Graphic by Daniela Quinteros-Parilla ‘28
By Isabel Dunn ’27 and Honora Quinn ’27
Books Editor | Staff Writer
In recent years, the banning and censorship of books in public schools have risen to levels “not seen since the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950s,” according to PEN America. The organization tracked that, during the 2023-24 school year, there were “more than 10,000 book bans affecting more than 4,000 unique titles,” according to their website. Most of these banned books were on topics relating to “race and racism or individuals of color and also books on LGBTQ+ topics as well as those for older readers that have sexual references or discuss sexual violence.”
In their annual Beyond the Shelves report, PEN America also stated that there has been a noticeable rise in “educational censorship,” which “has plagued not only K-12 public schools since 2021, but a range of institutions, including public libraries, colleges and universities.”
To understand how censorship may impact Mount Holyoke College, Mount Holyoke News interviewed Dr. Caitlin Mahaffy, a visiting assistant professor in English, and Irene McGarrity, the head of research services at Library, Information and Technology Services.
Although books themselves are not typically banned at the college level, censorship can still have a significant impact.
“My sense is that, at Mount Holyoke, [the book bans are] not going to affect me very much in terms of what I’m allowed to teach,” Mahaffy said. “If anything, they encourage us to teach banned books here … if they’re going to be banned at the secondary level, and students haven’t had the opportunity to be exposed to these texts, then that’s all the more reason to expose them now.”
Offering the perspective of LITS, McGarrity called attention to the effects of censorship on college campuses in an email interview.
“What this looks like in practice is scrubbing colleges’ websites of words like ‘equity,’ ‘anti-racism,’ ‘DEI’ etc. Luckily, that didn’t happen at Mount Holyoke College, but it happened in many other places,” McGarrity said in an email interview with Mount Holyoke News.
Mahaffy, whose primary focus area within the English department is early modern literature, said, “This is the kind of environment, this English department, where we are really told and encouraged to teach texts that, you know, might be on the banned books list … Shakespeare is considered so canonical, for better or worse. But for example, sometimes ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is banned, and I certainly put that on the Shakespeare syllabus more often than not, and I actually think the syllabus is better for it.”
“It’s a really troubling play and it’s not fun to read, but it’s so similar to some of the kind of bigotry that exists now that I think people should read that,” Mahaffy said.
McGarrity echoed this idea while discussing the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three.” The non-fiction book follows two male penguins who fall in love and adopt an orphaned penguin named Tango. While the book is neither explicit nor offensive, it is often challenged due to its depiction of a homosexual relationship.
“This book presents a great opportunity to talk about all the different kinds of families there are, and how love—not the sexual orientation or gender identity or number of guardians and children—is what actually matters,” McGarrity said. “What a beautiful message. Why censor that?”
Finally, when asked if there was a banned book that she wanted to highlight, Mahaffy said, “I saw ‘The Bluest Eye’ by Toni Morrison on a banned list at some point recently, and I think that that’s a terrible thing. I think all the works of Toni Morrison have so much to say in today’s world, it should never be on a banned list.”
According to PBS, Morrison’s debut novel has “consistently landed on the American Library Association's list of most challenged books” since its publication in 1970. In PEN America’s Beyond the Shelves report, “The Bluest Eye” was one of the 19 books banned in “50 or more school districts nationwide” in the 2023-24 school year.
“I’d say ‘The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,’ edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman and Jake Silverstein,” McGarrity said in her interview when asked the same question. “This is just the type of book that is being targeted by the administration because it doesn’t glorify the origins of our country, and presents a real narrative about how our country was built on the backs of enslaved people.”
McGarrity continued, “I’d also suggest reading a book—any book—with trans or gender non-conforming characters and themes … If the book hasn’t been banned yet, there’s a chance that it will be somewhere, sometime, which is a sad truth, but it’s unfortunately what’s happening now.”
Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact-checking.