#sandra cisneros

say my name

New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult, who’s written nearly 30 books, currently holds the title of having written the most banned book in American classrooms for the 2023-2024 school year with her 2007 novel, “Nineteen Minutes.” The book centers around a school shooting and its aftermath from multiple perspectives. The novel also includes a date-rape scene, which includes the word “erection,” that occurs more than 300 pages into the story.

“They started targeting — they meaning Moms for Liberty — what they called mature content or anything that they deemed sexually inappropriate. And that was where ‘Nineteen Minutes’ fell into the mix,” Picoult said. “They were not banning it because it is about gun violence; they don’t really care about that. They were banning it because of page 313.”

But for some authors, it’s not just their words that are called into question. Author and cartoonist Maia Kobabe’s award-winning graphic novel, “Gender Queer: A Memoir,” has topped the banned-books list for years because of both the content and pictures featured in the book, which details eir personal exploration of gender and sexual identity (Kobabe uses gender-neutral Spivak pronouns: e, em and eir.)

Eir work has been called obscene by book-banners due to the frankness exhibited throughout the memoir. But Kobabe says the level of honesty and transparency in “Gender Queer” was essential to the book.

“I wanted to write this book so that the people who I know and who love me can understand where I’m coming from and that we can have a relationship based on authenticity and truth,” Kobabe said. “Writers are so careful and thoughtful; we spend months and sometimes years considering a passage or word or a phrase or, in my case, one image. And pictures have power and I know that, which is part of why I use them.”

And some books that are in the cross-hairs of challenges and bans are decades old. Celebrated Chicana author Sandra Cisneros says she’s been facing pushback against her 1984 novel, “The House on Mango Street,”since the 1990s, despite the fact the book is taught in schools and universities and considered a contemporary classic. “The House on Mango Street” is so beloved that several stage adaptations have been performed, including a recent opera adaptation.