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All Boys Aren't Blue, a memoir for teens and young adults about growing up Black and queer, appeared on many "best books" lists when published in 2020. It's being challenged in some U.S. counties.
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In 2020, Gender Queer was given a Stonewall Honor and an Alex Award and was headed for a fourth printing. By spring of 2022 it topped the ALA's list of most challenged books.
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Maia Kobabe set out to express an experience with gender identity. The graphic memoir Gender Queer is now the most banned book in the United States, according to the American Library Association.
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Jerry Craft published the Newbury award-winning graphic novel New Kid in 2019. The novel focuses on the experience of being Black and the "new kid" at a predominantly white school.
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New Kid won the Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Kirkus Prize. But the book has been challenged in some school districts for content related to race.
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Susan Kuklin published the award-winning Beyond Magenta in 2014. The collection of images and interviews with transgender and nonbinary teens and young adults centers their experiences and identities.
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When Beyond Magenta hit shelves in 2014, little had been written or said publicly about transgender and nonbinary teens. The book received positive reviews. By 2015, it was being challenged.
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For years, Out of Darkness appeared on reading lists as a recommendation for ambitious young readers ready to face disquieting aspects of the American experience. It began facing bans in 2021.
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Ashley Hope Pérez published Out of Darkness in 2015 to critical acclaim. The novel re-contextualized contemporary issues of race providing a historical framework in a not-so-post-racial America.
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Writer and LGBTQ activist George M. Johnson speaks about what's lost when books like their 2020 memoir All Boys Aren't Blue are banned from school libraries.