Our world is another banned book on a shelf
By Sabahat Baig, April 24 2026—
The world is becoming a dark dystopian novel that no amount of book bans can censor, and no rose-tinted glasses can possibly romanticize
The complex and often torn discussion on banned books has been going on for ages, with concerned parents and hopeless teachers left in a never-ending dance of blades, trying to determine what is inappropriate and what is a blatant act of ignorance towards real issues.
Many books are seemingly being banned from schools due to their influence on political and social elements outside of conservative ideals, which are said to negatively affect impressionable youth. These books tend to contain LGBTQ+ content, conversations surrounding reproductive rights, environmentalist ideals going against technology like AI, and the deconstructing of various harmful binaries concerning orientalist and racist views.
What the list of banned books have in common is their liberal and modern thinking beliefs that discuss the violation of human rights at the hands of corrupt political systems. Books like The Hunger Games even show people revolting against the systems of power that continuously oppress them. If Donald Trump is our Coriolanus Snow, then who, I wonder, will be our Katniss Everdeen? Who will fight a system that condemns the poor to die for their entertainment?
I suppose the purpose of banning this book is to ensure no Katniss Everdeen does rise: no figure that ignites hope in the hearts of the condemned, so they might resist the corruption spreading through conservative governments. And what screams The Hunger Games more than the Met Gala following the bombing of Rafah in 2024? The richest people on earth dressed in exquisite costumes (as the Capitol does), donating their blood money to an even richer institute: the Met Museum. What about the 2026 Golden Globes coinciding with the “Artists for Aid” event for Sudan and Palestine? As we have been reminded time and time again, there is no profit for the rich man if the poor man is not being exploited, especially not in an oligarchal society.
These books challenge systems of power, and threaten to deconstruct social and political binaries while questioning whom they truly serve. To ban these books is to conceal the horrifying truth of where our society is leading us. Those who censor these texts do so in an attempt to try and hide the evidence of humanity’s growing more dystopian and inhumane by mimicking the oppressors of these politically influential novels.
For instance, Atwood’s speculative novel The Handmaid’s Tale shows a dystopia that feels closer to reality than fantasy. This unburnable book highlights rising issues in 1985, focusing on the loss of reproductive rights by the oppression of middle-class women, raped and forced to bear the children of their upper-class abusers. In this dystopian vision of America, people of colour, gay rights and women’s rights are eliminated.
The Handmaid’s Tale may be fiction, but it is frightening to think that with the loss of abortion rights in several countries, the rise of dangerous self-induced abortions being performed and celebrities utilizing surrogacy as a way to avoid aesthetically “ruining” their bodies, it looms closer and closer to our lived reality.
Our generation seems to be growing closer to right-winged ideals — endangering many groups of diverse social strata whose human rights are at risk as a result of uninformed voters choosing the next leaders of our countries.
The problem of misinformation and disinformation that produce such dystopias — the general lack of education we’re seeing propagated by governments — is directly affected by book banning, for when books full of real issues are blacklisted and teachers are punished for even uttering their names, we have nowhere to turn for an authentic depiction of what our world can turn into if we do not change our course of action.
One can also look to another banned book, The Diary of a Young Girl, an account of Anne Frank’s diary entries during the Nazi occupation of her home:
“Terrible things are happening outside… poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.”
You don’t need to look far to find a similar scenario occurring in recent times, with ICE going from home to home, to schools and places of work to “capture aliens” and deport citizens out of the USA or send them to prisons in El Salvador.
Banning books to censor real problems isn’t just an American scheme, it is a local issue. In Alberta, the issue gains more attention than the underpaid and overworked teachers forced out of their classrooms to go on strike and demand the bare minimum for the betterment of our children’s education.
Explosive discussions on equality are being had everywhere, and much of the public in political settings and the legible voters on either side of conservatives and liberals would like to argue that in 2026 we are all equal, since many rights and laws exist now that did not exist before. But, the movement of ICE and the increasing number of deportations targeting minority groups would say otherwise. Those who believe that we are all equal, it seems, see nothing and hear nothing. Even in 2026, we struggle to hold onto the rights —- whether it be Women’s rights or rights for Trans lives the UK supreme court endangers — those before us fought tooth and nail for. Rights that should have been given long ago, rather than becoming something we have to fight even now to keep.
In his banned book Animal Farm, George Orwell perfectly states the truth of the world and the hierarchical systems that profit from the unknowing: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
The purpose of censorship is to take down hope. Right-wing power systems fear that if you consume revolutionary media, you will gain a hope that will inspire you to demand change in the same ways the protagonists in these books do so — by talking about what’s wrong, protesting and working together to end it.
The step towards consuming this media and saving it from being banned and blacklisted allows the public to gain knowledge and identify patterns in the real world. Supporting educators’ right to choose what they teach, and the right to keep these informative books in schools allows the messages on inequality and justice to spread through the future law makers and voters. There will be no power, no influence, no superior being in the binaries the political structures carefully uphold to keep the rich and wealthy on top. They know that once you consume this media that discusses equality for all, rights for women, for queer communities, for the marginalized east and south, once you get a taste of an equitable world, a taste of rebellion, a taste for justice, that you will demand it. They know that once you consume Atwood, Collins, Orwell or Angelou, you’ll view things from a new angle. The world will seem uncanny, and at least half of the world will strive to fix the issues that set everything off.
Those who consume allegorical fiction and side with the resistance, and still fail to recognize the similarities between fictional fascism and real fascism, I worry for you. I question your morality and comprehension if you cannot pick apart reality and see the glaring similarities.
Frederick Douglass said, “Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
We need these banned books back in schools, so our future generation is not blinded by fake news and media meticulously planted in their education to further any sort of agenda — like Trump’s approach at teaching American youth a glorified and distorted history that erases the truth of Slavery.
Read banned books, and never stop discussing why they are banned. Join rallies, sign petitions, question the systems of power, and never stop fighting for equality, whether these authoritative figures listen or not. Or else the people deciding what is taught and what is not, people like Trump and Musk, and other dictatorship governmental figures, will win in their goal of cultivating an uneducated and unpolitical society that submits to all their crimes and schemes.
This article is a part of our Opinions section and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Gauntlet editorial board.