An acclaimed memoir is facing bogus pornography charges in Florida. It’s the latest fad in a nationwide trend of book bans on authors who write about race or gender.
For more than a year after its publication, author George Johnson’s memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue was met with universal acclaim. The book, an account of Johnson’s upbringing as a queer Black boy, landed on “best of 2020” lists at Kirkus Reviews and the New York and Chicago public libraries.
“There were no attacks until about eight weeks ago,” Johnson told The Daily Beast.
The shift occurred near the beginning of the 2021 school year, when a coordinated campaign against the teaching of certain race- and gender-related topics plunged school board meetings into a panic. Johnson’s book and others attracted the furor of adults in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, and elsewhere.
But it was in Florida that All Boys Aren’t Blue became the subject of a more insidious tactic. There, a Flagler County School Board member filed a criminal complaint against the book, accusing it of containing pornography. The accusation is on the rise against authors of children’s and young adult literature, with school board members, far-right paramilitary groups, and politicians slinging allegations of pornography at books they don’t like.
Johnson’s was not the first young adult book targeted with bogus pornography accusations.