Unfortunately, the banning of books is no longer widely cared about nor is it discussed often. The current generation doesn’t concern themselves with reading as the age of technology is taking over. Thankfully there’s been a reading spike where more people have become interested in the topic through the more popular books on TikTok and reading being used as an aesthetic, which is good, but unfortunately people are still oblivious that some of the books they are reading are banned, restricted or even burned in other places.
For instance, 2 books that have recently gone viral, “They Both Die At the End’ and “The Hate You Give”, have new audiences that don’t know that the latter actually made the top 10 most banned/restricted per year list almost every year since its release except for 2019. It's actually very difficult for a single book to do this because thousands of books are restricted per year, but it's succeeded in doing so.
“Thirteen Reasons Why”, a book popular because of its Netflix adaptation has been up for debate for banning and has actually been restricted in the years after the show came out because it touches on the hard topic of suicide. According to Top 10 lists, it has been in the top 10 banned and restricted books yearly chart 3 times since its release in 2007 and was actually #1 in 2017. The uncaring for banned books has become so widespread that even one of the most popular books, “Harry Potter”, has been banned in a multitude of locations.
For the most part, here at Mayfair everyone has at least read one banned book at some point whether they knew it or not, because half of the list of most banned books are those that we’ve had to read in most of our English classes. A few examples are “1984”, “The Great Gatsby'', “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Catcher in the Rye”. Obviously, where we live there’s not much care put towards reading books that have been previously restricted, but in other countries there is and people can even receive fees if they print and distribute them.
To summarize my point, we should continue reading books whether they are banned or not and you should join the “I Stand With The Banned” challenge which is most active during Banned Book Week. The week varies depending on associations and organizations in different places, but the concept is the same, it's to read banned books and decide for yourself if you feel that they deserve to be banned or restricted.