Writing in an Age of Censorship: The Banned Books Epidemic
Part of the point of the arts is to bring the imagination to life. They allow us to take the things in our heads and run with them, whether it be through visuals, performances, or literature. But nothing, not even the most intimate and insightful of things, is free of controversy, as, in reality, these things also tend to breed discomfort. Embracing that discomfort—“getting comfortable with being uncomfortable”, per se—is not something that everyone feels inclined to do, so instead of facing difficult ideas, they attempt to shut them down. In the case of art, this can take the form of debate over what is and is not acceptable by various societal and “moral” standards, and it’s from this that the issue of book bans stems.
Banning books is far from a new concept, typically involving the removal of a text from public libraries and schools but, at least in the United States, not actual legal action to remove it from print or prevent citizens from owning it. But it’s not the logistics or legal details of book banning that I want to focus on in this particular post. Overall, it doesn’t really matter because the simple suggestion that we should restrict public access to a piece of literature is censorship in itself.
As an author, this is something that I think a lot about, even if it doesn’t yet directly affect my work. I don’t have any published books, although I hope that one day I might, and all of the smaller pieces that I do have out in the world have been published on this website, under my name and my brand with my own money. Most of the stories I’ve published don’t address heavy issues, in part because short fiction doesn’t always have enough space to deal with complex themes in what I would consider to be a thorough and complete enough manner. My novels, however, are different, and I have to wonder what kind of chance they would ever stand in a political climate where half the issues they address or otherwise acknowledge could get them challenged or removed from shelves in a second if a loud enough group chooses to take issue with them.
Some may say that the simple solution would be for me to avoid these topics altogether, but that would be tedious if not impossible for me to successfully do while still maintaining the full scope of my stories, especially as, oftentimes, the inclusion of a theme in a fictional text is not intentional. I never liked it when English teachers would ask what themes an author had intended for readers to take away from their work because I almost never enter a project with any such ideas in mind. They create themselves as I go because if you’re writing a story well enough, you’re doing more than following your storyboard point by point from beginning to end. The story is coming alive as you put your words on paper, as your values and views of the world are subconsciously woven between each line.
My primary project, for example, which is the inspiration behind most of the short stories I’ve written, started off as a story about family ties (with respect to both blood and found families) and that was it. While it has maintained that focus, it has also since branched off into other areas. Coming of age, sexuality, gender norms, power dynamics, war, oppression, religion, death. You name it and it’s probably in there somewhere. Most of it was not deliberate. It was just the way the story formed as I expressed myself, influenced by the state of the world around me.
Ultimately, I write what I want to write, even if it means writing about ideas that are objectively messed up, because you can’t just stay away from topics because you think they might upset someone. Otherwise, the story you’re telling isn’t honest.
Words have power, but writing a story about real problems that people in our world do face, such as in To Kill a Mockingbird, or could face, such as in The Handmaid’s Tale or The Hunger Games, doesn’t hurt anyone. At least, it shouldn’t. And we can’t keep using kids as an excuse for everything either. Banning books is not about protecting children any more than it’s about protecting the rest of the general public. It’s about blinding them.
Needless to say, the idea of books being used as political ammunition bothers me. A lot. There’s so much that I could say about it that I almost can’t form any words at all. I’ve never been able to understand why some people care so much about other people’s business or why anyone would ever feel the need to control what someone else can and can’t do. With their lives, with their bodies, with their art. All it does is chain people down, and when you put chains on the hands of a writer, you hold back humanity.
Informational Resources
American Library Association Banned Books Information: https://www.ala.org/bbooks
Pen American 2025 Banned Books List: https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/
