“Artists have always been the real purveyors of news” - John Dewey, The Public and its Problems

News is ultimately a form of storytelling, a way of informing the public of the events occuring in the world around them. Censoring the press is therefore a way of framing the way people see the world into a picture defined by what is not censored. 

However, press extends beyond the typical newspaper; even a novel may also be considered a form of press, reflecting societal issues of a certain period, or working to challenge authority. To censor this type of artistic press is to censor imagination, which results in the same effect––a suppression of public opinion. 

In the Americas, there has been an influx in the censorship of the press, which has taken one of two forms: censorship of the formal newspaper press and book censorship. This article thus examines censorship in the case studies of Canada, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the United States.

Despite the First Amendment rights to freedom of the press and freedom of speech, in recent years regions of the United States have exhibited book censorship. In Florida and Texas, there has been a rise in book banning legislation primarily in state-funded schools and libraries. Lawmakers spearheading this censorship claim that they are protecting children from books allegedly containing pornographic content, profanity, Satanic themes, Critical Race Theory, etc. However, the topics that are censored have been found to be primarily centered around racial, sexual, and gender-related issues, with a majority of challenged books involving LGBTQ+ themes. Books that have been banned vary widely with a nonsensical inconsistency. There was an instance of math textbooks being banned for allegedly indoctrinating students into believing Critical Race Theory. A teacher in Texas was fired for showing a graphic novel of the Diary of Anne Frank due to discussions of sexuality which were found in the original text, despite the importance of the diary as a Holocaust historical text. “Pornographic” books tend to exclusively involve LGBTQ+ themes; the award-winning Gender Queer: A Memoir has been one of the most frequently banned books in the U.S. in recent years. Notable American classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain have been challenged throughout history, and have come to be important texts that are taught in schools. Despite this, there has been a renewal in adversity towards these books, such as a California school district which removed both of them from their curriculum. In one list of 1,600 banned books in a Florida county, there are a variety of young adult fiction novels with little to no explicit content, such as James Dashner’s The Maze Runner series or Stephanie Garber’s Caraval series. Also featured are dictionaries and Guinness World Record books. Furthermore, the list features famous authors such as Charles Dickens, Stephen King, and (ironically) Ray Bradbury. While this one list may be comparatively extreme, states such as Texas have banned more than 430 books and restricted education of topics pertaining to race and gender which includes the teaching of books that include these topics. On a national scale, Scholastic Book Fair, the most popular school book fair in the U.S., was pressured to divide its books between regular and “diverse” books. Schools with stricter censorship could opt out of receiving diverse books, allowing Scholastic to continue hosting its book fairs in both progressive and more conservative schools. Despite this, recently, Scholastic announced it would stop this segregation of books going into 2024. Interestingly, these movements, while officiated and legitimized by lawmakers, seem to be specifically impacting schools and school libraries. Despite this, there are resistance movements, such as PEN America, which is spearheading a federal lawsuit against book bans, along with leading general advocacy movements against such bans. A grassroots example of resistance to book banning in the U.S. would be the efforts by a bookstore in Asheville, NC which rescued over 22,000 books that had been banned in Duval County, Florida. The bookstore packaged and sent back the books directly to the homes of those in counties impacted by the bans, free of charge. An Oscar-nominated documentary by the title The ABCs of Book Banning showcases children’s voices in their opposition to being denied access to books by Floridian school boards. 

However, the United States is not the only country to have a contemporary crisis in book banning in the Americas. In the neighboring Canada, a democracy which also features a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of speech and press, there have also been movements to ban books. Books have been banned and even burned in a Ray Bradbury fashion, due to carrying “negative stereotypes,” “outdated content,” or LGBTQ+ thematic messages. Books have also undergone challenges and indirect forms of banning, such as restricting access or defunding libraries. One scenario described a book undergoing “shadow-banning” by a Canadian school, in which the book was available upon request, supplemented by a teacher or librarian’s Catholic explanation of it. The book, Salma Writes a Book by Danny Ramadan, is part of a kid’s series about an immigrant in Canada, with a side plot involving an estrangement between the protagonist’s mom and gay uncle. Furthermore, Canadian libraries have been defunded for carrying books that contain sex-ed content. Contrary to the book banning on a national scale in the U.S., book banning movements in Canada tend to be more localized in a select few districts across the country. However, the book banning is similar to the U.S. in how it is impacting books in school libraries specifically. Book banning in Canada seems to have only gotten worse, but it has been accompanied by widespread popular resistance and backlash. Canadian citizens and instructors alike have shown solidarity with authors whose books have been pulled off the shelves. “If a parent chooses not to read [a] book to their child, that is...100 per cent their choice,” states Wendy Burch Jones, a Toronto-based teacher and librarian, “but I am not going to restrict any other child from having access [to it].” Therefore, despite the rise of book banning in Canada, anti-book-banning movements have risen in the face of it. 

Another comparative case study of contemporary book censorship in the Americas would be the censorship of the press in Nicaragua under the Ortega Regime. The state-sponsored restrictions on the freedom of the press have taken both direct and indirect forms of censorship, with the independent press itself being censored, and books being banned as well for the general public.

One novel, written by Sergio Ramírez––a former Sandinista who fought to build the current government after the Nicaraguan Civil War––is banned due to its critiques of the Ortega dictatorship, which he terms as the “authoritarian left.” Other books banned include 1984, Ulysses, and Lady Chatterley's Lover. Furthermore, The Nicaraguan press faces intense censorship based on whether or not it supports the populist regime under Daniel Ortega’s governance. In recent years, there was a severe crackdown on the press, with journalists and news reporters being arrested on unfounded charges of treason. Six journalists were released in February 2023 and stripped of Nicaraguan citizenship. Despite this, there has been resistance to both forms of press restrictions. Reporters critical of the Ortega regime often operate outside the country in exile. In response to book censorships, readers in Nicaragua have used online distribution to gain access to banned books, and have formed clandestine reading groups. 

In Mexico, attacks were levied not at lists of individual books, but rather at a preeminent book fair in the country. In 2020, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador attempted a crackdown on the Guadalajara International Book Fair (Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara in Spanish). The book fair is the second-largest in the world, which is widely renowned in the Spanish literary world. Similar to Nicaragua, López Obrador runs a populist government and has openly called publishing itself “elitist,” and therefore, opposing the common person. López Obrador cut funding and has denounced the celebration of this fair. This parallels with the pressures leading Scholastic Book Fairs to separate their “diverse” books, except in the case of Mexico, this was a state-sponsored pressure. The attempt to stop the fair through defunding parallels with the Canadian school libraries with sex-ed books being defunded. Despite these parallels, the Guadalajara International Book Fair continues to celebrate annually, with a new fair to take place November 30-December 8, 2024.

The rise of censorship of the press in American countries is alarming, and it has shown to be a problem that has stretched across the globe. However, the censorship of the press is nothing new, and book banning in particular is a phenomenon that has been prevalent through history. Many of the classics taught in schools were once banned or challenged, and as they have overcome such bans in the past, they are sure to prevail again. Books are forms of art that reveal deep insight into the human condition in various societal and historical contexts, which have the power to reach emotions in a way traditional press sometimes cannot. The more books are banned, the more the public’s perception of the world is restricted to the frames set in place by their respective governments. However, the existence of resistance movements in these four case studies shows that there is hope in making sure that such stories are given a voice instead of being silenced.