Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books

Book banning in the United States has a long history. The very first volume to be censored was New England Canaan by Thomas Morton. He published it in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1637. The author was critical of the Puritans and their treatment of Indigenous people. Though a colonist, Morton was not Puritan, and his views threatened the religious orthodoxy of his day. The next book to stir widespread controversy didn’t appear for almost 200 years. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) was banned from most of the South for its inflammatory anti-enslavement rhetoric. Plantation owners feared that it might inspire uprisings among enslaved people. In the North, it fueled the growth of the abolition movement.

In both these instances, the topics suppressed by America’s earliest censors are still capable of stirring controversy today: religion and social justice. The third topic, sexuality, had its turn in 1873 with the Comstock Act. This law prohibited the post office from transporting materials deemed to be obscene. While one might assume that pornography was the target, the law was really intended to prevent the circulation of materials related to contraception or abortion. The Comstock Act still impacts people today since contemporary anti-choice activists are attempting to use it as a pretext to curtail the distribution of medical abortion pills.

These three examples, so widely separated in time, are indicative of how sporadic censorship once was in this country. However, with the growth of mass communication, book banning became a 20th- and 21st-century phenomenon. Censorship has increased dramatically in the past two years. Since 2022, the country has seen a 63 % rise in attempted censorship. Not all bans are successful since many of these have been contested in court. Of those cases, 75% are directed at reading material for children and teens. The primary reasons given for removing objectionable books from the hands of young readers are obscenity and immorality.

Some law courts view the freedom to read as a right covered by the First Amendment if the government or a public institution attempts to curtail that activity. In the past few years, the American Library Association has seen a troubling increase in the number of ban requests. These are no longer being brought forward by isolated individuals but by organized groups demanding censorship of books they have never read. At the moment, the topics most likely to stir controversy are race and gender. Nearly half the books targeted for banning contain subject matter about people of color, and complaints often cite their (real or supposed) engagement with critical race theory. The other controversial topic is LGBTQ+ identity.

Efforts to ban books are not evenly distributed throughout the country. States with the most bans are Florida, Texas, Missouri, Utah, North and South Carolina, and Virginia. Significantly, Pennsylvania is the only northern state in the top tier of censors. Within the states that advocate book bans, most censorship is concentrated in rural areas. Further, political conservatives are far more likely to favor bans than liberals. By setting Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books in a small Georgia town, the author is mirroring the current demographic and political trends in censorship. However, the novel offers a hopeful note in its conclusion that tolerance, and not suppression, serves a community best.