The Denver Center Theatre Company’s fall production of I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter is based on the young adult novel of the same name by Erika L. Sánchez. The story centers on Júlia, grieving after her sister’s death while also struggling to conform to familial expectations as she comes of age in a Mexican-American household. The way in which some readers feel the book deals with death, traditions and faith has led to its ban in several states including Florida, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah and Texas.

While I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter has not been banned in Colorado, according to Rocky Mountain PBS, “the state ranked among the top 17 in the nation for having more than 100 titles targeted for bans at public libraries across the Front Range.”

Joining the list of well-known banned books such as Forever by Judy Blume (Peabody Award, winner), The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (National Book Award, finalist), The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Award for Fiction, winner), To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, winner), and both Nineteen Eighty-Four (named to Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list) and Animal Farm (named one of the 100 best English-language novels by TIME) by George Orwell, PEN America provides an Index of School Book Bans. Among those removed from Colorado shelves in the 2022/23 school year are:

THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN by Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney

From GoodReads: Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was the most challenged book in the U.S. from 2010-2019 on the basis of allegations of sexual misconduct, offensive language, violence, and acknowledgements of poverty, alcoholism and sexuality among other concerns. It was banned in the Greeley-Evans Weld County School District 6 in 2023.

BELOVED by Toni Morrison

From GoodReads: Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but 18 years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.

After a ban in the Greeley-Evans Weld County School District 6 in 2023, according to Greeley Tribune, Beloved was ultimately reviewed by the District 6 School Board and was permitted to remain in high school libraries despite concerns of “passages depicting mature content.” However, the Board conceded that parents and guardians may limit their student’s access to library material and receive notifications of books checked out by their students. 

FLAMER by Mike Curato

From GoodReads: It’s the summer between middle school and high school, and Aiden Navarro is away at camp. Everyone’s going through changes—but for Aiden, the stakes feel higher. As he navigates friendships, deals with bullies, and spends time with Elias (a boy he can’t stop thinking about), he finds himself on a path of self-discovery and acceptance.

According to PEN America in the Los Angeles Times, Flamer was the fifth most frequently banned book from July 2021 through the first part of the 2022/23 schoolyear on the basis of its sexual-leaning content. It was banned in the Cherry Creek School District school district in 2022.

GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR by Maia Kobabe

From GoodReads: In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

According to PEN America in the Los Angeles Times, Gender Queer: A Memoir was the most frequently banned book from July 2021 through the first part of the 2022/23 school year on the basis of inappropriate depiction of sexual behavior. It was banned in the Cherry Creek School District school district in 2022.

LET’S TALK ABOUT IT: THE TEEN’S GUIDE TO SEX, RELATIONSHIPS AND BEING HUMAN by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan

From GoodReads: An inclusive, accessible and honest graphic novel guide to growing up, from gender and sexuality to consent and safe sex. Perfect for any teen starting to ask…Is what I’m feeling normal? Is what my body is doing normal? Am I normal? How do I know what are the right choices to make? How do I fix it when I make a mistake?

Based on concerns about sexual content, Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships and Being Human was banned in the Cherry Creek School District school district in 2022.

IDENTICAL by Ellen Hopkins

From GoodReads: Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family—on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret. For Kaeleigh, she’s the misplaced focus of Daddy’s love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites—and she is losing. If she has to lose, she will do it on her own terms, so she chooses drugs, alcohol, and sex. Secrets like the ones the twins are harboring are not meant to be kept—from each other or anyone else. Pretty soon it’s obvious that neither sister can handle it alone, and one sister must step up to save the other, but the question is—who?

According to the Colorado Times Recorder, following a complaint about sexually explicit content from a conservative activist group in Colorado Springs, its School Board voted to remove three books from school libraries: Identical by Ellen Hopkins, Lucky by Rachel Vail and Push by Sapphire, which was the basis of the 2009 Academy Award-winning film, Precious. 

LUCKY by Rachel Vail

Banned in the Colorado Springs School District in 2023

From GoodReads: It’s all good . . . and lucky Phoebe Avery plans to celebrate by throwing an end-of-the-year bash with her four closest friends. Everything will be perfect—from the guest list to the fashion photographer to the engraved invitations. The only thing left to do is find the perfect dress . . . until Phoebe goes from having it all to hiding all she’s lost. Phoebe’s older sisters warn her to keep the family’s crisis totally secret. Unfortunately, her alpha-girl best friend looks increasingly suspicious, and Phoebe’s crush starts sending seriously mixed signals. Phoebe tries hard to keep smiling, but when her mother is humiliated in Neiman Marcus while buying Phoebe that perfect dress and her father decides to cancel her party, she panics. How far will she go to keep up her image as a lucky girl?

PUSH by Sapphire

Banned in the Colorado Springs School District in 2023

From GoodReads: Precious Jones, an illiterate 16-year-old, has up until now been invisible: invisible to the father who rapes her and the mother who batters her and to the authorities who dismiss her as just one more of Harlem’s casualties. But when Precious, pregnant with a second child by her father, meets a determined and highly radical teacher, we follow her on a journey of education and enlightenment as Precious learns not only how to write about her life, but how to make it her own for the first time.