Novel Narratives:
Banned Book Representation
in the Age of the PEN Index

by Karoline Schaufler, Temple University

For many readers, the sheer variety of texts as well as individual titles that appear on PEN America’s Index of Banned Books might come as a surprise (Meehan, n.p.). Most books on the list are contemporary young adult fiction, children’s books, and even early-reader books. They don’t match up with a trope of banned books as popular “modern classics.” Novels like The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird that show up on high school Advanced Placement English curricula or on tote bags and stickers celebrating Banned Books Week at the library.

As of 2023 these “classic” types of books hardly crack into the top 20 of the PEN Index’s most frequently banned books across multiple reports and years. In a sample set from 2021 to 2022, the PEN Index recorded more than 2,500 unique bans across over 1,500 different titles. Of those, 22 books were banned 10 times or more, making them the most frequently recorded banned books of that period (Figure 1).

Many of the books on this shortlist, including Gender Queer, All Boys Aren’t Blue, and Lawn Boy, immediately begin to disrupt the trope of the banned “classic,” suggesting that it is a largely outdated narrative for what is occurring in schools and communities today.

Alongside banned book projects from PEN America and the American Library Association (ALA), the 2020s have also seen a significant increase in media coverage of banned books in publications like The New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Surveying the digital archives of these platforms confirms the existence of a narrative of the “classic” banned books of the recent past. However, it also reveals a shift in the way banned books are discussed today – from the generalized idea of what important, contested books might be to a more accurate representation of banned books and the audiences and themes at stake in them.

Across 60 articles from these publications, which mention or display 201 unique titles in their coverage of book banning, 19 books are mentioned five or more times. From 2000 to 2020 coverage of banned books most prevalently included older titles such as The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as popular series of the early 2000s, Harry Potter and Captain Underpants. From 2021 to 2023 across the same number of articles, none of these books continue to appear with high frequency. They have switched out for a greater variety of books, with The Bluest Eye, Gender Queer, and newly popular titles such as The Hate U Give appearing most frequently (Figure 2). As records of banned books improve in quality and availability, media narratives and generalized representations of banned books are also changing.

 Today, the media’s most frequently touted banned books have more in common with books recorded on the PEN Index than in the recent past. Seven of the most mentioned books from 2021 to 2023 align with PEN’s most frequently indexed bans. This is up from only one match in the earlier media from the 2000s.

Additionally, beyond the top books in each category, only about 38% of all books mentioned from 2000 to 2020 are on the PEN Index of banned books at all. This number increases to 61% from 2021 to 2023 (Figure 3). Banned book narratives are more representative of actual records now than they used to be, but the shift is not complete. Media coverage has a way to go before presenting a truly representative narrative of banned books.

The narratives that develop around banned books matter because they illuminate the issues and identities that are repeatedly challenged. In a 2021 interview, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, shared that the most challenged books in the U.S. have historically dealt with racism and related diversity issues. However, “in 2018 and 2019, the Banned Books list was made up ‘almost exclusively’ of books dealing with LGBTQ concerns” (Blair, n.p.). While the narratives around banned books have not reflected this shift completely, it is notable that all the most frequently mentioned books in surveyed media from 2021 to 2023 deal explicitly with race and/or LGBTQ+ concerns. This marks a clear and important difference from past narratives that highlight other coming-of-age themes and some, like Captain Underpants, that aren’t engaged in the same kind of commentary at all.

As PEN and the ALA continue to provide data on banned books, we should remain attentive to how media narratives respond, diluting or encouraging awareness of what is actually at stake amongst surging book bans. The texts that occupy the trope of a quintessentially banned book are changing, and recognizing the banned book narratives that belong in the past and present may help us better protect challenged books and their ideas.

Works Cited

Blair, E. (2021). During Banned Books Week, Readers Explore What It Means To Challenge Texts. NPR., https://www.npr.org/2021/09/30/1041610286/during-banned-books-week-readers-explore-what-it-means-to-challenge-text.

 Meehan, K. (2023). Bans In the USA Report. PEN America. https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercharge-book-suppression-in-schools/