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The American Library Association (ALA) reported on March 23 that 1,269 requests for censorship of books were received in the United States last year, particularly works by or about the LGTBI community and non-white people. That is, almost double that in 2021.
Demands for the censorship of books in libraries in the United States in 2022 almost doubled compared to the previous year and reached an unprecedented number of 1,269 documented cases, the American Library Association (ALA) reported.
This association indicated that also last year, “a record of 2,571 unique titles” was reached that were targeted for censorship, an increase of 38% compared to the 1,858 unique titles in 2021. According to ALA, in this case the vast majority were books written by or about members of the LGBT community and people of color.
“Censorship Groups”
In the case of the 1,269 documented cases of censorship requests, 58% of them were books and materials in school libraries, classrooms or that appeared in the student’s curriculum, while another 41% of these efforts pointed to materials in public libraries.
Some of the affected titles in previous years were classics like Kill a Mockingbirdby Harper Lee of mice and menby John Steinbeck and Blue eyesby the Nobel Prize for Literature Toni Morrison.
Prior to 2021, most attempts to silence a book sought to remove or restrict access. Now “we are seeing these challenges coming from organized censorship groups going to local library board meetings to demand the withdrawal of a long list of books” and “that no one can read them,” he said in a statement from Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.
“Book Police”
Its goal is to “suppress the voices of those traditionally excluded from our nation’s conversations, such as people from the LGTBQIA+ community or people of color,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who argues that readers should be the ones to decide what read and not “the self-proclaimed book police”.
Censorship does not attack only books. There are more and more threats against library workers, their employment, their safety and in some cases direct threats for providing books to young people and their parents who want to read, recalled the president of ALA, Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo. -Lozada.
The challenge of a book can be resolved in favor of keeping it in the collection, restricting its access or withdrawing it from the library, the association specifies, which only counts the complaints it receives directly.
