The republican-dominated state of Florida has already the most number of banned books in the USA. And ahead of the start of term, hundreds of new titles have disappeared from school libraries, writes The Guardian.
The bans began to increase after 2021, but the latest wave of withdrawn books in Florida comes after pressure from the state's education board. In May, its board issued a sharp warning to Hillsborough County's school district – if the school did not remove "pornographic" titles from its library, they were threatened with legal action.
More than 600 books were cleared out because of this, in a process that costs the district around 350,000 dollar. Books that were sorted out included, for example, "Anne Frank's diary" and "What girls are made of" by Elana K Arnold – despite neither of the titles having been reported as unsuitable by any parents. Nine different schools have now removed books as a precaution, for example Maya Angelou's classic "I know why the caged bird sings" and Kurt Vonnegut's anti-war depiction "Slaughterhouse 5" about the bombing of Dresden.
American Pen believes that the book purges are "state-driven censorship" and calls them a "strategic attempt to consolidate power through fear, by circumventing legal precedents and silencing different voices in Florida's public schools".
Many of the books that have been cleared out are otherwise about diversity, racism or hbtqi issues.
