It’s been a banner year for book banners.

When I started this newsletter in June 2023, PEN America had recorded a 28 percent increase in bans against individual books in the first half of the school year, as compared to the previous period from January to June 2022.

Florida Governor and Republican then-presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis made removing books from school libraries a signature of his right-wing platform. Librarians were being targeted for selecting and defending certain books, getting called “pedophiles,” porn peddlers and worse. President Biden had created a new position at the Education Department — a book ban coordinator — specifically to deal with the rise in book bans, particularly those that focused on publications with LGBTQ+ themes.

Then, Project 2025 leaked and Donald Trump got reelected.

I started Banner Year as a way to cover the developing story of book bans in America and dig into some of the complex questions that they bring up. Like — what are book bans, really? Why are they so prevalent now? What’s the historical precedent? And what can we do about them?

During the Reagan years, challenges against books were common but they were almost always coming from right-wing grassroots groups, including the Moral Majority. Now, things are different — bans are actively endorsed by politicians and are likely to be a mainstay of the new ultra-right-wing presidential administration.

I’m anxious about how all of this will play out, as a parent, a writer, a book lover and a journalist. I’ve written two histories — Women from the Ankle Down and Brilliance & Fire — and I am also the author of The Genius of Judy, about Judy Blume’s most controversial and impactful novels. Blume’s decades-long fight against book bans is what set me down the path of documenting this phenomenon. Bans are about more than just literature — they’re about society, culture and our most basic assumptions about life itself.

Here, I’ll be writing about current news stories, history and the books that people are losing their minds over. Please join me for my very first Substack adventure. 

xRachelle

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Exploring the rise in book bans — and how we got here

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Rachelle Bergstein is a lifestyle writer, author and editor. She's the author of three books, most recently "The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood," which was a national bestseller. She lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.