Book banning has become such an insidiously entrenched part of the contemporary political landscape that it’s easy to forget how long the problem has been with us. Reading about Banned Books Week—observed October 5-11 this year—I was surprised to learn that the American Library Association had launched this annual observance back in 1982, in response to a wave of attempted bans at the time.

That year also saw a significant Supreme Court ruling, Island Trees School District v. Pico. A group of parents in the district had lodged a complaint with the school board that nine books in the library were “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy.” Among the offending titles? Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and a volume of Best Short Stories by Negro Writers edited by Langston Hughes. When the books were removed from the shelves, four students filed a lawsuit. SCOTUS ultimately ruled in the students’ favor, citing the First Amendment. (Our cover subject, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wasn’t yet on the court, but she has plenty to say about the value of literature for young readers; read the interview on p. 86.)

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple was published in 1982 as well. The novel garnered immediate critical acclaim, but by 1984, it was already a magnet for would-be censors, who disliked its depictions of sexual abuse and a lesbian relationship. In Oakland, California, a parent, whose daughter had been assigned to read it, objected to its use in public school classrooms; a committee was formed and “exonerated” the book—yet The Color Purple, like Slaughterhouse-Five, remains a frequent target, all these years later.

Clearly, the impulse to ban books is part of the American DNA, as two new books demonstrate. Ira Wells’ On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy (Biblioasis, June 3) zeroes in on public libraries as contested zones of free speech and censorship where, in an ideal world, democratic citizens can educate themselves and make informed decisions about what they will and will not read. Our review calls it a “thoughtful, conversationally written reflection on why banning books damages the fabric of social belonging.”

In You Can’t Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads: Angelo Herndon’s Fight for Free Speech (Norton, February 4), legal historian Brad Snyder shows the frightening flip side of book banning—the punishment of individuals for the books they choose to read. Snyder unearths the forgotten story of a Black labor organizer who, in 1930s Georgia, was successfully prosecuted for possession of a book, discovered during an unwarranted search of his home, that advocated the formation of a Black homeland in several Southern states, supposedly violating a Georgia statute against inciting insurrection. Eventually, the Supreme Court struck down the law and freed Herndon.

You, too, can play a role in the ongoing struggle against censorship. Visit the Banned Books Week website (bannedbooks.org), which has more information and tool kits for further action, such as hosting a “Right To Read Night,” where friends and neighbors can discuss this year’s featured banned book: Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains. Reading is indeed a right—one best defended by exercising it.

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.