When books get banned, something fascinating happens. Rather than fading into obscurity, they often find a new life as symbols of resistance. The mere act of trying to silence a story transforms it into something more powerful, something that refuses to disappear quietly. Think about it: the censors who push for book bans are essentially advertising which books carry messages they find threatening.
Right now in 2025, we’re witnessing an unprecedented surge in book challenges across America. Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members, and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries according to data released during National Library Week. PEN America reports over 10,000 recorded instances of book banning, as well as book bans in 29 states and 220 public school districts during the 2023–2024 school year. These numbers tell a story that’s both disturbing and galvanizing.
All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir That Became a Movement
George M. Johnson never imagined their 2020 young adult memoir would ignite such fierce controversy. It was the most challenged book of 2024, according to the American Library Association. The book, written as a series of personal essays about growing up Black and queer in New Jersey and Virginia, addresses experiences Johnson wished they’d had guidance for as a young person.
What makes this book remarkable isn’t just its content but the activism it has unleashed. Writing is a form of activism, Johnson stated, viewing their work as an extension of decades-long LGBTQ advocacy. When school districts began pulling the book from shelves in late 2021, something unexpected happened. Students rallying, students signing petitions, students activating their rights – which is what my book is teaching them to do.
The activism surrounding All Boys Aren’t Blue has been intensely personal and community-driven. Kaye Johnson and her sisters saw challenges to All Boys Aren’t Blue as not just attacks on the book, but attacks on who George is, and the right of people like them to exist. After the public commentary and deliberation, the board voted to keep all All Boys Aren’t Blue and five other challenged titles on the shelves in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Families showed up, allies spoke out, and young people testified about how the book had helped them understand themselves.
Gender Queer: The Book That Broke Records and Built Resistance
Maia Kobabe’s graphic memoir Gender Queer holds a distinction nobody wants: The book holds the Guinness World Record for “Most banned book of the year”. The American Library Association ranked it as the most challenged book in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and the second-most challenged book in 2024. Yet this relentless targeting has paradoxically amplified the book’s reach and impact.
Kobabe wrote the memoir to address a gap e noticed in eir own coming-of-age experience. The author wrote it – to guide young people grappling with questions about gender expression and sexual orientation. Kobabe, who identifies as queer, bisexual, and nonbinary, told PEN America in an interview that eir intention behind the book was to make it easier for young people: to help them understand and find the words to explain who they are.
How Controversy Created Community
A video of a parent railing against Gender Queer in a school board meeting in Fairfax, Virginia went viral and sparked an immediate series of copy-cat challenges elsewhere. Sometimes the challenges were overturned, and the book was returned to the library shelves. Other times the book was banned and removed. This viral moment in fall 2021 marked a turning point not just for the book but for organized resistance against censorship.
Rather than discouraging Kobabe, the bans strengthened eir resolve. For now, I am strengthening my commitment to continue writing stories centering trans, queer, and nonbinary characters. Certain parts of the country may be fixated on censoring me, but I will not be censoring myself. This defiant stance has resonated with readers and activists nationwide.
Kobabe has been receiving almost weekly, and sometimes more than weekly, emails from readers thanking em for writing it, telling em how much it meant to them, saying it helped them understand themselves or that they gave it to a parent or a child or a friend or a partner, and that it helped their loved one understand them more, and that it opened up conversations they had not previously been able to have. The book has become a tool for building understanding across generations and identities.
Student Activism Finds Its Voice
Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of the fight against book bans has been the emergence of student-led activism. Young people aren’t waiting for adults to defend their right to read. Johnson has been in constant contact with students from multiple states who are organizing rallies. They’re making sure that they have books, they’re making sure they have supplies, and making sure that they’re okay. And they’ve been sharing their campaigns to make sure that they’re amplified.
Students have publicly said on record that works like mine have saved their lives, works like mine have helped them name their abusers, works like mine have helped them come to terms with who they are and feel validated in the fact that there is somebody else that exists in the world like them, Johnson noted. This testimony isn’t abstract – it’s young people articulating exactly what’s at stake when books disappear from shelves.
Legal Battles as Activism Tools
The resistance to book bans has moved beyond school board meetings into courtrooms. Federal lawsuits challenging censorship in multiple districts have created legal precedents that could protect intellectual freedom for years to come. These cases involve not just advocacy organizations but also publishers, authors, parents, and students as plaintiffs.
In February 2025, Penguin Random House filed a lawsuit along with several other publishers, a library district, the Authors Guild, a teacher, students, and parents, saying the law is overly vague and violates the First Amendment. The suit argues libraries are forced to preemptively remove books due to inability to afford defense costs in the case of a lawsuit in Idaho. This multi-pronged legal approach demonstrates how various stakeholders are uniting against censorship.
Coalition Building and Banned Books Week
Established in 1982, Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community in shared support of the freedom to read. The annual event, which takes place October 5–11, 2025, has taken on renewed urgency as censorship attempts have exploded. With the escalation in attempts to ban books in libraries, schools, and bookstores around the country, George Orwell’s cautionary tale “1984” serves a prescient warning about the dangers of censorship, reflected in the 2025 theme “Censorship Is So 1984.”
Unite Against Book Bans is a coalition initiated by the American Library Association. In 2024 it organised a book tour with banned author Jodi Picoult to oppose censorship. These coordinated efforts create visibility and solidarity across communities facing censorship challenges.
To Kill a Mockingbird
When Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” hit shelves in 1960, nobody could’ve predicted it would become one of America’s most challenged books while simultaneously inspiring generations of civil rights activists and lawyers.To Kill a Mockingbird remains a timeless beacon of moral courage, teaching us that true bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but the willingness to fight for justice even when the odds are against you. Through the eyes of Scout and the integrity of Atticus Finch, Harper Lee reminds us that empathy – the ability to “climb into someone’s skin and walk around in it” – is the only way to bridge the divide of prejudice. It is an inspiring call to stand up for the marginalized and to protect innocence, proving that a single voice for truth can echo through generations.
