My Book, Plus 300+ Others, Is Banned in Missouri: Book Censorship News, November 18, 2022

This week, PEN America sent a letter to Missouri school boards and the state legislature, demanding a reversal to a spate of book bans enacted thanks to the state’s Senate Bill 775. The bill makes any material with “visual depictions” of “graphic material” illegal for schools to have available. This is why so many graphic novels have been banned across the state.

My book, Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy is one of the books pulled by a district in the state for “review.” As of writing, it’s been off shelves for months, with no status update. This is the second time I’ve learned of this book being removed from shelves to be assessed for appropriateness to age group. It is a book about the physical and political realities of having a body, written specifically for those 12-18. The Missouri district which has the book in a review hold appears to have removed every book with art within it; if Body Talk is pulled, it will set a state-wide precedent, ensuring that my book is banned at schools across the state. I have, of course, cosigned the PEN letter.

Even though it is 2022, there are still authors who believe having a book banned is a badge of honor. This week, I read an editorial while doing my research for this roundup of book ban news, extolling how the writer hopes to be banned in order to amp up sales. They don’t have much for a marketing or publicity budget, and surely, that would do the job.

Except…it doesn’t.

Body Talk is my third anthology, and it is my poorest performing book to date. My first two anthologies earned out their advance in a year, meaning that the publisher made as much money as they gave me to make the book. That amount? $17,500 (after my agent’s cut, it’s $15,000). That $15,000, paid out in three separate periods, amounts to $5,000 each check, minus the near 40% I set aside from each in order to pay taxes. And since my books are anthologies, each contributor also gets paid from these checks, leaving me as the creator, the editor, and an author of the book to the remaining balance as my money.

That amount, when publicity and marketing costs are removed, is 0, if not negative. I don’t get an actual paycheck for my work until my book earns out, and I collect royalties, which have generally been between $500 and $1,500 twice a year.

Body Talk published in August 2020, and it was buried in the blitz of books which had their release dates pushed back because of COVID. As of my last royalty statement from August of this year, two full years after its release, the book is in the red to the tune of nearly $9000.

I’m in a privileged position that I know my book has been challenged in two districts. I am also, I suppose, in a privileged position that I have a full-time job to pay my bills, as writing and publishing books certainly doesn’t provide me anything resembling an income. But, if my book is removed, is pulled, becomes a target throughout an entire state, you can bet I’ll continue to be hoping to earn out on Body Talk by the time it turns 10 or 15. I’ll continue to not only never make a penny from this book, but I’ll continue to learn or discover how many places have ripped it from shelves by decree, have silently pulled it to avoid pushback, or who haven’t bothered buying it at all, despite a slate of stellar reviews and the gap it fills in collections.

This isn’t publicity, and it isn’t marketing. It is a book ban.

Not only do I lose out on potential income and the potential for future books — if you’re not selling, why would a publisher keep taking a chance on you? — I don’t get anything but the knowledge that the work I did is seen as obscene, as inappropriate, as actively harmful to young people.

A book written with honesty, to them, so they can grow up feeling a level of empowerment, acceptance, and pride in themselves for who they are, how they are. So they don’t have to grow up with the same insecurities, self-hatred, and lack of worth I did.

Instead, a couple of images in the book depicting a range of bodies — abled, disabled, queer, trans, cis, images that reflect the very bodies learning and breathing and thinking inside public school classrooms today — may determine whether or not young people across an entire state have access to such information.

In no way, shape, or form does that do me any good as an author.

In no way, shape, or form does that do me any good as an advocate for the rights of young people.

And, of course, that is the point.

Here are links to PEN America’s press release, the list of banned books in Missouri since August, as well as an explainer about the new law and the wave of bans. If you’re in Missouri, please consider writing to your state legislators and showing up to your school board meetings and sharing these points. If you’re not in Missouri, you can do the very same thing, in hopes you don’t need to be put in this position.

Anyone can sign the open letter here.