Book censorship is no longer a concern of countries with authoritarian regimes, such as China or Russia. It has also long been a reality in "the land of freedom," thanks to pressure from the most conservative groups, fearful their children will read things about racism, homosexuality or anything that is not to their liking. 

On Feb. 2, an ultra-conservative pastor in Nasville, Tennessee, organized a burning of copies of Harry Potter and Twilight (children novels about magic and vampires) to stamp out their "demonic influences." 

A week later, Tennessee was again in the news after members of the local McMinn County School Board voted unanimously to remove Maus, an acclaimed Holocaust comic, from the eighth-grade curriculum.

In Oklahoma, Republicans have introduced a bill in the Senate that would give parents the power to veto school books that focus on topics such as sexual preferences, sexual activity, sexual perversion, and sexual identity. 

“There have been battles and debates that have bubbled up from time to time but the ferocity of this wave of both the education gag orders affecting curricular and book bans is unprecedented,” Stephanie Nossel, CEO of PEN America, told The Guardian.

“We’re in this pitched moment of historically unprecedented polarization in our country and there is a very potent and intense struggle under way about what the future of our society looks like,” she added.

According to a new American Library Association report, there were 330 “book challenges” in the Fall of 2021, an uptick from the same periods in recent years.

“Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades,” the New York Times reported last month.

In the state of Virginia, a conservative mother got the support of the Republican candidate to denounce Beloved, the masterpiece by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, for containing explicit content and violence. 

Another controversial book is The Handmaid's Tale, Maragaret Atwood’s popular dystopian story that turns the United States into a Christian theocracy where fertile women are stripped of their name and impregnated against their will. The original book, its graphic novel adaptation, and sequel, The Testaments, were pulled from circulation then quickly restored in a Kansas school district in November.

The comic book Fun Home, in which author Alison Bechdel addresses the issue of her own homosexuality, has also sparked protests in numerous states, as did All Blues Aren't Blue, by nonbinary Black writer George M. Johnson, Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe, and The Bluest Eye, also by Morrison. Another book that has been the subject of complaints is And Tango Makes Three, a children's book about two male penguins who fall in love and have a baby penguin.

In late 2020, a school board in York County, Pennsylvania, voted to ban books, movies and articles that tell stories from the perspective of gay, Black and Latino children. According to the New York Times, the ban "included children's books like A Boy Called Bat, about a third-grader with autism, I am Rosa Parks and Cece Loves Science, about a curious girl who loves experiments. However, after a massive student outcry, the board temporarily lifted the ban in September.