LGBTQ+ Titles Targeted for Censorship: Stand Against Book Banning
Photo: NYPL
Pride Month brings together the LGBTQ+ community and its allies to celebrate and remember those who have fought for equality and the freedom to live authentically. While this is a time for festivities and celebration, Pride Month this year takes place against the backdrop of an unprecedented rise in attempts to ban books in schools and libraries across the country—bans that overwhelmingly target books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters.
2022 saw the largest-ever number of attempted book bans in the more than 20 years that the American Library Association has been keeping records—nearly double the number reported in 2021. Of the 13 most targeted books last year, seven were challenged on the basis of their LGBTQ+ content.
Banning books is an attempt to silence voices. Voices that have fought to be heard. Voices whose stories light the way for the next generation. Voices that belong in libraries. Let us say it loud and clear: Libraries are for everyone and books are for everyone.
The New York Public Library remains dedicated to ensuring that no perspective, no idea, no identity is erased. This Pride, we ask you to stand with us to push back against censorship and stand up for the freedom to read.
Most Challenged Books With LGBTQ+ Themes (2022)
ALA documented challenges to 2,571 unique titles in 2022. The books below—targeted for their LGBTQ+ content— are among ALA's Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022. See the full list. Check out the books below, talk to your librarians about what other titles have been the target of censorship, then—check them out. Read banned books. Ensure these stories—and the writers who share them—are read, their voices amplified, and their impact felt.
Gender Queer: A Memoir
by Maia Kobabe
In this intensely cathartic autobiography, Kobabe (who uses e/em/eir pronouns) charts eir journey of self-identity. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide to gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto
by George M. Johnson
The first book by the prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist shares personal essays that chronicle his childhood, adolescence, and college years as a queer Black youth, exploring subjects ranging from gender identity and toxic masculinity to structural marginalization and Black joy.
Flamer
by Mike Curato
In the summer between middle school and high school, Aiden Navarro navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and finds himself drawn to Elias, a boy he can't stop thinking about.
Looking for Alaska
by John Green
Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words—and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet François Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young, who will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
by Stephen Chbosky
Charlie is a freshman and while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. He's a wallflower—shy and introspective, and intelligent beyond his years, if not very savvy in the social arts. We learn about Charlie through the letters he writes: trying to make friends, family tensions, exploring sexuality, experimenting with drugs—and dealing with his best friend's recent suicide.
Lawn Boy
by Jonathan Evison
Mike Muñoz is a young Mexican American not too many years out of high school—and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew. Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it.
This Book Is Gay
by Juno Dawson
A British author of teen fiction offers basic information about the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender experience, including terms, religious issues, coming out, and sex acts, for people of all orientations—including the curious.
Further Reading:
NYPL staff at the 2022 NYC Pride March