Mastodawn

Annalee Newitz 🍜Jan 7, 2023

Was just doing research for a book I #amwriting and discovered that in the U.S., over 1600 #books were banned in school libraries in 2022 -- as compared to just 175 being "challenged" in 2015 (books that are challenged are rarely banned, according to the American Library Association, so the numbers of banned books that year were much lower).

In 2022, 41% of books were banned for LBGT content. 40% had BIPOC characters.

Citations:
2022: https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-censor-books-in-schools/

2015: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/statistics/2015infographiclong

Banned in the USA

PEN America's report on school book bans offers the most comprehensive look at banned books in the 2021–22 school year, with counting more than 2,500 bans.

PEN America

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Mayhawke Jan 7, 2023

@annaleen Many years ago I read a #scifi #shortstory by (I think) #Robert_Heinlein. In it he imagined a future US that was a theocracy, in a similar vein to post revolutionary Iran in the late 70's. He set the story a couple of centuries ahead, and when I read it - as a teen - I thought it was stretching the bounds of possibility.

Four decades later, it's looking increasingly feasible.

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T. Thorn Coyle they/them Jan 7, 2023

@annaleen @mayhawke

I found The Family by Jeff Sharlet indispensable for understanding how a strange theocracy runs the US government. It’s non fiction and very real. There’s a documentary series on Netflix as well as the book.

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SpeakerToManagers Jan 7, 2023

@thorncoyle @mayhawke @annaleen
It’s “If This Goes On” published with 2 other stories in a collection called “Revolt In 2100”. He was inspired by events in the US in the 1930s very similar to what’s happening here and now: rising Protestant theocracy, rising home-grown fascism, rising racism and antisemitism.

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Mayhawke

@SpeakerToManagers @thorncoyle @annaleen Yes, someone else has ID'd the book for me, as well, but thank you.
THinking about it now, 40 yrs later, what strikes me is how enduringly and powerfully that story, and the horror it inspired, have stayed with me. I read pretty much everything by #Heinlein & #Asimov at that time, and odd bits are remembered, but that story is one of the stand out memories from quite a large corpus of work.