Banned Books Week highlights Georgia fight over books on race and gender

Banned Books Week starts Oct. 4, and Georgia advocates are pushing back against recent announcements of banned books in public schools.

The focus this year is on books about transgender people and Black history being removed from schools and libraries, including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” which was recently banned by the state’s second largest school district.

Cobb County Schools officials announced that Toni Morrison’s book would be removed from the school library during a school board meeting two weeks ago. The school district’s superintendent read from the book a scene in which the main character is raped by her father. 

Dean Steed is the communications director for the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, a Black trans and queer-led organization in Atlanta known as SnapCo. He said they are pushing back against banning books about trans lives by creating their own publication.

“We just released a new zine called ‘How We Talk About Us,’ which looks at the harmful narratives about Black trans people and it gives people the practical tools to challenge a lot of the misinformation that has been pushed around trans lives by politicians and within news,” Steed explained.

SnapCo says the project is a resource created for and by Black trans people to examine dominant tropes and myths about trans people.

Steed said that storytelling is a central part of organizing because words have power, especially when they are used to rally people.

“Black trans people deserve the opportunity to document our own lives, our own histories, ideas and experiences in our own words. So often trans people are being talked about but we are not being talked to,” Steed observed.

Steed said that when narratives position trans people as a threat to children or society, extreme actions against trans people, such as increased policing and restrictions, can feel justified.

Legislation passed in Georgia in 2025 that prohibits transgender and nonbinary youth from participating in school sports and using bathrooms and locker rooms aligned with their gender identity.