For the first time, Clatsop Community College in Astoria is offering a course on the spike in recent years of book bans and challenges. The 10-week course launches on March 30 and will explore the reasons why titles such as “The Bluest Eye,” “Looking for Alaska,” and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” are being targeted in school districts or public libraries. The course will also cover TV shows and movie adaptations of novels that have also been targeted to restrict their viewing in school classrooms and public libraries.
The course is being taught by Kama O’Connor, a writing and English instructor at CCC who also writes romance novels under the pen name Kristine Lynn. O’Connor says that whereas in previous years most book bans originated from individuals, the bans and challenges today are increasingly arising from religious and conservative organizations that are targeting works they find objectionable, including those with romantic themes or feature characters who are people of color or identify as LGBTQ+.
O’Connor joins us for more details about the course and her personal motivations for teaching it.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Book bans and challenges have spiked all around the country in recent years. They’re being introduced in schools and public libraries and are increasingly brought not by individuals but by organized groups. Kama O’Connor decided this was not just an issue she was concerned about, she wanted to teach it as well. O’Connor is a romance writer, and also a writing and English instructor at Clatsop Community College in Astoria. She’s offering a new course this spring on book bans, and she joins us now to talk about this.
Welcome back to the show.
Kama O’Connor: Thank you so much, Dave, for having me again.
Miller: When did you first get interested in banned and challenged books?
O’Connor: I’ve been studying literature and writing my own for a long time. And I think when I really got invested was in my master’s program, looking at some of the books that were available to me in both the public library and school library, and seeing some that fit the themes that I was studying, but weren’t available in either the college or my public library, and getting interested in that. And then the more I investigated it from a DEI lens – I teach DEI as well – one of the biggest issues is access to literature, access to entertainment media, where students can see themselves represented, or folks can.
So it’s been on my radar for a long time, Dave. But the interest to teach is … in the past year, I think there have been some challenging things in education.
Miller: What do you mean by that? What’s the connection between the challenges you’ve seen or experienced and your desire to create this class?
O’Connor: So we’re seeing a nationwide ban on discussions about DEI in general; in education, having to wipe instances of DEI. We’re not alone, it’s not just education. There are calls to scrub any DEI language. So I guess it all comes down to language, and literature is that. We’re seeing a nationwide scrub of some of this access to material that is LGBTQIA+ positive, covers racism, things of that nature. So when it comes to literature and access to entertainment media, we’re seeing a really big hit with that.
Miller: How much have the reasons for attempts to ban books changed over the decades?
O’Connor: What a great question. The reasons are relatively consistent, more or less. We’re seeing a lot more happen now when it comes to disproportionate numbers that pull books with People of Color, with LGBTQIA+. The “agenda” is one of the words that’s most frequently used in book challenges. We see “sexually explicit” or “unsuited for age group” being a couple of the reasons. Offensive language in there as well, with drugs and alcohol. And we see magic and the occult. Basically anything that someone can deem as “anti-American,” “anti-family values.” Those are some of the most frequently used terms for the reasons we’re seeing challenges.
And again, those are relatively consistent, but the numbers are going up at a rapid rate.
Miller: When you say “the agenda” in quotes, what does that phrase mean? What have you come to understand it trying to communicate?
O’Connor: Yeah, gosh. I’m going to tie this back to one of the most alarming things that made me want to teach this class, and that’s that 11 folks were responsible for over 60% of the challenges and bans in 2024. And that’s alarming, across the nation, to have 11 folks. And these are from pressure groups, positions of power. We’re talking government officials who have a lot of power and money to be able to make this happen.
So when we’re seeing the word “agenda,” we’re seeing the calls for these challenges and bans are treating the entertainment media as if it’s an indoctrination, rather than just a person’s lived experience, or a group of folks’ stories being told in a way that is deemed, again, un-American or anti-family value. So I guess that’s what the term shows. And gosh, it’s a real negative one. It’s not great.
Miller: So another way to look at the numbers here is, according to the American Library Organization, in 2024, more than 70% of the demands to censor books in school or public libraries came from pressure groups or government entities that include elected officials, board members or administrators. Parents only accounted for 16% of these demands.
In general, what kinds of groups are trying to get books removed from public access?
O’Connor: We see a lot of religious institutions that are calling for that from their local schools. The top three places books are challenged and banned are schools, and that includes school libraries; public libraries; and then prisons, which was a fascinating one for me to find. Over 10,000 books a year, unique titles, are challenged or banned in prison systems, compared to a little over 4,000 in the public sector. So the groups that we’re seeing are government entities, school boards. So not just parents bringing it to a school board, but the school board themselves, superintendents. We see government officials, state officials that are calling for the removal of certain books in certain counties.
So the alarming part is really that these pressure groups carry a lot of power, so the number of challenges turning into actual bans because of these groups is pretty high.
Miller: If one of the big arguments in favor of these challenges or bans, or attempted bans, is “this is not age appropriate, we’ve got to keep this material away from these young kids,” I’m curious about the arguments when we’re talking not about schools or school libraries but public libraries, where adults would have access to this material … Are the arguments there the same?
O’Connor: They are, because it affects access. I really love the language that PEN America and the ALA have on their websites. It says “false claims of.” That word “false” shows that aspect of public libraries and the reason for that access is so that folks can have material that represents their lived story or their lived experience, and to invite folks without that lived experience to engage in that material. That’s how we find out about cultures that are different from us without having to leave the confines of our own home.
So in a public library, if that’s accessible to just anyone, there is a real fear. We see words like “divisive” and “fear mongering,” and again, “anti-family value” being used in public library challenges and bans. I think that’s, in my opinion, a blanket excuse that’s unfounded, and PEN and ALA are citing that with that word “false,” those false accusations.
Miller: By the time a book gets to a library or a school, it’s out in the world. How much pressure is being levied on publishers to prevent books from being published in the first place?
O’Connor: That’s a really great question. As a writer myself, this was part of my interest in this, from not the professional level in what I’m teaching and finding access for my students, but in what I write. I write romance novels that fall under one of these categories, that have some explicit nature in them.
I think publishers … there’s something called a shadow ban and there’s some self-censoring that happens. We see a lot of publishers not publishing. There was an entire arm of the romance publishing world that did not publish People of Color romantic elements stories, and they have been vilified. So there is that negative impact on the publishing world if they choose to pre-ban topics or books. And we’re seeing that, which is great, that’s positive for the anti-book ban community, libraries, teachers, librarians who are all trying to get access to these books. But we do still see it out there, for sure.
They also have distinct publishing arms within a publishing house that will look at particular stories so it doesn’t fall under their parent imprint, but there will be a side arm imprint that will house those collections, oftentimes.
Miller: In recent years, I’ve seen plenty of displays in libraries and in bookstores of banned books. It almost seems like, in these venues, that the bans or the challenges are a kind of badge of honor, or a marketing ploy in a sense. Does an attempted ban make some people more likely to want to read a book?
O’Connor: Yeah, absolutely. And when we look at the counties in which these bans and challenges are happening, it actually has that adverse effect, right? It’s the inverse relationship that we’re seeing. And it’s a distinct, immediate uptick in both the sale of those books in bookstores, the marketing for the books and the requests. So lots of libraries will talk about requests for books and they’ll keep a list of what they want to see or what people are asking for. And that’s what’s happening. It’s kind of neat.
Miller: It almost seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the classic dynamic that parents know … if you tell a kid, if you tell anybody they can’t have something, can’t see something, can’t do something, that thing becomes way more enticing.
What are you going to be having your students do in this class?
O’Connor: Great question. I’m so looking forward to this. I’ve broken the class into three modules. We’ve got to have the talk, and the talk is going to be what is the difference between a ban and a challenge, what leads a challenged book to become banned, and who are the folks doing it? Where is it happening? Why is it happening? So we’re going to spend about four out of the 10 weeks looking at that and reading the texts that are more likely to be banned in certain places. So we’ve got a memoir, a novel, we’ve got a couple of kids’ books. And then we’re going to look at some shows and films, because it’s entertainment media, it’s a humanities class.
We don’t have the problem of these shadow bans at our college library. We have such a great collection of banned books. And I want my students to engage with one that looks at their lived story. What is something about you that might lead to a ban or a challenge and see where those books are banned. Look to see if it’s banned in the county. And then finally they’re going to wrap up with a creative project of their own, where they get to write their story themselves and “publish it.” Create a kid’s book, a podcast or something that shares their story with others, so that they can bring more words into the world – which is the point of all of it, right?
Miller: And for that last project, is the idea that you want them to be more free in terms of telling their story in the context of an increase in book bans? What’s the connection between book bans or challenges, and the final project?
O’Connor: I want them looking at their story as sacred. A lot of the reasons books are banned and challenged is because of the lived experience not matching what folks want their kids to see and engage with, because it’s shameful to them. Not the folks writing it, not the folks telling the story. So I want to decrease the shame of sharing a story and invite people to be creative and give back to literature, and add more literature to the world. That includes representation. So that’s my hope.
And thank you. This is great.
Miller: Kama O’Connor, thanks very much for joining us.
O’Conner: Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Miller: Kama O’Connor is a romance writer. She’s also a writing and English instructor at Clatsop Community College in Astoria. She has developed a new course at the college on banned and challenged books.
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