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There’s no better time than October, National Book Month, to highlight the Black women fighting for our rights to read, write and consume literature.
PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for literary access, notes that books by non-white, LGBTQ+ or female authors have been increasingly under attack and subjected to bans. Other highly scrutinized literary titles are those about “racism, sexuality, gender and history.”
The nonprofit’s records from July 2022 to June 2023 documented a 33% increase in book bans in public school classrooms and libraries in comparison to the previous school year. In addition to book bans being fueled by worries of “sexually explicit” and “age inappropriate” material, PEN America’s analysis reported that literary prohibitions “overwhelmingly” targeted books about race or racism and those with LGBTQ+ and/or characters of color.
The organization starkly emphasized that those bans “removed students’ access to 1,557 unique book titles [and] the works of over 1,480 authors, illustrators, and translators” — many of whom are or have been marginalized.
This October marks National Book Month’s 20th anniversary. According to National Today, the month-long observance was first established by the National Book Foundation in 2003. Notably, Banned Books Week ran from Oct. 1 through Oct. 7.
Read about seven Black women or Black women-led organizations doing the work and using their voices to eradicate book bans below.
Katrina Brooks — Black Pearl Books
Brooks owns Black Pearl Books in Austin, Texas, — the only Black-owned bookstore in the city. She passionately fights against book bans through her small retailer and her advocacy.
Put It in A Book, the charitable nonprofit attached to her bookstore, was established in 2021 “to promote diversity, inclusion and representation through literature.” The nonprofit’s current initiative, Right To Read, works to make banned or challenged books available to kids. The 501 (c)(3) organization also offers a “Redacted Reads Book Club” at local schools and partners with other community organizations to help make books as accessible as possible.
The Change.org petition Brooks started in April 2023 fights against pending state legislation HB 900, which would require booksellers to implement ratings set by the State Board of Education based on a book’s “sexually explicit” or “sexually relevant” material. It has the possibility to greatly impact what and how much is accessible to students in school libraries.
