I’ve had 16-year-old white, rural Americans tell me, ‘I didn’t know any Black people. “We weren’t writing to have a political agenda,” Thomas said. Six years later, Thomas says she is still overwhelmed and gratified by the response from all types of readers and viewers who have applied lessons from her book to their lives and politics.īut both writers on the panel were eager to emphasize that they didn’t publish their books to have them banned. The New York Times bestseller was adapted into a 2018 film by the same name. “ The Hate U Give” (2017) was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and offered a critical look at race and police violence in the U.S. Thomas added that books like hers are seen as dangerous because of the immense power they have to create change through empathy. (The fourth panelist, Peter Coyl, is the president of the Freedom to Read Foundation, winner of this year’s L.A. “When they become the next governors, senators, people in power, they already go into these systems wanting to dismantle them,” said Johnson, whose receptive audience included an entire class visiting from Los Angeles Unified School District’s Fairfax High School. Johnson, whose book is currently the third most challenged book in 2021, said he believes this is intentional and driven by fears that Generation Z, the most racially diverse and LGBTQ-identifying demographic, is threatening to push major changes at the ballot box. In the school year spanning 20, PEN America - whose Los Angeles director, Allison Lee, moderated the panel - reported that nearly half of the banned books were YA novels, 41% featured an LGBTQ character and 40% had a character of color.

There are concerns that these bans are disproportionately targeting queer writers and authors of color. surged, almost doubling from 2021 and setting a 20-year record, according to the American Library Assn. In 2022, the number of attempted book bans across the U.S. But “Banned Books: Defending the Right to Read,” which also featured “The Hate U Give” author Angie Thomas, was less focused on defining opponents of access to books than on the writers, librarians and students for whom the stakes are highest - and on the generation best positioned to fight back. Johnson, author of the young adult novel “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” early in a sold-out panel on Sunday at USC’s Newman Recital Hall during the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. “This is how fascism begins,” warned George M.

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