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Banned and Challenged: Restricting access to books in the U.S.

Perspective, ashley hope pérez: 'young people have a right' to stories that help them learn.

Ashley Hope Pérez

Author Ashley Hope Pérez wrote Out of Darkness, which is on the American Library Association's lists of most banned books. Kaz Fantone/NPR hide caption

Author Ashley Hope Pérez wrote Out of Darkness, which is on the American Library Association's lists of most banned books.

This essay by Ashley Hope Pérez is part of a series of interviews with — and essays by — authors who are finding their books being challenged and banned in the U.S.

For over a decade, I lived my professional dream. I spent my days teaching college literature courses and writing novels. I regularly visited schools as an author and got to meet teens who reminded me of the students I taught in Houston — the amazing humans who had first inspired me to write for young adults.

Then in 2021, my dream disintegrated into an author and educator's nightmare as my novel Out of Darkness became a target for politically motivated book bans across the country.

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Banned books: author ashley hope pérez on finding humanity in the 'darkness'.

Attacks unfolded, not just on my writing but also on young people's right to read it. Hate mail and threats overwhelmed the inboxes where I once had received invitations for author visits and appreciative notes from readers. At the beginning of 2021, Out of Darkness had been on library shelves for over five years without a single challenge or complaint. As we reach the end of 2022, it has been banned in at least 29 school districts across the country.

From the earliest stages of writing, I knew Out of Darkness would be difficult — for me, and for readers. I drew my inspiration for the novel from an actual school disaster: the 1937 New London school explosion that killed hundreds in an East Texas oil town just 20 minutes from my childhood home. This tragic but little-known historical event serves as the backdrop for a fictional star-crossed romance between a Black teenager and a young Latina who has just arrived in the area.

As I researched the novel, I imagined the explosion as its most devastating event. But to engage honestly with the realities of the time and of my characters' lives, I had to grapple with systemic racism, personal prejudice, sexual abuse and domestic violence. As I wrote, the teenagers' circumstances began to tighten, noose-like, around their lives and love, leading to still more tragedy. I sought to show the depths of harm inflicted on some in this country without sensationalizing that history. The book portrays friendship, loving family, community and healthy relationships because they, too, are part of the characters' world. Then, as now, young people struggle mightily for joy, love and dignity.

When Out of Darkness was first published, I braced for objections. Would readers recoil from the harshness of my characters' realities? Or would they recognize how the novel invites connections between those realities and an ongoing reckoning with racialized violence and police brutality? To my relief, the novel received glowing reviews, earned multiple literary awards, and was named to "best of the year" lists by Kirkus Reviews and School Library Journal . It appeared on reading lists across the country as a recommendation for ambitious young readers ready to face disquieting aspects of the American experience.

So it went until early 2021. In the wake of the 2020 presidential elections, right-wing groups pivoted from a national defeat to "local" issues. The latest wave of book banning exceeds anything ever documented by librarian or free-speech groups. The statistics for 2021, which represent only a fraction of actual removals, reflect a more than 600% increase in challenges and removals as compared to 2020. (See Everylibrary.org for a continually updated database of challenges and bans and PEN America's Banned in the USA reports for April 2022 and September 2022 for further context.)

These book bans do not reflect spontaneous parental concern. Instead, they are part of an orchestrated effort to sow suspicion of public schools as scarily "woke" and to signal opposition to certain identities and topics. Book banners often cite "sexually explicit content" as their reason for objecting to books in high schools. What distinguishes the targeted titles, though, is not their sexual content but that they overwhelmingly center the experiences of BIPOC, LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. If you were to stack up all the books with sexual content in any library, the tallest stack by far would be about white, straight characters. Tellingly, those are not the books under attack. Claims about "sexual content" are a pretext for erasing the stories that tell Black, Latinx, queer and other non-dominant kids that they matter and belong. Beyond telegraphing disapproval, book bans serve the interests of groups that have long sought to dismantle public education and shut down conversations about important issues.

Debates about the suitability of reading materials in school are nothing new. These include past efforts by progressives to reorient language arts instruction. Concerns about racist language and portrayals might well lead communities to seek alternatives to the teaching of works like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . But de-emphasizing problematic classics does not generally entail removing the books from library collections. By contrast, in targeting high school libraries, conservative book banners seek to restrict what individual students may choose to read on their own , disregarding the judgment of school librarians who carefully select materials according to professional standards.

Rather than reading the books themselves, today's book banners rely instead on haphazard lists and talking points circulated online. Social media plays a central role in stoking the fires of censorship. Last year, a video of a woman ranting about a passage from Out of Darkness in a school board meeting went internationally viral. The woman's school board rant resulted in the removal of every copy of Out of Darkness from the district's libraries, triggered copycat performances, and fueled more efforts to ban my book.

Book banning poses a real professional and personal cost to authors and educators. For YA writers, losing access to school and library audiences can be career ending. And it is excruciating to watch people describe our life's work as "filth" or "garbage." We try to find creative ways to respond to the defamation, as I did in my own YouTube video . But there is no competing with the virality of outrage. Meanwhile, librarians and teachers face toxic work conditions that shift the focus from student learning to coping with harassment.

But book banning harms students, and their education, the most. Young people rely on school libraries for accurate information and for stories that broaden their understanding, offer hope and community, and speak honestly to challenges they face. As libraries become battlegrounds, teens notice which books, and which identities, are under attack. Those who share identities with targeted authors or characters receive a powerful message of exclusion: These books don't belong, and neither do you.

Back in 2004, my predominately Latinx high school students in Houston wanted — needed — books that reflected their lives and communities but few such books had been written. In the decades since, authors have worked hard to ensure greater inclusion and respect for the diversity of teen experiences. For students with fewer resources or difficult home situations, though, a book that isn't in the school library might as well not exist. Right-wing groups want to roll back the modest progress we've made, and they are winning.

These "wins" happen even without official bans. Formal censorship becomes unnecessary once bullying, threats and disruption shake educators' focus from students. The result is soft censorship . For example, a librarian reads an outstanding review of a book that would serve someone in their school, but they don't order it out of fear of controversy. This is the internalization of the banners' agenda. The effects of soft censorship are pervasive, pernicious and very difficult to document.

The needs of all students matter, not just those whose lives and identities line up with what book banners think is acceptable. Young people have a right to the resources and stories that help them mature, learn and understand their world in all its diversity. They need more opportunities, not fewer, to experience deep imaginative engagement and the empathy it inspires. We've had enough "banner" years. I hope 2023 returns the focus to young people and their right to read.

Ashley Hope Pérez, author of three novels for young adults, is a former high school English teacher and an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University. Find her on Twitter and Instagram or LinkT .

The University of Chicago Library News

Taking a stand against book bans

The University of Chicago was founded over 130 years ago based on the belief that knowledge creates a better world and enhances our lives. This is what our Latin motto states. We also believe that learning and creating knowledge require the freedom to explore, to discuss and to share views and ideas, even if it makes us uncomfortable at times. A discourse that allows for disagreement and where divergent perspectives are heard makes us all stronger, whether it is in academia or in society more broadly.

The enduring success of the University of Chicago gives us confidence that these values hold true today as much as they did when this University was founded.

Today we see these values under attack. Across the United States, books are being banned and libraries and librarians are being threatened. The American Library Association recently released statistics that show that, for the third year in a row, attempts to censor books have hit a record number. In the first eight months of this year alone, ALA tracked attempts to get almost 2,000 banned. The vast majority of challenges were to books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Attempts to ban books have often focused on school libraries, but in the last few years public libraries have come more into focus, and we are now seeing more attempts to censor academic libraries too. This is not a surprise. After all, book bans are usually not just aimed at an individual book. They are aimed at what a book stands for and what libraries stand for.

Books are more than containers of knowledge or sources of inspiration or enjoyment. They are a symbol for knowledge and its impact on society. In a similar way, libraries are more than containers of books. They are a symbol for progress and a promise. A promise of a space where we can get lost in thought, get inspired, engage with the world’s knowledge. A promise that a free society accepts and cherishes a multitude of views, even if we personally may not agree with all of them. And a promise that we stand by those who cannot afford access to knowledge,and that marginalized communities can still use their voices.

The University of Chicago stands firmly behind the promise of the book and the promise of the library. We also stand with librarians across the country and all those who seek to inquire or express themselves.

In that spirit, at a press conference with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, and UChicago President Paul Alivisatos during Banned Books Week on October 3, I announced that we are taking five steps relating to banned books.

First, the University of Chicago Library has started work to build the Banned Books Collection, an attempt to bring together all books banned in the United States, whether digital or print. We have already a quarter of the more than 1,500 banned books here in our libraries, and we will grow this collection and keep it up to date. We are building this as a research collection, to increase our understanding of book bans, but also to create a historic record. Importantly, this will also be a collection for access, available to everyone who visits our libraries, whether they come from an Ivy League institution or live a few dozen blocks south of us. We will also make this collection available to users of other libraries, through interlibrary loan.

Second, to support those who live in areas where books are banned, we are partnering with the Digital Public Library of America. For more than a decade, the DPLA has worked to widen access to books for everyone in the U.S., through the internet. Through its Palace app, the DPLA already makes two thirds of books banned available in those locations where they are banned . We will work with DPLA to increase that percentage, with the hope to eventually make all banned books available online—in partnership with authors and publishers.

Third, as another part of our partnership, DPLA and UChicago Library will provide all Illinois residents with access to the banned books in the DPLA app , initially for a year. This will support those who cannot come to visit us in Hyde Park or another library that does have a banned book they want to read.

Fourth, in the UChicago spirit, we want to encourage research and debate on books bans, through a program of events with partners such as the DPLA and the UChicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.

Finally, we launched the Freedom to Read fund to allow those who want to support these and future activities of the University of Chicago Library. To make a contribution, please go to the University’s Giving Page and select “Library” and then “Freedom to Read Fund.”

I would be remiss not to acknowledge that some of our patrons may not agree with everything we add to the collection. In fact, it is possible our librarians and even I may be uncomfortable with what is in some of these books or in books that may be banned in the future. But that is what libraries are here for, to create an environment for freedom of discussion and exploration. In this context, libraries are the promise of freedom, of a free and democratic society built on knowledge, of the freedom to dream of a better world for everyone. We stand with everyone who feels this shouldn’t be a dream but reality.

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Does banning books really help kids? A childhood education expert weighs in

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When Jaci Urbani taught early learners at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, one of the books she read to them was “Charlotte’s Web,” by E.B. White, a children’s novel about a pig destined for slaughter and his friendship with the barn spider who saves him. 

While Wilbur is saved (spoiler alert), by the end of the book, Charlotte dies. It was at this point some of the children would start to cry.

Here is where some educators and parents would put the book away and not take it out again. Instead, Urbani approached the moment with empathy and used it to open up a discussion with students about whether they’ve experienced loss and how they take care of themselves and others when they’re sad. Others prefer to keep books addressing issues they find difficult out of kids’ hands, an approach that is becoming more and more common in the form of book challenges and bans in schools across the country.  Many of the most frequently challenged books are being targeted for containing  LGBTQIA+ and sexually explicit content , including having depictions of sexual abuse, topics some say parents should be the ones introducing to children.

But Urbani, now a professor of education at Northeastern University in Oakland and a childhood education expert, said we should be talking to children about uncomfortable topics and books allow for those conversations.

“Just because death is a sad topic doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it with kids and help them,” she added. “Those are the kind of conversations that we should have around these topics we find difficult. … There’s so many things that people can learn about and if it’s handled in a mature, developmentally appropriate way, kids can learn from it.”

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom documented 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022 with 2,571 unique titles targeted by censors. This is nearly double the 729 attempts documented in 2021 and doesn’t account for attempts not reported or covered by the news. It’s also the highest number the ALA has seen since it began tracking book challenges over two decades ago.

The ALA found nearly half of demands were made by parents, patrons or political/religious groups . The vast majority were targeting not just one single book, but multiple titles. At least 40% of challenges targeted more than 100 books at once. In Texas, for example, there were 93 challenges to 2,349 titles.

The most challenged books of 2022 range from graphic memoirs (“Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe was number one on the list) to classic literature (Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”) to popular fantasy novels (“A Court of Mist and Fury” by Sarah J. Maas). While the books may range in genre and topic, what many of them have in common is the reasons for being challenged.

“These numbers and the list of the Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022 are evidence of a growing, well-organized, conservative political movement, the goals of which include removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health from America’s public and school libraries that do not meet their approval,” the ALA wrote in its 2022 book censorship data snapshot.

Some of the organizations behind these bans, like Moms for Liberty, argue they are standing up for the rights of parents and they themselves want to be having these conversations with their kids. But are these bans helping or hurting kids? 

There’s so many things that people can learn about and if it’s handled in a mature, developmentally appropriate way, kids can learn from it. Jaci Urbani, a professor of education at Northeastern’s Oakland campus

Urbani takes the stance that they do more harm than good. Instead, books addressing so-called difficult topics can open avenues for discussions between kids and the adults in their lives (topics, she adds, they are probably already exposed to through friends and other media).

“Our society doesn’t like to talk about bad things,” she said. “It’s just shut down. It’s not engaging in a conversation around it. But kids know things. They’re very perceptive. I think it’s much more harmful that they have these book bans in place because kids need this knowledge and quite frankly, the adults who are banning these books need that knowledge.”

Additionally important for parents concerned about their kids’ reading material is looking at content in context. Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” which depicts his father’s experiences in the Holocaust, has been challenged for its language and for having an image of a partially naked woman . But in the context of the book, Urbani said, it’s appropriate.

“There’s nothing sexy about it,” she added.

But what if a child reads a book beyond their maturity level? Is that harmful? Urbani says there is a conversation to be had about whether some books are appropriate for a child’s developmental capability. For example, you wouldn’t read John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” to a kindergarten class or dive into the brutality of slavery with a group of preschoolers.

“What we should all be engaging in a conversation together,” Urbani said. “There’s a responsibility to talk about things that are real in the world without getting into explicit detail.”

Urbani says each child will be different and she encourages parents to consider their child’s maturity level and be open to having conversations if their child reads something that confuses them or is beyond their maturity level. For educators, Urbani says looping in parents and letting them read their children’s assigned reading and encouraging them to talk about it with their students can be helpful, as can bringing in additional support in the form of a school counselor.

 But what you can do instead is introduce difficult topics in an age appropriate way. 

“(Enslaved people) were kidnapped from their families and their countries and their potential futures, and were forced to work to make money for somebody else in horrible conditions,” Urbani said. “I’m not going to say that to a 5-year-old. But I will talk about how we treat each other and how we want to care for each other in our classroom. That’s how you relate it. … I’m not going to talk about rape and beatings, but I will talk about the absolute right and wrong of slavery. Trying to whitewash it is just a way to lie to children because it makes adults uncomfortable.”

Erin Kayata is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email her at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @erin_kayata .

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Recent Stories

The Book-Banners: Adventure in Censorship is Stranger Than Fiction

Published as a Guest Column in the March 20, 1992 issue of The Bangor Daily News

"When I came into my office last Thursday afternoon, my desk was covered with those little pink message slips that are the prime mode of communication around my place. Maine Public Broadcasting had called, also Channel 2, the Associated Press, and even the Boston Globe. It seems the book-banners had been at it again, this time in Florida. They had pulled two of my books, "The Dead Zone" and "The Tommyknockers," from the middle-school library shelves and were considering making them limited-access items in the high school library. What that means is that you can take the book out if you bring a note from your mom or your dad saying it's OK.

My news-media callers all wanted the same thing -- a comment. Since this was not the first time one or more of my books had been banned in a public school (nor the 15th), I simply gathered the pink slips up, tossed them in the wastebasket, and went about my day's work. The only thought that crossed my mind was one strongly tinged with gratitude: There are places in the world where the powers that be ban the author as well as the author's works when the subject matter or mode of expression displeases said powers. Look at Salman Rushdie, now living under a death sentence, or Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years in a prison camp for calling Josef Stalin "the boss" and had to run for the west to avoid another stay after he won the Nobel Prize for "The Gulag Archipelago."

When the news stories about my latest adventure in censorship came out, however, I didn't like the way that "the author could not be reached for comment" stuff looked. To me, that line has always called up images of swindlers too cowardly to face up to what they've done. In this case I haven't done anything but my job, and I know it's all too possible to make a career out of defending one's fiction -- for a while in the mid-1980s, Judy Blume almost did make a career out of it -- but I still didn't like the way it felt.

So, just for the record, here is what I'd say if I still took time out from doing my work to defend it.

First, to the kids: There are people in your home town who have taken certain books off the shelves of your school library. Do not argue with them; do not protest; do not organize or attend rallies to have the books put back on their shelves. Don't waste your time or your energy. Instead, hustle down to your public library, where these frightened people's reach must fall short in a democracy, or to your local bookstore, and get a copy of what has been banned. Read it carefully and discover what it is your elders don't want you to know. In many cases you'll finish the banned book in question wondering what all the fuss was about. In others, however, you will find vital information about the human condition. It doesn't hurt to remember that John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, and even Mark Twain have been banned in this country's public schools over the last 20 years.

Second, to the parents in these towns: There are people out there who are deciding what your kids can read, and they don't care what you think because they are positive their ideas of what's proper and what's not are better, clearer than your own. Do you believe they are? Think carefully before you decide to accord the book-banners this right of cancellation, and remember that they don't believe in democracy but rather in a kind of intellectual autocracy. If they are left to their own devices, a great deal of good literature may soon disappear from the shelves of school libraries simply because good books -- books that make us think and feel -- always generate controversy.

If you are not careful and diligent about defending the right of your children to read, there won't be much left, especially at the junior-high level where kids really begin to develop a lively life of the mind, but books about heroic boys who come off the bench to hit home runs in the bottom of the ninth and shy girls with good personalities who finally get that big prom date with the boy of their dreams. Is this what you want for your kids, keeping in mind that controversy and surprise -- sometimes even shock -- are often the whetstone on which young minds are sharpened?

Third, to the other interested citizens of these towns: Please remember that book-banning is censorship, and that censorship in a free society is always a serious matter -- even when it happens in a junior high, it is serious. A proposal to ban a book should always be given the gravest consideration. Book-banners, after all, insist that the entire community should see things their way, and only their way. When a book is banned, a whole set of thoughts is locked behind the assertion that there is only one valid set of values, one valid set of beliefs, one valid perception of the world. It's a scary idea, especially in a society which has been built on the ideas of free choice and free thought.

Do I think that all books and all ideas should be allowed in school libraries? I do not. Schools are, after all, a "managed" marketplace. Books like "Fanny Hill" and Brett Easton Ellis' gruesome "American Psycho" have a right to be read by people who want to read them, but they don't belong in the libraries of tax-supported American middle schools. Do I think that I have an obligation to fly down to Florida and argue that my books, which are a long way from either "Fanny Hill" or "American Psycho," be replaced on the shelves from which they have been taken? No. My job is writing stories, and if I spent all my time defending the ones I've written already, I'd have no time to write new ones.

Do I believe a defense should be mounted? Yes. If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. No book, record, or film should be banned without a full airing of the issues. As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them."

Inspiration

Stephen's response to requests for his opinion on the banning of two of his books.

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Related Works

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© Copyright © 2000 - 2020 Stephen King - All Rights Reserved.

A Case for Reading - Examining Challenged and Banned Books

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

Any work is potentially open to attack by someone, somewhere, sometime, for some reason. This lesson introduces students to censorship and how challenges to books occur. They are then invited to read challenged or banned books from the American Library Association's list of the most frequently challenged books . Students decide for themselves what should be done with these books at their school by writing a persuasive essay explaining their perspectives. Students share their pieces with the rest of the class, and as an extension activity, can share their essays with teachers, librarians, and others in their school.

Featured Resources

T-Chart Printout : This printable sheet allows students to keep notes on parts of books that they believe might be challenged, as well as supporting reasons. Persuasive Writing Rubric : Use this rubric to evaluate the organization, conventions, goal, delivery, and mechanics of students' persuasive writing. The rubric can be adapted for any persuasive essay. Persuasion Map : Use this online tool to map out and print your persuasive argument. Included are spaces to map out your thesis, three reasons, and supporting details.

From Theory to Practice

There are times that the books that are part of our curriculum are found to be questionable or offensive by other groups. Should teachers stop using those texts? Should the books be banned from schools? No! "Censorship leaves students with an inadequate and distorted picture of the ideals, values, and problems of their culture. Partly because of censorship or the fear of censorship, many writers are ignored or inadequately represented in the public schools, and many are represented in anthologies not by their best work but by their ‘safest' or ‘least offensive' work," as stated in the NCTE Guideline. What then should the English teacher do? "Freedom of inquiry is essential to education in a democracy. To establish conditions essential for freedom, teachers and administrators need to work together. The community that entrusts students to the care of an English teacher should also trust that teacher to exercise professional judgment in selecting or recommending books. The English teacher can be free to teach literature, and students can be free to read whatever they wish only if informed and vigilant groups, within the profession and without, unite in resisting unfair pressures." This is the Students' Right to Read. Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 11. Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

• Selected books as examples (from the most frequently challenged books list)
• Example Family Letter
• Persuasion Map
• Book Challenge Investigation Bookmarks
• Persuasive Writing Rubric

Preparation

• Because this lesson requires that students read a book from the ALA Challenged Book list, it’s a good idea to notify families prior to starting the assignment. See the example family letter for ideas on how to notify families.
• Bookmark the websites listed as resources to refer to throughout the lesson.
• Compile grade-appropriate books for students to explore using the Challenged Children's Books list .  Talk to your librarian or school media specialist about creating a resource collection for students to use in your classroom or in the library.
• Copy T-Charts and/or bookmarks for students to document passages as they read.
• Test the Persuasion Map on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tool.

Student Objectives

Students will:

• be exposed to the issues of censorship, challenged, or banned books.
• examine issues of censorship as it relates to a specific literature title.
• critically evaluate books based on relevancy, biases, and errors.
• develop and support a position on a particular book by writing a persuasive essay about their chosen title.

Session One

• Display a selection of banned or challenged books in a prominent place in your classroom. Include in this selection books meant for children and any included in the school curriculum. Ask students to speculate on what these books have in common.
• Explain to the students that these books have been "censored."  Ask students to brainstorm a definition of censorship and record the students' ideas on the board or chart paper. When you have come up with a definition the group agrees on, have students record the definition.
• Brainstorm ways in which things are censored for them already and who controls what is censored and how. Examples include Internet filtering, ratings on movies, video games, music, and self-censoring (choosing to watch only 1 news show or choosing not to read a certain type of book).  Discuss circumstances in which censorship would be necessary, if any, with the students.
• Provide the students’ definitions for challenged books as well as banned books. (Share these American Library Association definitions: “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials.”)
• After the students have seen the ALA definition, have the students “grow” in their own definitions. Ask them to revisit their definition and align it with the one presented by the American Library Association.
• Invite the students to brainstorm any books that they have heard of that have been challenged or banned from schools or libraries. Ask them if they know why those books were found to be controversial.
• Students should then brainstorm titles of other books that they feel could possibly be challenged or banned from their school collection.  Allow time for students to share these titles with their classmates and offer an explanation of why they think these titles could possibly be challenged or banned.
• Share with the students a list of banned books .
• Did they find them to be entertaining, informative, beneficial or objectionable?
• Can they suggest reasons why someone would object to elementary, middle school or high school students reading these books?
• If desired, complete the session by allowing students to learn more about Banned Books Week , additional challenged/banned books, and cases involving First Amendment Rights.

Session Two

• From a teacher-selected list of grade-appropriate books from the Challenged Children's Books list , have groups of students select one of the books to read in literature circles, traditional reading groups, or through read-alouds.
• As the students read, ask them to pay particular attention to the features in the books that may have made them controversial. As students find quotes/parts of the book that they find to be controversial, they should add them to their T-Chart , along with an explanation of why they think that this area could be controversial.  On the left side of their T-Chart , they will list the quote or section of the book (with page numbers); on the right side of the T-Chart , they will write their thoughts on why this area could be seen as controversial.
• You may also choose to invite the students to use bookmarks (in addition to or instead of the T-Chart ) , so they can record page numbers and passages as they read.

Session Three

• After the students have completed the reading of their book, have a group or class discussion on the students' findings that they recorded on their bookmarks or T-Chart .
• Next, explain to students that they will be writing a persuasive piece stating what they believe should be done with the book that has been challenged. If students read the book in groups, they could write a team response.
• Share the  Persuasive Writing Rubric to explore the requirements of the assignment in more detail and allow for students' questions about the assignment.
• Demonstrate the Persuasion Map and work through a sample book challenge to show students how to use the tool to structure their essays.
• Provide students with access to computers, and allow students the remainder of class to work with the Persuasion Map as a brainstorming tool and to guide them through work on their papers.  If computer access is a problem, you may provide students with print copies of the Persuasion Map Printout .
• Encourage students to share their thoughts and opinions with the class as they work on their drafts.  Students should print out their work at the end of the session.

Session Four

• Invite students to share their persuasive pieces with the rest of the class. It is their job to persuade teachers, librarians, or administrators to keep the book in their collection, remove the book from their collection, or add the book to their collection.
• For an authentic sharing session, invite parents in for a panel discussion while the children present their thoughts and opinions on the matter of challenged and banned books.
• Students can discuss the books after each presentation to draw conclusions about each title and about censorship and challenges overall.

Concerned Parent The concerned parent is interested in how controversial materials affect school children. The concerned parent wants to maintain a healthy learning environment for students.   Classroom Teacher The Classroom Teacher needs to select books that will both match the interests of the students and also meet the requirements of the curriculum. The Classroom Teacher needs to listen to the parents, and also follow the rules of the school.   School Library Media Specialist The School Library Media Specialist selects library materials based on the curriculum and reading interests the students in the school.   School Lawyer The School Lawyer is concerned about how the students’ civil liberties would be affected if the School Board decided to ban books.

• Students can elicit responses and reactions from peers, teachers, administrators, librarians, the author, and parents in regards to the particular book they are researching. Ask students to focus on the appropriateness of the book in reference to an elementary school collection.  
• Discuss Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico and how after the decision from that court case public school districts around the country developed policies concerning book challenges in elementary, middle, and high school libraries.
• Students can play the role of the librarian and decide where a challenged/banned book should be shelved. For example, the challenged book may be a picture book, but the “librarian” might decide that the book should instead be shelved in the Teacher Resource Section of the library. An alternative for Sessions Three and Four for this lesson plan is to ask students to write persuasive essays explaining where the book should be shelved and why it should be shelved there.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• As students discuss censorship and challenged/banned books, and as they read their selected text, listen for comments that indicate they are identifying specific examples from the story that connect to the information they have learned (you should also check for evidence of this on their bookmarks or T-Chart ). The connections that they make between the details in the novel and the details they choose as their supporting reasons for their persuasive piece will reveal their understanding and engagement with the books.
• Monitor student interaction and progress during any group work to assess social skills and assist any students having problems.
• Respond to the content and quality of students’ thoughts in their final reflections on the project. Look for indications that the student provides supporting evidence for the reflections, thus applying the lessons learned from the work with the Persuasion Map .
• Assess students’ persuasive writing piece using the rubric .
• Calendar Activities
• Professional Library
• Student Interactives
• Lesson Plans

Students brainstorm reasons why certain books might have been banned and discuss common reasons why books are challenged.

Students adapt a Roald Dahl story to picture book format and share their books and add them to the classroom library. Additionally, they compare a book version and film version of one of Dahl's works.

Bring the celebration of reading and literacy into your classroom, library, school, and home all year long.

The current edition of The Students' Right to Read is an adaptation and updating of the original Council statement, including "Citizen's Request for Reconsideration of a Work."

The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.

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Book Ban Data

The American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has released new data documenting book challenges throughout the United States, finding that challenges of unique titles surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022 numbers, reaching the highest level ever documented by ALA. Read the full announcement .

OIF documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship , as well as 1,247 demands to censor library books, materials, and resources in 2023 . Four key trends emerged from the data gathered from 2023 censorship reports:

• Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023 ; school libraries saw an 11% increase over 2022 numbers.
• Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge.
• Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47% of those targeted in censorship attempts.
• There were attempts to censor more than 100 titles in each of these 17 states: Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Spread the word. Download these graphics and share on social media!

Note: a previous version of one of these graphics incorrectly referenced the number of unique titles challenged in 2021 as 1,651. In fact, the actual number is 1,858 unique titles challenged. 1,651 is the number of unique titles challenged during the preliminary period between January 1 and August 31, 2022, originally reported in September 2022.

Take Action

Unite Against Book Bans is ALA's national initiative to empower readers everywhere to stand together in the fight against censorship with an array of resources, tools, and actions.

Reporting censorship and challenges to materials, resources, and services is vital to defending library resources and to protect against challenges before they happen.

Additional Resources

Lists of frequently challenged books compiled by ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom to inform the public about censorship efforts that affect libraries and schools.

A clearinghouse of resources to assist library workers and advocates in responding to and supporting others facing those challenges.

Documents designated by the Intellectual Freedom Committee as Interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights and background statements detailing the philosophy and history of each.

Methodology

ALA compiles data on book challenges from reports filed by library professionals in the field and from news stories published throughout the United States. Because many book challenges are not reported to ALA or covered by the press, the data compiled by ALA represents a snapshot of book censorship.

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict access to materials or services based upon the objections of a person or group. A challenge to a title may result in access to it being retained, restricted, or withdrawn entirely. Restrictions on access may include relocating the book to a section of the library intended for an older age group than the book is intended for, labeling it with a prejudicial content warning or rating, taking it out of the online catalog so it has to be requested from a staff member, removing it from open and freely browsable stacks, or requiring parental permission to check it out.

Challenges do not simply involve people expressing their point of view, but rather are an attempt to remove materials from curricula or libraries, thereby curtailing the ability of others to access information, views, ideas, expressions, and stories. A formal challenge leads to the reconsideration of the decision to purchase the material or offer the service. This process is governed by a board-approved policy and includes review of the material as a whole to assess if it is aligned with the library or school's mission and meets the criteria delineated in its selection, display, or programming policy (as applicable).

A book is banned when it is entirely removed from a collection in response to a formal or informal challenge.

Any reduction in access to library materials based on an individual or group's believe that they are harmful or offensive is an act of censorship. ALA does not consider weeding of an item based on criteria defined in a library or school district's policy to be a ban, nor do we characterize a temporary reduction in access resulting from the need to review materials to be a ban.

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Book Bans Are Surging in Florida. So Lauren Groff Opened a Bookstore.

It’s called The Lynx, after the wildcat native to the state. “We wanted something a little fierce,” she said.

By Alexandra Alter

On a recent Sunday, Lauren Groff got out of bed at three in the morning, jolted by a mix of anxiety and adrenaline.

It was opening day for The Lynx, Groff’s new bookstore in Gainesville, Fla., and her mind raced with all that could go wrong. So she drove over to the store, where she felt reassured by the presence of some 7,000 books, a collection she had helped to curate.

“I like being there alone, because I’m surrounded by all of my friends,” Groff, a best-selling novelist and three-time National Book Award finalist, said of the books.

A few hours later, she was no longer alone: By 10 a.m., about 100 people had lined up outside the store to watch as Groff cut the ribbon. More than 3,000 people showed up throughout the day for a series of author readings, folk music, live poetry composition and, of course, to buy books.

Groff and her husband, Clay Kallman, had toyed with the idea of opening a bookstore in Gainesville for more than a decade, but the timing never felt right. Groff’s writing career was taking off, and they had two young sons. But last year, as book bans surged across Florida , they decided that their town needed an independent bookstore where titles that had been purged from libraries and classrooms would be on prominent display.

“This store would probably still be a pipe dream if the book bans hadn’t happened,” said Groff, who has lived in Gainesville since 2006. “I want this for me too. I don’t want to live in a place where we stifle free expression.”

Last fall, they found an old building, a 2,300-square-foot former hair salon, on South Main Street in downtown Gainesville. They transformed it into a bookstore and event space, with a cozy reading nook in the children’s book section, a small cafe and large rolling display tables that can be wheeled away to make way for chairs.

For the front of the building, they commissioned a 60-foot-long mural of a lynx, a wildcat native to Florida , sitting sphynx-like next to the store’s motto: “Watch Us Bite Back.”

“We wanted something a little fierce,” Groff said.

Banned titles are prominently placed at The Lynx. A large display near the front of the store features frequently challenged books across the United States — among them “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood; “Beloved” by Toni Morrison; “Tricks” by Ellen Hopkins; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson.

Groff also hopes to make The Lynx a place where people will come together to discuss books that are being targeted. Upcoming selections for its Banned Books Book Club include “ Gender Queer ” by Maia Kobabe and “ Flamer ” by Mike Curato.

The store’s mission is also resonating outside of Florida. Since The Lynx opened, it has received about $1000 in donations from around the country. Groff plans to use the funds to distribute free copies of banned titles to Florida residents who might not otherwise have access to them.

“At a time when we in Florida need to speak out against the banning of books and against the restriction of reading, she’s going to have a real impact,” said Mitchell Kaplan, the founder of Books & Books, an independent chain in South Florida, who shared advice with Groff when she was preparing to open the store.

Groff is the latest writer to try her hand at book selling, joining Ann Patchett, Louise Erdrich, Judy Blume, Emma Straub, Jenny Lawson, Leah Johnson, Jeff Kinney and others.

This January, Groff attended the Winter Institute, an annual gathering of independent bookstore owners, where she got advice from more seasoned booksellers like Straub and Patchett. Straub said she urged Groff to focus not just on the fun parts of running a bookstore, like effusing over books with customers, but also the practical elements, like learning how to manage the point-of-sales system.

“A lot of us authors don’t spend that much time thinking about that part. We think about the books and the community, all of that big picture stuff, and we don’t necessarily think about the nuts and bolts, retail-ness of it,” Straub said. “Like, oh by the way, you need a mop.”

With its focus on banned books and Florida-centric literature, The Lynx could help make Gainesville more of a literary destination — a hub for author readings, book club gatherings and workshops.

For some local authors, The Lynx already feels like an oasis of sorts.

“This place is not only very welcome, but necessary,” said Amy Hempel, a fiction writer who lives in Gainesville and gave a reading on the store’s opening day, as did the Florida authors David Leavitt, Rebecca Renner, Cynthia Barnett and Kristen Arnett.

The Lynx not only provides a gathering spot for book lovers, Hempel said, but also offers hope to residents who have been discouraged by book bans happening across the state. More than 5,100 books were banned in Florida schools from July 2021 through December 2023 — the highest number in the country, according to PEN America.

“The signal it sends to a community, to the whole state, to the country, at a really heated, difficult time, is such a positive,” Hempel said.

Gainesville isn’t exactly a book desert. It is home to the University of Florida, and has a Books-A-Million and a new Barnes & Noble. But it has lost many of its independent shops. One of its beloved bookstores, Goerings , went out of business in 2010, and another longtime independent, The Florida Bookstore, which was opened by Kallman’s grandfather in 1933 , closed in 2016.

“Gainesville has great potential to have a literary community, but we needed a bookstore,” said Alyssa Eatherly, a Gainesville resident who stopped by The Lynx on a recent evening with her friend, Katie Dreffer, to pick up copies of books that were chosen for the store’s romance book club.

“It’s nice to have something that’s not a big chain,” Dreffer added.

As more people trickled in, Groff greeted customers enthusiastically and asked if they needed recommendations or help finding a book.

“Can I show you where the kids’ section is?” she asked a little girl who came in with her mother. “What do you like?”

The girl followed Groff to the children’s area and asked for a book about ancient history.

Groff asked another shopper who was scanning the display tables if she was able to find what she was looking for. “If you see spots we need to fill, let me know, I’m on it,” she said.

A big draw of The Lynx for many readers and customers, of course, is Groff — an acclaimed writer. She has published two short story collections and five novels, among them her 2023 novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” about a girl who flees to the woods from a colonial settlement in the 1600s, and “Matrix,” her 2021 novel about nuns in medieval England.

Part of the appeal of independent bookstores is their careful curation, and booksellers’ ability to recommend titles based on customers’ interests and moods; who better to help you choose your next book than a best-selling novelist who is also a voracious and wide-ranging reader?

Next to the entrance, on a shelf full of bookseller recommendations, Groff placed a few of her own favorite novels with handwritten notes effusing about them, describing “The Transit of Venus” by Shirley Hazzard as “a work of sheer genius,” and calling “Autobiography of Red” by Anne Carson “legit bonkers brilliant.” (Groff’s husband, Kallman, has only one recommended title on the shelf — Groff’s novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” with a note that says, “It slays.”)

Groff conceded that opening the store and meeting the demands of her own writing career has been exhausting. But she’s not especially worried that selling other people’s books will get in the way of writing her own. She often gets up at 5 a.m. to write and is working on three different books.

“I have four to five hours of writing usually, if I’m not opening a bookstore,” she said.

She plans to be intimately involved in the store’s operations, which will be overseen by the store’s three booksellers and two managers.

“I want to know how to do everything so that I can step in if I have to,” she said.

At the grand opening on April 28, Groff was sweaty and frazzled but buoyed by the enthusiasm of the store’s hundreds of visitors. She got up on an outdoor stage and read from a short story titled “Ghosts and Empties” from her 2018 collection, “Florida.”

Over the course of the day, the store sold 1,011 books, including 56 copies of Groff’s, which sold out. The toilet clogged a few times, and some customers gave up because the cash register line was so long, but otherwise, the mood was celebratory.

“Not a single one of us had a breakdown,” Groff said.

Alexandra Alter writes about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times. More about Alexandra Alter

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Crime Fiction and Communism

In 1971, when the Cuban government launched the Anniversary of the Triumph of the Revolution Crime Fiction award, local literary critics were acutely aware of the genre’s roots in a capitalist setting. Yet, José Antonio Portuondo considered that crime fiction could serve a purpose within a Communist framework of life, provided it underwent adaptation to suit the new context. Over the following years, Cuban journals published numerous programmatic texts aimed at guiding writers willing to produce what would be termed Revolutionary crime fiction. Similar adjustments took place in other Soviet bloc countries, albeit with varying degrees of success and popularity. While crime fiction from the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Hungary are perhaps the most well-known cases, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia also produced significant crime narratives. At the same, however, some Communist leaders loathed the genre: Stalin deemed it “the most naked expression of bourgeois society’s fundamental ideas on property” and Mao banned crime fiction.

Simultaneously, several prominent crime fiction writers from Capitalist backgrounds have identified themselves as Communists at various points in their lives, including Dashiell Hammett, Ed Lacy, Andrea Camilleri, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö, Henning Mankell, Frédéric Fajardie, Thierry Jonquet, among others.

Likewise, a number of Marxist thinkers have analysed the genre. Antonio Gramsci, for instance, included some reflections on detective fiction in his Prison Notebooks, while Trotskyite author Ernest Mandel extensively explored the genre in his Delightful Murder. A Social History of the Crime Story (curiously omitting any mention of crime fiction from the Soviet Bloc). More recently, Stephen Knight has established the relationship between social ideology and genre conventions and Slavoj Žižek has discussed Swedish crime fiction.

Despite all of this, the relationship between crime fiction and Communism remains largely understudied and lacks comprehensive analysis.We are compiling a collection of essays that seek to address the intersection of Communism and crime fiction narratives. Essays with a multinational approach, and dealing with crime fiction generated outside Anglo-American areas are encouraged. Survey essays are discouraged. Possible areas of research may include, but are not limited, to:

Crime fiction written in communist areas

Crime fiction by communist authors living in capitalist areas

Crime fiction set in communist areas

Crime fiction dealing with communist to-post communist transition

Approaches to crime fiction by Marxist thinkers

International circulation of communist crime fiction

Crime television series in communist countries 

Crime fiction that deals with the idea of youth and communism

Youth literature, crime fiction and communism

Advice for contributors

If you are interested in contributing to this collection, we ask that you submit an abstract of up to 300 words explaining the focus and approach to your proposed essay. Include an author bio of 200 words listing your current professional affiliation as well any relevant previous publications and other qualifications. Each final contribution should be around 7000 words, including bibliography. 

Abstracts should be emailed to  [email protected] or [email protected]  

Abstract submission deadline: 15 September 2024.

Authors notified of acceptance: 29 November 2024. 

Full paper submission deadline: 1 April 2025.

About the editors

Dr Carlos Uxo is Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of El género policial en Cuba: Novela policial revolucionaria, neopolicial y teleseries (Peter Lang: 2021), and editor of The Detective Fiction of Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Manchester Metropolitan University: 2006). He has also published close to fifty academic articles and book chapters, including “Cuban Crime Fiction: A Literature for the (Communist) Masses” (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2019) and “Crime Fiction and Authoritarianism” (Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction, 2020).

Dr Isabel Story is Senior Lecturer in Visual Communications at Nottingham Trent University, UK. She is the author of Soviet Influence on Cuban Cultural Institutions 1961-1987 (Lexington 2019) and has edited books on Cuban disaster preparedness (Disaster Preparedness and Climate Change in Cuba, 2021) and social politics (Cuba’s Forgotten Decade, 2018). She specialises in the international projection of Cuban culture and in particular in cultural relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union and East Germany, the role of cultural heritage, and international collaboration. 

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Freedom of Speech — Books Should Not Be Banned

Books Should not Be Banned

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Published: Mar 16, 2024

Words: 793 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

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The freedom to read and access information is a fundamental right that should be protected and upheld in any democratic society, censorship undermines critical thinking, limiting access to valuable and diverse knowledge, inhibiting the development of empathy and understanding.

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China’s online ‘Kim Kardashian’ banned for being too ostentatious

• China’s online ‘Kim Kardashian’ banned for being too ostentatious on x (opens in a new window)
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Joe Leahy and Wenjie Ding in Beijing

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

An influencer nicknamed “China’s Kim Kardashian” for his extravagant outfits and displays of wealth has been banned from Chinese social media networks along with dozens of others who bragged about splurging on luxury goods.

The abrupt online disappearance this week of Wang Hongquanxing, who once boasted he never left home in jewellery and clothes worth less than Rmb10mn ($1.4mn), is part of the government’s latest campaign to maintain its dominance over China’s vibrant social media culture .

Wang and the other influencers, known for their short videos, were banned by multiple Chinese social media platforms, including Weibo, Douyin and Xiaohongshu after the internet regulator announced a drive against “creating ostentatious personas”. Profile pages for Wang, whose real name is Wang Hongquan, were declared inaccessible due to “violation of self-discipline” rules. 

“This is a highly visible spectacle that reminds people of the authority’s power,” said Carwyn Morris, assistant professor of digital China at Leiden University. 

For the Communist party government , the crackdown had the advantage that many would see it as ethically justified, he said. “It is likely that many people do see this sort of content as vulgar, particularly during an economic slowdown,” Morris said. “So this conduct makes the authority seem more moral and upstanding in their actions.”

China’s economy grew at an annual rate of about 5 per cent in the first quarter, but analysts say other indicators show real conditions are tougher than the headline figures would suggest, making the authorities even more sensitive to any sources of possible discontent.

The campaign started in April, when the Cyberspace Administration of China, the internet watchdog, announced it would curb behaviour such as “deliberately showcasing a lavish lifestyle built on wealth”. 

Internet platforms responded last week by vowing to crack down on “extravagance and waste” and “ostentation and materialism”. 

“Once materialism starts spreading, it can have a bad influence on teenagers . . . Hence this trend of luxury on the internet needs to be stopped,” state media Beijing News wrote on Wednesday. 

The 31-year-old Wang had 4.3mn followers on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, Chinese online magazine Sixth Tone reported. He would appear online dripping with jade and pink diamonds and once boasted he owned seven luxury apartments in Beijing.

Other influencers also banned included “Sister Abalone”, a middle-aged wealthy socialite who gave her more than 2mn followers online tours of her palatial Macau homes, and “Mr Bo”, a luxury goods junkie with nearly 3mn followers.

Showing off his purchases of high-end fashion, Mr Bo carried his dogs around in designer bags, Chinese news website The Paper reported, and for his 25th birthday bought a customised Rolls-Royce Cullinan.

Travelling first class, he shopped at luxury stores around the world, obsessing over Hermès products in particular, according to state news outlet Hongxing News. 

Beijing’s campaigns to control social media figures date back at least to 2012, when it shut down the accounts of popular opinion leaders, said Luwei Rose Luqiu, an associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. 

More recently, China’s regulators have regularly rolled out “Clear and Bright” campaigns to purge the internet of trends they find reprehensible.

In 2021, authorities targeted celebrities and their armies of fans. A year later, they purged more accounts in the name of protecting youth from cyber bullying and other evils. 

But according to the China Media Project, a research group, Beijing made clear in 2022 that its real aim was to control online behaviour ahead of a national congress in October that year at which President Xi Jinping won an unprecedented third term as party general secretary.

“The goal in carrying out the special action . . . is to protect the party’s 20th National Congress,” the China Media Project quoted senior Cyberspace Administration official Zhang Yong as saying in March 2022.

Last year, the campaigns cracked down on “gender antagonism” — code for feminism — and on “class antagonism”, described by the China Media Project as a curious target for a party long led by Mao Zedong, a champion of class struggle.

Baptist University’s Luqiu said this year’s campaign against luxury influencers was aimed at asserting control over the emergence of independent internet personas. The “Clear and Bright” campaigns rarely affected state-backed personalities.

“The focus has shifted to grassroots internet celebrities . . . to strengthen control of the internet due to the concern about losing the ability to control public opinion and the behaviour of the people,” Luqiu said.

Leiden University’s Morris said managing short video content had become increasingly important for Beijing as the medium grew in popularity. 

A report by the official China Internet Network Information Center in March showed nearly 98 per cent of Chinese internet users watched short videos, while just under 76 per cent used conventional web browsers. 

The latest crackdown, however, has drawn a mixed response, with some championing influencers such as Wang — a sponsor of charities who is liked for his forthright style — and others criticising them.  

“Internet celebrities are already pretty boring, and flaunting wealth just makes them even more annoying,” said one online commenter. 

But another said Beijing’s efforts to conceal conspicuous consumption would not make poverty disappear.

“It’s hilarious — it turns out [the government’s] method for solving the wealth gap is to blindfold the poor so they can’t see it,” said one popular post on the question-and-answer website Zhihu. 

Wang’s assistant did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sister Abalone’s agency and Mr Bo could not be reached.

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