better going forward for newspapers and magazines to take on the responsibility for showing these images. When the Danish Muhammad cartoons appeared in 2006, and when the Mohammad cartoons from Charlie Hebdo appeared, newspapers should have shown these images and talked about them. Many dismissed them as banal and treated them as, “Nothing to see here, move along.”

If it were taken as a matter of course for newspapers and magazines to show these images, they could be normalized, so the many Muslims not offended to the point of grabbing a machine gun could understand that this is how our culture functions with images and issues. It would create a better-informed population dealing with whatever comes next. It would also be useful to have other voices on newspaper and magazine staffs.

What’s the mistake in not publishing images that could be deemed offensive?

There’s no stopping it. What would it be based on? Would it be based on when someone takes up arms against the image? Would it be based on when someone thinks it’s offensive? God knows where the line would be drawn. It can’t be drawn that way. There is an incredible efficiency cartoons have, once you learn to read them, in clarifying the issues at hand, making them memorable.

There’s something basic about cartoons. They work they way the brain works. We think in small, iconic images. An infant can recognize a smiley face before it can recognize its mother’s smile. We think in little bursts of language. This is how cartoons are structured. They’re structured to talk to something deep inside our brains. A cartoon becomes a new kind of word that didn’t exist before.

It’s interesting how little respect they get. “Oh, anyone could draw that crude, vulgar scrawl,” said a number of critics of Charlie Hedbo. That’s not quite true. They’re not totally dismissible. If a writer had made some of the points that Charlie Hebdo had made, I don’t think the writers protesting PEN would have been so condescending and dismissive.

Art Spiegelman: Je Suis Charlie—But I’m Not Pamela Geller | TIME.

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It’s not about Islam, it’s about courage: Authors protesting Charlie Hebdo’s PEN award are missing the point – Salon.com

2015/04/30 Leave a comment

One of the better commentaries on the Charlie Hebdo and PEN controversy by Laura Miller:

It isn’t always easy to judge where power resides. Islamophobia is a real problem, but so is Islamic fundamentalism — and even just good ol’ fashioned patriarchal religious authoritarianism. Most of the targets of Muslim extremism are other Muslims. Muslim writers, artists and cartoonists are subject to religious censorship on a routine basis across the Muslim world. Islam cannot be simply or easily equated with victimhood, even if Muslims are discriminated against in French society.

And yet even in France, extremist Muslims seized the power to impose the ultimate punishment on the staff of Charlie Hebdo for, in the words of Salman Rushdie, “drawing pictures.” They were able to do so only with the backing of an organized, well-funded international network that, when it comes to criticism of their beliefs, would gladly shut down the speech rights of everyone, regardless of faith or nationality. The attack on Charlie Hebdo was a significant initiative in their campaign to do just that. It was not a one-off, or an uprising of the powerless, even if its organizers are able to play on real grievances to hoodwink young men into executing homicidal and suicidal actions.

As I’ve written before, Charlie Hebdo’s humor is too crude and obvious to appeal to me, but I’m predisposed to favor anyone who takes religious authorities down a peg. Raised in the Catholic Church, I regard anti-clerical campaigns as anything but passé; my own experience suggests to me that some French Muslims might find irreverent portrayals of the prophet, however crass, to be a crowbar prying open the confining box of tradition and piety. I don’t think anyone should be forced into secularism, but history tells us that this is far less of a threat than the compulsion — enforced by the state or by a more intimate community — to believe and observe. For this reason, I feel that no religion should be shielded from ridicule and satire; organized religion is always a form of power.

Rushdie has excellent cause to fear violent Islamic extremism, which Charlie Hebdo always maintained was the true object of its mockery. It’s likely that Eisenberg, a Jew, and Cole, a black man, have a heightened sensitivity to scenarios in which racial caricatures appear in publications indulged or encouraged by a prejudiced state. And from what my French friends tell me, there are all kinds of cultural signals in those cartoons that Anglophones miss, leading them to radically misinterpret the jokes. We’re all entitled to interpret them in our own way, of course, and even to repudiate them for what we think we see there. But what we can’t do with any real credibility is decide what they mean to somebody else.

It’s not about Islam, it’s about courage: Authors protesting Charlie Hebdo’s PEN award are missing the point – Salon.com.

And the contrary view by Philip Slayton and Tasleem Thawar of PEN Canada which I find less convincing, as it only focuses on one community, not recognizing that Charlie Hebdo, as noted above, aims for equity among the largely religious groups it offends:

Clearly, Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish should be defended. But does an obligation to defend something entail an obligation to celebrate it? We often recognize and celebrate writers who are silenced by the state or other powerful groups – still the primary threats to free speech around the world. And PEN has always been committed, as stated in the PEN charter, to dispelling race, class and national hatreds. This is why celebrating Charlie Hebdo is complicated. While Charlie Hebdo journalists were victims of a horrific attack on free expression, there are good arguments that regardless of their intentions, their work can be used to promote hate and further marginalize an already disenfranchised community.

The same argument holds true for PEN American’s impending celebration of Charlie Hebdo. Certainly Charlie Hebdo was courageous in continuing to publish, despite threats and, indeed, the murders of its journalists. In awarding this prize, PEN American clearly distinguishes between agreeing with Charlie Hebdo’s message, and applauding their bravery. But, as the six writers who are boycotting the PEN Gala are aware, despite intentions, the PEN award may very well be perceived as an endorsement of a magazine that continues to lampoon a disempowered group with scathing and provocative cartoons, and used to bolster the arguments of those who seek to further marginalize them. No organization can expect unwavering support from within its ranks when it makes difficult choices on sensitive matters. PEN represents writers with widely differing viewpoints – it has always embraced controversy and encouraged dissent.

 We celebrated Charlie Hebdo’s right to offend – and some took offence 

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Salman Rushdie Slams Critics of Charlie Hebdo’s PEN Award

2015/04/29 2 Comments

A fair amount of coverage and commentary with respect to Charlie Hebdo’s PEN award on both sides of the issue (I lean towards Rushdie’s position):

Six writers have withdrawn as literary hosts of the 2015 PEN American Center gala, criticizing the organization’s choice to honor satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo with the Freedom of Expression Courage award—a move author Salman Rushdie calls “horribly wrong.”

The writers—Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose and Taiye Selasi—believe it’s wrong to reward the publication for free speech, since they feel its depiction of Islam was often offensive, the New York Times reports. Carey acknowledged that the terrorist act that killed many of Charlie Hebdo‘s staff members was “a hideous crime,” but also noted that France as a nation “does not recognize its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.”

Though Rushdie (whose death was called for by a Muslim leader over his book The Satanic Verses) calls both Carey and Ondaatje “old friends,” he said the choice of Charlie Hebdo was perfectly appropriate. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others,” he told the Times, “is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”

Salman Rushdie Slams Critics of Charlie Hebdo’s PEN Award | TIME.

Commentary magazine, while predictably using this to assail the left, nevertheless has a point:

“If PEN as a free speech organization can’t defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organization is not worth the name,” Mr. Rushdie said. “What I would say to both Peter and Michael and the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.”

Indeed. Liberals have apparently graduated from telling Muslims what is and isn’t truly Islamic to telling Muslims (and their victims) what is and isn’t blasphemy. According to the left, blasphemy is not a religious term so much as it just shouldn’t be applied to people who draw yucky pictures. This is, to say the least, a standard that bodes poorly for those who truly do support free speech. Where are their allies going to come from if not from free-speech organizations?

And there’s also something quite hilarious in the don’t-worry-Rushdie-you’re-still-good defensiveness in the anti-Charlie Hebdo group. That may be true today, but for how long will it continue to be true? At what point will the left finally throw Rushdie under that bus? Because that moment is coming, and I suspect everyone knows it.

The Left Will Disown Rushdie Too; the Only Question Is When

The Globe’s editorial board tries to find a middle approach:

For writers who deal in human complexity like Mr. Ondaatje, context matters. If an awards night is to be more than a self-congratulatory fundraiser, abstract notions like freedom of expression and courage must defer to a harder literary question: Should the boundaries of both free speech and courage necessarily adapt to local realities?

Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists, working in the persistent French spirit of secularism and anticlericalism, saw themselves as caricaturing a monolithic sect that consistently behaves with barbaric cruelty and unreason. Islam, for Charlie Hebdo, became an updated version of the Catholic Church, and so a deserving target of ferocious satire.

But for the dissenting authors at PEN, these broad-brushed satirical attacks necessarily had damaging consequences at the human level. France’s colonial past has produced a modern culture of inequality, they say. In Paris, where encouraging anti-Islamic sentiments shades too easily into racism, Muslims are much more likely to be the oppressed than the oppressors PEN normally rails against.

For other prominent PEN members, all this literary ambivalence is a weak-kneed diversion from the no-compromise ideals of free speech. Salman Rushdie, who knows a thing or two about attempts to limit free expression, said his old friend Mr. Ondaatje was “horribly wrong.” But he’s not wrong, just different – and right to avoid the gala’s awkward culture of unanimity.

 Charlie Hebdo deserves praise, but not at all costs 

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