
“The fact is, these widespread efforts to challenge and ban Lawn Boy have only driven sales and raised awareness of the book. So, what are the book banners actually accomplishing?”
—Jonathan Evison, “My Life in Book Banning,” Poets & Writers, Sept/Oct 2022
Despite some disturbing hate mail, the challenging of Jonathan Evison’s novel Lawn Boy might not have been such a bad thing, after all. Sales skyrockted as a result of the controversy surrounding the book.
According to the American Library Association, this was the second-most challenged book in 2021. The reasons given were that the book contains LGBTQIA+ content and is supposedly sexually explicit.
I wholeheartedly endorse the view that if someone doesn’t want you to read a book, you should definitely read it, to find out what they are trying to conceal from you.
What are you reading?