‘Copycat’ book bans: How US activists are impacting Australian libraries

Book bans across schools and libraries have increased rapidly in the US over the past five years, in a trend that has also hit Australian shores with Sydney’s Cumberland City Council attracting controversy this week for voting to ban books featuring same-sex parents.

In April this year, PEN America found 4349 book bans were recorded across 23 states and 52 public school districts from July to December 2023. That reflects more bans in the first half of the current school year than in the entire 2022-2023 year, in which 3362 books were targeted.

Melbourne-based author Amie Kaufman.Credit: Christopher Tovo

Among the most banned books in the US is Gender Queer, a memoir by Maia Kobabe about coming out as non-binary, while titles ranging from The Color Purple to The Catcher in the Rye have been taken out of school and public libraries. Overwhelmingly, the affected books are about LGBTQ issues or race, or written by queer authors and non-white authors.

Many of the activists agitating for bans are from the Christian lobby, some are Republicans, some are from the far-right; all seem to have a particular agenda. The right-wing group Moms for Liberty is at the forefront of the objections, often made through school councils and directly to libraries. In response, groups such as Stop Moms for Liberty have sprung up, to counter what it calls a far-right extremist group “destroying public education.”

“When we try to ban books effectively what we do is silence voices – and very particular voices,” says Melbourne-based Amie Kaufman, whose books have been the target of bans in the US.

Kaufman’s New York Times best-selling books – The Illuminae Files and Aurora Rising with US writer Jay Kristoff have been banned in some parts of the US – news she has heard through messages sent by readers saying they are unable to get them. It’s difficult to know exactly where her books have been struck off, she says, as it’s all ad hoc. Across the board, Florida and Texas are the states with the highest number of banned books.

The Handmaid’s Tale is one title that’s been banned in some US school districts.Credit: SBS

Ironically, the objections are not based on violence, she says, which does feature, but too much LGBTQ content, despite there being no sexual activity featured. In one of the books concerned, the extent of same-sex content is when a teacher in a fantasy school refers to her wife.

Reports this week of NSW Cumberland Council voting to ban a same-sex parenting book has brought the issue to a head locally. Councillor Steve Christou had claimed parents had complained about a book titled Same Sex Parents, which led to the motion to ban it.

This is similar to what has occurred again and again in the US, with books featuring the same kind of content also targeted.

According to the American Library Association, just a handful of people are driving the record number of challenges to books in the US. AWashington Post analysis of thousands of challenges found that 60 per cent of all challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from 11 adults, each of whom objected to dozens – sometimes close to 100 – of books in their districts.

The Post found the majority of school book objections centred on titles by or about LGBTQ individuals or people of colour.

Visiting Australia last year, Tracie D Hall, outgoing head of the American Library Association said all but four states in the US have introduced pro-censorship laws. “We are now outpacing even the McCarthy era in terms of censorship,” she said. “This should be a global concern because we are seeing other nations who are copy-catting the clamping down on freedom of speech.”

Most of the books in question are about race, gender identity and sexual orientation. Non-fiction books about menstruation, or dealing with sexual assault and rape, have been labelled pornography by those wanting to ban them, says Hall. “For those books to be called pornographic, it is a heinous and egregious misuse of those terms,” she says.

The Cumberland news this week reflects something industry professionals have been concerned about for several years. “This sort of activity and this sort of pressure on libraries really has no place in Australian society today,” says Cathie Warburton, CEO of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA).

Her organisation has been monitoring this kind of actively over the last 18 months and has seen an increase in attacks on library staff. “We are seeing basic copycatting from the States,” she says.

“We’ve had people going into libraries, grabbing books off the shelves, reading them out loud and saying ‘These shouldn’t be here’, calling librarians horrible names and threatening doxxing and physical violence. It’s incredibly distressing.”

It’s almost a mirror image of what has been experienced in the US. Thus far, ALIA has been working behind the scenes to assist staff affected, but Warburton says the Cumberland ban was a tipping point.

“A number of us have seen this as a watershed moment,” she says, adding it’s a concern for publishers, authors, librarians and booksellers alike – not to mention readers. “It’s this amazing force saying, no, not on our watch. This is a threat to democracy.”

Warburton says organised groups of people are going around to libraries, who don’t live locally, conducting targeted campaigns against particular books. Again, they seem to be taking a leaf out of their US counterparts’ playbook.

In Australia, the focus is on LGBTQ titles and related events, such as drag-themed Rainbow story time.

Welcome to Sex which won an ABIA this week, was subject to a conservative backlash on its release last year.

“Thank goodness the legal structure in Australia is very different to the States,” Warburton says. “In NSW the public libraries act and guidelines make it clear that you can’t take books off shelves on discriminatory grounds.”

Here, only the Australian Classification Board has the legislative right to classify and/or restrict books.

It’s not the first time this issue has made headlines in Australia. Last year, Welcome to Sex by Dr Melissa Kang and Yumi Stynes was targeted by conservative activists which resulted in it being temporarily pulled from the shelves of Big W.

The book was pitched as a frank, age-appropriate introductory guide to sex and sexuality for teens of all genders but described as graphic and offensive by objectors. At the time, Stynes told this masthead she was surprised by the backlash and that “an army of professors … fact-checked and contributed to the book”.

“So for people to try and shame us or make us feel like we haven’t done the work, it’s just really misguided. It does make me think that they’re taking a leaf out of the book of Trumpism and fearmongering there,” she said.

On Thursday, Welcome to Sex was voted Book of the Year for Older Children at the Australian Book Industry Awards “for its ‘there’s no silly question’ guide to sexuality and pleasure”.

Kaufman says a perception persists that a book being banned can be positive, that it’s good publicity and can lead to increased sales. That is a myth, she says, most banned books just go silent “and kids don’t get to read those books any more”.

“This is a culture war we need to avoid importing to Australia,” she says. “We need to be in an active conversation about it, and we have in front of us an example of what can happen if we don’t.”

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.