More than a thousand book titles, most addressing racism and LGBTQ issues, have been banned from U.S. classrooms and school libraries in the last nine months, many under pressure from conservative parents and officials, the writers’ organization PEN America said on Thursday.
PEN compiled a database of banned books that includes the first novel by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison and a memoir by actor and activist George Takei about being sent to an internment camp in California as a Japanese-American child during World War Two.
“Challenges to books, specifically books by non-white male authors are happening at the highest rates we’ve ever seen,” Jonathan Friedman, director of PEN America’s Free Expression Program and lead author of the report, said in a news release.
