It’s Indigenous people’s day and last week was banned books week. How appropriate, because here is a fact that will change how you see history: Christopher Columbus never actually arrived in the United States. He landed in the Caribbean, and the story of what happened next is exactly why his book is so often banned.
In A People’s History, Howard Zinn tells the story of Columbus’s arrival from the perspective of the Arawak people. When the Arawaks came out to greet the sailors with gifts, they didn’t find explorers: they found captors.
Zinn describes the gruesome reality: the enslavement of men, women, and children, and the violence that followed. He doesn’t shy away from the fact that Columbus was a murderer who tortured and killed Indigenous people to find gold.
This is the truth in Zinn’s book: history isn’t just about the powerful; it’s about the people they tried to erase. That’s why this book is consistently on the list of most challenged titles in American schools. If you are interested in reading Zinn’s book, please visit howardzinn.org
As promised, here are the books that have been banned for 2025/2026, including a few from the Classics and from the previous years:
- Sold by Patricia McCormick
- The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
- Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe
- Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
- All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
- Gender Queer: A Memoir Deluxe Edition by Maia Kobabe
- Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- Drama by Raina Telgemeier
Our Newly Banned Classics include:
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
- Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
And from the previous years we have:
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
- The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
- And Art Spiegelman sequential art masterpiece Maus
Remember, you get to choose what you put in your brain! Don’t let anyone decide what you are allowed to know.
So, what banned book are you reading next?
