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Just four days after Donald Trump took office earlier this year, his Department of Education (may it rest in peace) released a statement declaring book bans a “hoax.”
As someone who spent countless hours in school board meetings to fight book-banning attempts in my own district, I wish this claim had even an ounce of truth in it.
The new documentary film Banned Together (available on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video) debunks the Trump administration’s blatant lie that Americans are safe from book bans. The documentary follows my efforts to preserve intellectual freedom in Beaufort, South Carolina, alongside student activists Isabella “Izzy” Troy Brazoban and Millie Bennett.
My personal experience in combating censorship started in 2022 when complaints from two community members resulted in the removal of 97 books from every school in the Beaufort County School District (BSCD). Izzy, Millie, and I attended three different schools when the books were taken, but we each found our way to school board meetings that winter. The three of us, along with several other students who understood and appreciated the value of access to diverse literature, began meeting biweekly to research and draft public comments that showcased the endless variety of arguments for keeping the government out of school libraries.
Every other Tuesday, we stood before the board in a strategic, predetermined order to maximize the impact of that evening’s comments. I reviewed the history of public education as a pillar of functioning democracy and documented historical instances of book-banning to demonstrate the anti-democratic nature of censorship. Millie spoke to the importance of queer representation in literature for LGBTQ+ students who often lack resources and support in small, conservative communities like Beaufort. Izzy shared her own experiences with racism and familial substance abuse to show that trying to “protect” students by taking away books with dark storylines is ineffective and even dangerous for the significant portion of kids who have already experienced similar hardships in their own lives.
Slowly but surely, the BCSD Board voted to comply with recommendations from community-led review committees, returning a few books at a time over the course of the year. In the end, 91 of the 97 books were returned to our schools.
The School Board’s hopeful voting record was a major win for Beaufort County, but the story has ended differently for so many other school districts in South Carolina and across the country. PEN America has documented “nearly 16,000 book bans in public schools nationwide since 2021,” a number that is rising alarmingly quickly with each passing school year.
When Atomic Focus Entertainment — the production company behind Banned Together — approached Millie, Izzy, and me about filming a documentary to capture our community’s response to censorship efforts, the story quickly and necessarily morphed. What started as local activism for Izzy, Millie, and me became a national undertaking when the three of us had the opportunity to meet and interview scholars, politicians, and authors about the United States’ dramatic rise in censorship.
Howard University law professor Justin Hansford explained to us that the First Amendment not only protects Americans’ right to express ideas, but to receive information as well — meaning the removal of access to specific novels directly violates the Constitution. PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman illustrated how book banning has opened the door to classroom censorship, discouraging educators from teaching the most up-to-date and accurate curricula. Bestselling author Jodi Picoult indicated that the real motivation behind banning books is a fear that kids may wind up thinking differently than their parents — on a whole host of issues.
Over and over, everyone we talked to reaffirmed one central message: the book-banning movement is about something so much bigger than books. The same movement started by attacking Critical Race Theory as a proxy for targeting Black and brown students. Queer and transgender students — like my own brother — were added to the list of demonized identities as far-right extremists came after their stories in schools and libraries. And now the Trump administration is coming after higher education by utilizing unconstitutional fear tactics to dismantle DEI programs and deport international students who challenge its policy positions.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) reminded us that censorship is a core function of fascism, as seen by the book burning carried out in Nazi Germany. Cutting off access to ideas that threaten a singular, narrow perspective of the American experience is inherently undemocratic, in addition to being harmful to students with marginalized identities. Raskin’s frank analysis is a good reminder that book banners have never been on the right side of history.
Needless to say, my last year of high school certainly would have been a lot less stressful if book bans were indeed a mere hoax. But, unfortunately, instances of censorship are happening all over America as part of a larger agenda to silence diverse voices, rewrite history, and suppress the critical thinking that is the hallmark of an informed electorate.
As students, we cannot sit idly until our favorite book is taken from our classrooms or our coolest teacher is harassed into leaving her profession. Consider the words of Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller spoken in Germany following the Holocaust: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
When right-wing extremists come after public education and First Amendment rights, they are coming after you. They are coming after your ability to consume information, to read books that speak to your identity, to develop empathy for your peers, to think critically about the world around you.
If you’re wondering what you can do, watching Banned Together is a great first step. You’ll learn more about the context surrounding book bans and censorship, and see how students and communities alike have fought back against these harmful policies. Hopefully, the film will leave you feeling inspired, optimistic, and ready to take action; after all, we have the joy of learning, literature, diversity, and inclusivity on our side. And in the words of This Book is Gay author Juno Dawson, “Who doesn’t love joy?”
