Over the past couple of years, there’s been an inordinate amount of controversy about books. Coordinated and effective efforts have removed books about minorities and minority histories from school and public library shelves across the country. The numbers are scary: 9,012 books were challenged in 2023 alone, according to the American Library Association. In response to this rise in censorship and outright bans, Brooklyn Public Library launched Books Unbanned, an initiative that supports the rights of young people to read what they want, and expands and defends access to books by offering free library cards.
From this work, we know that the most commonly censored books are ones that deal with race, sexuality, gender, LGBTQ+ content, and violence. Last year, in order to help readers understand how and why these bans are happening, we created Borrowed and Banned, an award-winning podcast series about book bans that gets at the heart of this historic rise in censorship. We came away from that series with one main takeaway: books have always had incredible power. Why else would anyone go to such lengths to take them away?
Our newest podcast, Borrowed and Returned, addresses new questions: Which books have had the profoundest impacts on our political history? Which books changed the national conversation on things like incarceration, representation, and the environment? And which books are readers turning to now, in order to navigate yet another uncertain moment in our nation’s history? To help us answer that question, we sent out a survey to library workers, readers and writers. We asked them: which books changed you?
This list gathers eight of the books that readers are turning to in order to understand our present moment. They are from all different genres–memoir, speculative fiction, history, children’s books, and graphic novels. We asked librarians and staff at Brooklyn Public Library to write stories about their connections to these books, and describe why they think we should all be reading them now.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
In Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler’s seminal work of Afrofuturism, a young Black girl named Lauren Olamina lives in a dystopian 2020s California. Olamina’s America is a broken nation ravaged by climate change, poverty, and violence. She was born with hyper-empathy—the ability to feel the pain of others as if it were her own. When Olamina’s walled-in community is destroyed, she is forced to flee into an increasingly dangerous world. As she travels north, she gathers others—those looking for a brighter future. Together with these survivors, she creates a new religion called Earthseed, guided by the belief that change is the only constant, and that their destiny lies beyond the stars. Through loss, danger, and transformation, she fights to build something new—a future shaped not by fear, but by purpose and faith.
—Adwoa Adusei, managing librarian at BPL’s Library for Arts and Culture
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
The Autobiography of Malcolm X shows up consistently on lists of both classics of American literature, and books banned for being dangerous; it’s proof positive that an enlightened life is an empowered life, but your empowerment can make you an icon, or a target. The biography, as told by Malcolm to writer Alex Haley, details Malcolm’s tragic Jim Crow childhood, his wayward adolescence of criminality, his prison sentence, the spiritual and intellectual awakening he experienced there while reading the Koran, and his ascent into national and international civil rights leadership. This book was first published in 1965, shortly before Malcolm’s assassination, and has been beloved over the generations for its message that leaders can emerge from anywhere, a person can reinvent themself, over and over again, and that sometimes, all it takes is a book to change your life.
—Dominique Jean-Louis, chief historian at BPL’s Center for Brooklyn History
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States challenges readers to confront American history in ways they are rarely asked to do—through a broader and more inclusive lens. Zinn presents the nation’s past from the perspective of groups often underrepresented in traditional narratives: workers, Indigenous peoples, women, and people of color. By foregrounding their experiences and voices, he challenges readers to think critically about whose stories are traditionally allowed to be told, by whom, and why. This book is a foundational read for anyone seeking to better understand the roots of social justice movements and the continuing hard work and struggle toward equity in American society.
—Nick Higgins, BPL’s chief librarian
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
When I first opened An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, I wasn’t sure what I’d find. The praise was loud but mostly came from outside the Indigenous community. I’d heard of the author’s once-claimed ancestry, later withdrawn. I entered with questions. What I found was a text that doesn’t just retell history—it disrupts it. It strips away the romance of liberty and progress, revealing a nation built not by chance, but by land theft, genocide, and erasure. Dunbar-Ortiz writes with the weight of fact, but what lingers is feeling: grief, clarity, responsibility. This book is a rupture, a sharp break from the sanitized versions of history we’ve been handed and an invitation to see differently. To see the land we inhabit with new eyes. To confront the stories we were taught to revere. The lies we’ve inherited run deep. This book doesn’t just shift the conversation, it invites us to sit with the truth, rethink, and reimagine what comes next.
—Heyrling Oropeza, librarian at BPL’s Library for Arts and Culture
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
A young boy named Peter wakes up to a snow-covered neighborhood. Donning a bright red snowsuit, he goes outside, makes snow angels and snowmen, slides down a hill, marvels at the different tracks he can make in the snow, and in a moment of self-awareness, decides he is too little to join in a snowball fight with some older boys. Ezra Jack Keats’ 1962 book The Snowy Day is hailed not only for a simple, relatable story and its collage illustrations, but also for its protagonist. Peter is a little Black boy—one of the first little Black boys in children’s literature to be portrayed positively and without stereotype. The Snowy Day maintains a constant presence on childhood bookshelves, in classrooms, and in libraries to this day.
—Nia Pierre, children’s librarian at BPL’s Crown Heights branch
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
When Silent Spring was released, it kicked off what we know now as the environmental movement. It moved people to start questioning how they felt about the drastic changes in the environment and man’s attempt to try and mold their world into a picture-perfect place while destroying the landscape. As a Floridian, I felt deeply moved by her love and respect for our birds, our swamps, and the destruction taking place in the Everglades. While her life was tragically short, she emphasized the interconnected systems between the earth, the animals, the people that came before European colonization, and how we need to work with each other to thrive. I carry her words with me, and I hear them in the cry of the heron, the beauty of the mangroves, and the sounds of the springs.
—Assh Albinson, librarian at BPL’s Mill Basin branch
Maus by Art Spiegelman
In Art Spiegelman’s groundbreaking graphic novel Maus, the author tells the story of his own father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor. Spiegelman recounts Vladek’s life in Nazi-occupied Poland, and how Vladek survives in ghettos, hiding places, and Auschwitz. Through the medium of comics, Spiegelman casts Jews as mice and Nazis as cats in order to capture the horror and absurdity of this moment in history. Spiegelman tries to make sense of the trauma that his father carries, as well as how it has shaped their relationship. In hearing his father’s life story, Spiegelman confronts inherited pain, survivor’s guilt, and the weight of history passed from father to son.
—Adwoa Adusei, managing librarian at BPL’s Library for Arts and Culture
Palestine by Joe Sacco
The Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco follows in the footsteps of Art Spiegelman; both have made careers from drawing comics about people living through times of conflict and war. In the winter of 1991-1992, Sacco spent two months in Palestine, documenting in words and pictures the first intifada against Israeli occupation. In the resulting book, Sacco draws himself as the bespectacled, dark-haired interviewer gathering personal histories and tragedies from the people he meets. Because the story is told in graphic novel form, Sacco has the ability to zoom backward and forward in time, layering the story in a way that feels true to the complex history of Israel and Palestine. When the war in Gaza erupted in 2023, there was renewed interest in the book, creating long queues for the title at public libraries and prompting the publisher to order a reprint.
—Virginia Marshall, BPL’s audio producer
