BookBrowse Reviews Banned Together by Ashley Hope Pérez

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In this YA anthology, authors and illustrators explore the meaning, causes, and consequences of book bans, and provide resources for teens who want to stand up to censorship.

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In the heat of the righteous anger many of us feel when confronting a book ban, it can be easy to lose the forest for the trees. We may feel incensed that anyone would tell us what we can or cannot read—but to truly combat this growing national problem, readers must transform their anger into a useful force for social change.

This is the impetus behind the new anthology Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers' Rights. In this brilliant book, editor Ashley Hope Pérez and an impressive group of young adult authors and artists have joined forces to provide a resource for all readers, and teenagers in particular, who want to fight for their right to read.

Through a variety of forms—essays, short stories, poetry, and comics—these YA authors explore the issues around book bans and censorship (young adult fiction is the most frequently banned genre in public schools and libraries). They also discuss the hate they've personally received for their writing, and why it is more important than ever for everyone to have access to stories that expand our understanding of the world we live in.

Brendan Kiely, the co-author (with Jason Reynolds) of the frequently banned All American Boys, contributes the heartbreaking short story "O-Town Blues." The story is written in the form of a letter from Cal, a teenage boy, to the author of his favorite book, O-Town Blues, a semi-autobiographical novel set in Cal's hometown. Cal's mother has started a Moms for Liberty-esque group intent on banning it from the school library for its sexual content and the unfavorable things it has to say about the town. When his Muslim girlfriend, Maryam, wants him to stand up to his mom at a school board meeting, Cal can't find the strength to do so. Paralyzed, he can only listen while Maryam declares, "We are not asking for your permission to exist. We're demanding that our education not be stunted by your strange obsession with dehumanizing us." Kiely highlights the deep, emotional damage done not just to those teens who lose the chance to read important stories that reflect their own experiences but to those whose loved ones lead those charges.

Though all of the authors represented here have become fierce advocates for the freedom to read, their frustration at having to do so is palpable. In "Live in the World," artist and writer Trung Le Nguyen expresses in comic form how exhausting and infuriating it can be to have the same fight over and over. "Well this email sucks and I hate everything about it," he grumbles in the face of yet another ban. In the graphic essay "Getting to Know Your Hate Mail," Ashley Hope Pérez laments the effect hate mail has on her as she wades through emails calling for her arrest and even attacking her hair style: "So why do I care? Why do these words eat at me? Why can't I remember fan mail half as clearly as the slime that coats my inbox?"

Padma Venkatraman's powerful short story "Word Warriors" follows Kamala, a young, rebellious Indian woman. Full of passionate feelings but lacking direction and support from home, she finds new purpose in a caring teacher's creative writing class. However, her happiness is short-lived when her teacher is suspended at the behest of campaigning parents who are angry over the books she assigned her students. Along with her classmates, Kamala fights valiantly against the nearly overwhelming tide of hateful ignorance, winning back her teacher's job only to be confronted by terrible violence just when things are returning to normal. The story is told from Kamala's perspective after these horrific events have taken place—as she reflects on what has happened, she faces a choice: returning to a life where the voice she's found as a writer is silenced, or continuing her teacher's crusade. Kamala chooses to keep writing. "I look at my friends sitting around me, writing," she says. "Our writing circle, like all circles, has no end."

In its nonfiction essays, Banned Together critically discusses book bans from different angles. Multiple authors point out that those who move to ban books rarely actually read the material they're seeking to eliminate; another reminds the reader that book bans don't just restrict access to books, but also undermine trust in the institutions that offer them, like libraries and schools. Maia Kobabe, whose memoir Gender Queer about coming out as nonbinary has topped banned lists for years (see Beyond the Book), points out that the majority of the 1,000 book challenges filed at school districts during the 2021-2022 school year were submitted by only 11 people (one man alone filed 92 challenges)—meaning that just a handful of people are driving the national push to remove books.

Perhaps Banned Together's most important message is that despite their insistence that book bans are focused on "protecting" young people, most people who attempt to ban books come from a place of fear, ignorance, and bigotry. The main target of book bans is literature featuring LGBTQ characters and storylines; the second biggest is literature about race and racism. These are usually books that parents think are inappropriate for their children simply because they feature lives that are different than their own or stories that acknowledge painful truths about their country, their race or religion, or themselves. "Book banners are afraid of having to think for themselves, of having to speak to their children on subjects they don't know anything about," writes Isabel Quintero in her essay "The Art of The Hocicona."

Each piece in the anthology is introduced with a short biography of the author and followed by useful resources, including recommendations for further reading on the piece's topic, advocacy opportunities, and extra information, like an introduction to the "SLAPS test," an adolescent-friendly riff on the Miller Test (the legal standard for obscenity), which is frequently invoked in legal battles against book bans. There are even instructions for creating your own "Little Free Banned Library."

Banned Together is an excellent, incredible resource that entertains and teaches in equal measure. It is full of unique authorial voices that represent many different cultures and life experiences. But perhaps its greatest gift is the wonderful introduction it offers to some truly brilliant authors. My own reading list grew by leaps and bounds as I "met" each of these gifted storytellers. I highly recommend the anthology to any teen who wants to equip themselves to engage in the battle to protect our right to read. The greatest weapon we have to fight ignorance is knowledge—and this book offers it in spades.

This review first ran in the March 26, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.