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The last several months of the Trump administration’s reign have seen the deployment of language restriction as a tactic in the systemic erosion of civil rights. While the scale has intensified dramatically, this enforcement of social hegemony through literary and aesthetic regulation is not a new phenomenon. Historian Andrew Hartman contends that “the history of America, for better and worse, is largely a history of debates about the idea of America.” We are watching this ideological question play out violently, attempting to delineate which bodies are “American,” what behavior is “American,” and what art, what literature, what television is “American.” One of the many ways this debate is performed is through grand displays of moral outrage over literature, as well as through the banning of books and education material.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, schools and libraries across the country fought a record number of book bans — a figure that will likely rise as increasing restrictions are imposed on academic institutions, museums, and libraries. In late 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an assembly bill into law protecting school curricula from gender- and race-based bans. Tony Thurmond, state superintendent of public instruction, celebrated this victory, proclaiming that the measure “sends a strong signal to the people of California — but also to every American — that in the Golden State — we don’t ban books — we cherish them.”

While these safeguards are undeniably important, Thurmond’s conviction that “we don’t ban books” is missing a caveat: We don’t ban books here — except in our state prisons. Access to literature for people experiencing incarceration has always been heavily monitored; often the very same books that state officials fight for access to in public schools are restricted in jails and prisons.

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Chuck Murdoch, 68, has experienced this firsthand. On August 19, 2024, his memoir

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