Established in 1982, Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating open access to information and our freedom to read. Each year, several books are challenged in libraries and schools across the country, and their removal subsequently requested. Banned Books Week shines a light on these attempts at censorship by releasing a list of the most-challenged books that year. Celebrate your right to read—pick up a banned book!
Compiled by:
Fern S.
(Adult Nonfiction - 306.7662 Joh)
In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores their childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting their teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with their loving grandmother, to their first sexual relationships, this memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer people.
(Adult Fiction - Morriso)
11-year-old Pecola Breedlove—a Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be beautiful, people will look at her, and her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
(Graphic Novels - GN Curato Flamer)
It's the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone's going through changes—but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can't stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.
(Graphic Novels - GN 921 Kobabe Kob)
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Starting as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story; it's a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
(Graphic Novels - GN 306.7 Moe)
A graphic novel about sex, sexuality, gender, body, consent, and many other topics for teens.
(Young Adult - Andrews)
Greg Gaines is the last master of high school espionage, able to disappear at will into any social environment. He has only one friend, Earl, and together, they spend their time making movies—their own incomprehensible versions of Coppola and Herzog cult classics. That is, until Greg's mother forces him to rekindle his childhood friendship with Rachel. Rachel has been diagnosed with leukemia—cue extreme adolescent awkwardness—but a parental mandate has been issued and must be obeyed. When Rachel stops treatment, Greg and Earl decide the thing to do is to make a film for her, which turns into the worst film ever made and becomes a turning point in each of their lives. And all at once, Greg must abandon invisibility and stand in the spotlight.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Chbosky)
Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. He's a wallflower—shy and introspective, and intelligent beyond his years, if not very savvy in the social arts. We learn about Charlie through the letters he writes—trying to make friends, family tensions, exploring sexuality, experimenting with drugs—and dealing with his best friend's recent suicide.
(Young Adult Fiction - Y Mccormi)
Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.
(Adult Nonfiction - 306.766 Daw)
Inside this revised and updated edition, you'll find the answers to all the questions you ever wanted to ask: from sex to politics, hooking up to stereotypes, coming out, and more. This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBTQIA+ also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations.
(Young Adult - Hopkins)
Five troubled teenagers fall into prostitution as they search for freedom, safety, community, family, and love.