The most frequently banned books all together. Photo collage courtesy of freshman Irelynn Zurbach.
Our libraries are under threat with book bans take away our nation’s right to literature. Even San Luis Obispo High School is under threat with ten books being challenged by the state right now. These books include “1984,” “The Color Purple,” “The Outsiders,” and many other fan-favorite books with important messages that teens need to know.
“The overall reason [for banning books] is fear. I think people are afraid of when certain ideas proliferate in society. That having access to those ideas can lead to action on those ideas,” said English teacher Shoeleh Prochello.
Challenging a book is the attempt to ban a book from a library, school district, institution, organization, government entity, retailer, or publisher based on its content. Challenges can end in the book being banned or they can be overturned and the book would remain in circulation.
“If you don’t end up reading books then you’re not gonna end up as well informed,’ said freshman Eve-Va Sarabia.
It’s not likely that SLOHS would get any books banned since the school itself is in one of the more progressive districts in this state and nation. Not many schools even allow non-binary/single room bathrooms, let alone have teachers call students by their preferred name and their preferred gender.
Imagine a kid reading a book that deals with topics such as these and realizing they have more rights than their school lets on.
“We call it humanities for a reason, because it’s all about what makes us human. Art, literature, music all are about expressing these parts of ourselves that are human, that are about connecting with others,” said Prochello.
For the 2023-2024 school year, 10,046 instances of individual books were challenged, restricted or removed. This affects 4,231 unique titles in school libraries and classrooms in the U.S..
Novelist Jodi Picoult’s “Nineteen Minutes”, about the moments leading up to a school shooting, was the most banned book with 98 instances in 2024. Author John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” followed with 97. Surprisingly, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky comes right after with a steep 85 bans across the country.
The book ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison is a widely banned book taught in the AP literature class at SLOHS. This book depicts the life of a Black woman named Sethe, from her pre-Civil War days as a slave in Kentucky to her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873. Although Sethe lives there as a free woman, she recounts her traumatic experiences from her time as a slave.
“I think people are arguing that high schoolers are not ready to interact with [the topics of Beloved] at the age where they are,” said AP Literature teacher Ryan Mammarella.
Often times, books are banned for depictions of race/racism, LGBTQIA+, sexual content, rape or taboo topics like incest. Most of these topics are narratives that need to be taught to teens. If they don’t read and understand what these topics are, they won’t be well educated on them in the future. How is someone supposed to avoid sexual assault if they were never even taught that it could happen?
“People should be able to read what they want to read and they should be able to learn about what’s happened before. They should learn that what happened isn’t right and shouldn’t continue,” said freshman Ainsley Stegner.
Read, not because a teacher asks or because this article is saying to do so, but because your right to literature could be taken away some day. Read these books and share these stories, together people can stop the crimes against our libraries.
Sources: libraryca.gov, aaastateofplay.com, nytimes.com, pen.org
