Books are essential. Storytelling allows us to fill in the gaps of history, gain new perspectives, and orient ourselves and our place in the universe. Ironically, the power of books is affirmed by the recent efforts to suppress them. In 2023, compared to 2022, the number of book titles targeted for censorship surged by 65%, reaching the highest numbers ever documented by the American Library Association (ALA). Primarily targeting schools and public libraries, book challenges have been increasing exponentially since 2020 and they show no signs of slowing down.
Some recurring themes show up on the banned books list. For example, books about LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47% of those targeted in censorship attempts, the ALA reports. In honor of those whose stories and lives have been deemed too sensitive, we’d like to give these books a fair chance. With the help of 10 published authors (whose newest books are linked below), we’ve put together a list of banned book recommendations that cover everything from enslavement and forced immigration to queer coming of age tales.
01of 10
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
“Vulnerable and honest, this memoir wrestles with some heavy themes but they are balanced out with really joyful family stories. When I first encountered this book it felt unlike anything else I’d read before, especially for a YA audience. I love a queer memoir and I hope the challenges against this book only bring it to a wider audience.”
—Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer, the most challenged book of 2023, according to the ALA
02of 10
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
“[Nineteen Minutes] is a novel about a school shooting, and it explores the nightmare that becomes real with horrifying frequency: A troubled, likely bullied, young person morphs into a monster. It’s a tale that could help discourage gun violence … but, of course, that means people have to be able to read it.”
—Chris Bohjalian, author of bestseller and banned book Midwives
03of 10
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
“The House on Mango Street packs a punch for a short novel. Cisneros weaves together a medley of vignettes into one unified narrative that captures Esperanza Cordero’s childhood and adolescence in her Mexican American neighborhood of Chicago. Banned or challenged in schools for a myriad of themes including sexuality, racism, and poverty, this book brilliantly evokes Esperanza’s journey from girl to young woman. I love so much what Cisneros does in this book, from dialogue to characterization, but my favorite part is the language itself, which is so lush and bright it seems to shine right off the page.”
—Shannon Bowring, author of Where the Forest Meets the River
04of 10
Beloved by Toni Morrison
“Toni Morrison’s Beloved tells with such depth, beauty, and pain, the racial tensions that have long crossed—and still cross—the United States of America. But the value of Beloved goes far beyond the borders of a single country … Toni Morrison makes the story of Sethe and Denver a universal parable, with sumptuous, elegant, magnificent prose … Beloved moves us to tears, makes us participate in a circumstantial and timeless tragedy, elevates our spirit, infuses new strength into our desire for justice, makes us more human than we would be without reading it.”
—Nicola Lagioia, author of The City of the Living
05of 10
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
“Yaa Gyasi’s beautiful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable Homegoing should be required reading for every American. A generational saga spanning three centuries, the novel begins with two sisters in Gold Coast Africa who are divided forever by slavery. Gyasi’s spellbinding storytelling and artful fictional realization of these difficult moments in our shared history offer an empathetic platform for facing and discussing the legacies of enslavement and forced immigration. The fact that it has been banned in many communities is testament to the power of the blow it lands.”
—Juliet Grames, author of The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia,
06of 10
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
“A Time to Kill depicts the brutal, racially motivated rape of a very young girl and the trial of her father that follows in the wake of his grief-fueled murder of her attackers. In addition to being a riveting legal thriller, A Time to Kill is, importantly, an extremely accessible look at the complex intersection of racism and the American justice system. Counterintuitively and—I would argue, disingenuously—the book has been repeatedly banned precisely because of the racism and terrifying sexual violence it depicts. However, never has a society or its youth changed for the better by trying to pretend its greatest horrors do not exist.”
—Kimberly McCreight, author of Like Mother, Like Daughter
07of 10
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
“One could say that Lolita should be read precisely because of the empathy it inspires for the character of Humbert Humbert, a pedophile—which demonstrates literature’s capacity to transport us into realities far removed from our own. Yet, this position would be as moralistic as wanting to ban Lolita. Instead, I think we should read Lolita to remind ourselves that, in a world where people and institutions seek to ban myriad works of art out of bigotry and prejudice, a native Russian speaker was able to emigrate to the United States and write one of the greatest masterpieces of English-language literature—a book so powerful that some still want to ban it seventy years after it was written.”
—Irene Graziosi, author of The Other Profile
08of 10
The Rabbits’ Wedding by Garth Williams
“One of my favorite children’s banned books was published in April of 1958, long before challenged books became viral. The Rabbits’ Wedding, by uber talented author and illustrator Garth Williams, depicts an enchanting woodland wedding … The sweet story and glorious watercolor illustrations give children a first glimpse of true love. Unfortunately, it was banned when the White Citizens Council in Alabama challenged the book and had it removed from libraries because the male rabbit was black and the female rabbit was white. This white-supremacist group argued that the book would condition preschoolers to cross the color line.”
—Nancy Furstinger, author of The Forgotten Rabbit
09of 10
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
“The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood has long been my favorite banned book. This gripping book positions you in a future of censorship and government control that feels all too possible. It follows the story of a woman whose fertility is so prized in a future of low birth rates that she has become the possession of a wealthy family, forced to bear children for them. The book is as tangible and moving today as it was when it was written in 1985 and the dystopian society of Gilead is fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. Margaret Atwood has produced an incredibly detailed, well-considered dystopian world that will pull you in and characters who will remain with you permanently as a chilling reminder of what could be.”
—Lily Kingsolver, author of Coyote’s Wild Home
10of 10
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
“A trilogy of fantastical novels that are filled with the kind of adventures and oblong monsters one would expect, these books transcend by ultimately turning into examinations of a world without God. As our heroes come of age, they face rich and vital emotional conflicts which are buoyed by frank examinations of what it means to be a person, to be alive. Targeted in particular by the Catholic church, Pullman’s oft-banned novels were my first true exposure to questions of existence, cloaked so perfectly in one of the most thrilling fantasy universes I’ve found.”
