"the lives of LGBTQIA+ persons and Black persons."In Texas, some students have formed book clubs specifically to read books that have been banned, with examples including Ashley Hope Pérez's Out of Darkness and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale according to The Texas Tribune.PEN America defines a book as being banned if it has been removed from school libraries or classrooms, or banned from circulation, as a result of either complaints or laws passed by legislatures.Under this definition the following books by Black authors have been banned from an Oklahoma school district:Books from white authors which deal with race and racism, such as Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, are also included on the Oklahoma banned book list.Some of the works banned in Oklahoma deal with LBGTQ rights, with a particular focus on transgender issues.They include Jeff Garvin's Symptoms of Being Human, which deals with gender fluid adolescents coming of age, and George by Alex Gino, a novel focused on a transgender girl.Also on the PEN America banned list for Oklahoma schools were a number of modern classics, including Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
In those cases, a specific reason was not given as to why the book had been subject to a ban.According to PEN America, 41 percent of book bans across the U.S.