Last year, PEN America reported that over 10,000 books were banned in United States public schools. These bans don’t mean that a book will stop being produced or available to purchase, but depending on the ban, it can be removed from libraries’ collections or barred from being part of school curriculums. However, this mass banning of books looks set to not only continue, but accelerate under the Trump administration.
Banned books are not a new issue; literary classics such as 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmaid’s Tale and To Kill A Mockingbird have all been removed from school districts and libraries across the country. However, book bans have been widely discussed in Project2025, and while Project2025 isn’t confirmed to be affiliated with Trump, it is in the best interest for Republicans to ban books that spark discussions about women’s rights, people of color, queer-identifying individuals, facism, rebellion, climate change and class disparity, according to The Hill newspaper. And with a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, it is likely that book banning will increase exponentially over the next four years.
With that said, here are three books to read that include the aforementioned topics and therefore may potentially be banned.
Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler: This dystopian novel was written in 1993, but is set in 2024. Most surprisingly, the story takes place in a post-apocalyptic California that is ravaged by fire; Butler was able to almost perfectly predict the L.A. wildfires over 30 years before they occurred by looking at the warnings of climate change at the time and following them to their logical conclusion.
The story itself follows the journal entries of an African American teenager, Lauren Olamina, who documents the natural disasters, political unrest and socio-economic inequality that are destabilizing the country. Through this, Butler unintentionally predicted current-day America with shocking accuracy. (Interestingly, the sequel to Parable of the Sower, titled Parable of the Talents, which takes place in 2032, features an authoritarian politician promising to, “Make America Great Again.” Butler, who passed before Trump’s political rise, heard the phrase used by President Ronald Reagan, but could not have been more correct in using that phrase in the book.)
Butler seems to have seen the future coming in a way few other writers did, and with vivid language and a captivating plot, this book is her message to us: A warning to stop refusing to change our ways, to be conscious of the consequences of our actions on the planet and to be aware of the actions of those in power.
Parable of the Sower is currently banned from certain state and federal prisons, as well as one Texas school district, for discussing classism, racism and climate change, but it is highly likely that it will be banned in more districts across the country in the future.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 – Cho Nam-Joo: This is the story of a South Korean woman named Kim Jiyoung, a young mother and housewife who is driven to psychosis. The English translation of her name is, fittingly, similar to “Jane Doe”; nothing about her life seems extraordinary, with her living a fairly middle class existence in Seoul. However, after giving birth to her baby, her husband begins to notice that Jiyoung is having episodes where she takes on the personalities and mannerisms of other women in her life, from her mother to her coworkers to her deceased friend.
As her psychiatrist tries to determine what is causing these episodes, the reader is taken through flashbacks of Jiyoung’s life, where it can be seen that gender roles, gender inequality and the patriarchy have profoundly affected her, along with the women around her, for as long as she can remember. As more of Jiyoung’s life is explored, the more prevalent sexism, harassment and the demonization of women are, and these routine experiences are what ultimately cause Jiyoung’s destroyed mental well-being. Jiyoung’s story, raw and unfiltered, is one that can be shared by women of all backgrounds, and it serves as a reminder of the long-term effects of systemic misogyny.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is currently not banned anywhere in the US, but faced major controversy in South Korea due to its conversation about feminism, sexism and misogyny. After reports of the book being turned into a movie were released in 2018, the anti-feminist backlash was so severe that a petition was sent to South Korea’s president, asking for a ban on the film’s release. With an Asian, female protagonist and a story revolving around the oppression of women, it is likely that this book may become banned in certain U.S. school districts in the future.
This Is How You Lose the Time War – Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: This is a science-fiction sapphic romance novel about two female rival agents. One agent, addressed as Red, works for the Agency, a technologically-advanced cybernetic dystopia. The other, addressed as Blue, sides with the Garden, a nature-based world filled with wilderness and flora.
The Agency and the Garden are in an interdimensional (and utterly unwinnable) war, and it’s Red and Blue’s job to travel back and forth through time, altering the history of multiple universes in order to make it so that the future favors their own organizations. The agents spend each chapter in a new setting, sometimes exotic and imaginative and other times familiar and tame, in a back-and-forth, cat-and-mouse game of strike-counterstrike interactions.
However, Red and Blue begin to leave each other hidden messages: initially taunting, but then gradually developing into friendship, then flirtation, then something more as their respective sides become suspicious of them. The ultimate enemies-to-lovers and forbidden love story, Red and Blue’s relationship unfolds through the aforementioned letters exchanged between them in such a poetic and poignant way.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is currently not banned anywhere in the U.S., but it is likely that this book may become banned in certain US school districts in the future due to its mentions of queerness.
