‘The reception of my books is different now’: Author Grace Lin on the reality of book bans and their impact
As an author who writes and beautifully illustrates children’s picture books featuring dim sum and mooncakes, Grace Lin shouldn’t be on book banners’ radars. Yet, her books are being irrationally targeted, impacting her career in more ways than one.
Lin is an award-winning author and artist who specializes in children’s books. She is the author/illustrator behind works like The Ugly Vegetables, Dim Sum for Everyone!, The Year of the Dog, and A Big Mooncake for Little Star. She is the recipient of a Newberry Honor, Theodor Geisel Honor, and Caldecott Honor. Throughout her career, Lin has been a champion of diversity and inclusion, believing books to be “windows” and “mirrors” that allow children to see themselves reflected and learn to care about the lives of others. Unfortunately, she has been targeted by book banners.
Recently, the Department of Education sided with book banners, claiming they were rightfully removing “inappropriate” and sexually explicit books from schools rather than banning books they disliked. However, Lin’s experiences strongly contradict this claim. The Mary Sue spoke to Lin via e-mail about her book-banning experiences and how the irrational banning has impacted her career.
The reception of Grace Lin’s books shifted because of book bans
When Lin first discovered her books were being banned, she didn’t initially believe it. However, the ban was real and an indicator of times to come. Lin explained, “I actually found out when someone tagged me on an Instagram reel. It was about the books being banned in York School District in PA—and it was showing my book A Big Mooncake for Little Star. I was pretty incredulous and thought it was some sort of social media hoax. I mean, I just didn’t see how A Big Mooncake for Little Star could be controversial—a little girl eating a big mooncake? But it wasn’t— in fact, it was just a harbinger of how book banning was becoming completely irrational.”
Lin acknowledges that all authors’ experiences with banning are different, and some have faced aggression and bullying that goes beyond having their books challenged. She noted, “Many authors have it much, much worse than me—facing aggressive bullying and threats, and I want to be very clear that they are the ones who deserve the most sympathy, support and protection.” However, her experience has also been “painful” because book banning has had a more “subtle” impact that left her questioning her own abilities. Many of her books aren’t being formally banned, but the atmosphere that banning has created has led to her and her books simply not being chosen by teachers and educators. She wrote:
I have been publishing books for 25 years and have regularly received many invitations to visit schools. Those invitations have decreased dramatically. My books used to be chosen often for One School, One Book Reads. That has also decreased dramatically. Educators worry that my books featuring Asian characters might make students ask about race and that a school visit with me, an author who has been so aligned with diversity, equity, and inclusion, will enrage parents. So, while most of my books are not being protested, they are simply not being chosen anymore.
The most heartbreaking part is that these authors are sometimes led to believe they’re the ones who have done something wrong. She explained, “It is easy for those who doubt book bans to point to other reasons for this—heck, it’s easy for me to wonder if it’s just because my books are no longer relevant or I’ve suddenly become a talentless hack. But that is what makes this kind of book banning so insidious. It is quiet and it hides itself in whispers; and it likes to make authors believe that they are the problem.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Education calling book bans a “hoax” exacerbates the situation. Lin wrote, “For my author friends who have faced truly frightening harassment and hostility, it was incredibly insulting. For my situation, it was disheartening as it just makes it more difficult to prove there is a problem. Many deny my books are being banned as the subtleties of soft banning are hard to show.” However, it’s impossible to deny how things have changed. She stated:
But my books are the same as they have been for 25 years. Dim Sum for Everyone! was published in 2000. However, it is only now that it needs to be ‘under review.’ The reception of my books is different now. Whether they are blatantly banned or not is not the point; it’s that things have changed. Sure, in the past, my work was met with a great deal of indifference—but now it is getting met with worry or suspicion. And that is new. Many don’t believe it, and, honestly, I don’t want to believe it either. But I have to because it’s true.
Why were Lin’s books targeted?
If book banners are doing what they claim to do and removing inappropriate books for children, they wouldn’t be targeting children’s picture books by Lin. However, they went after it because it was flagged for diversity. Lin explained, “A Big Mooncake for Little Star was recommended as a book to include for libraries who wish to increase diversity in their collections. Because the book has been included on the list, it was flagged. At the time, banners were trying to say the books on that list taught Critical Race Theory (spoiler: they don’t!) and used that to justify it.”
Over the years, it has gotten to the point where banners don’t even have to manufacture these ridiculous arguments about CRT. Any connection to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is all they need now to immediately flag books for review in some conservative states. Lin wrote, “Just being a book with ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ is enough for a book to be put ‘under review,’ such as my book Dim Sum For Everyone! in Florida. Diversity, equity, inclusion—those words are in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States. But now those words are toxic.”
As Lin clarified, A Big Mooncake for Little Star doesn’t teach preschoolers CRT. It’s a book that teaches children the moon’s phases through the tale of a little girl, affectionately called “little star,” who can’t help but sneak a few bites of the giant mooncake her mother made. One of Lin’s inspirations came from her and her daughter’s attendance at a “Robert McCloskey exhibit.” She explained, as they left, “I saw that the show was called ‘Americana on Parade’ and it struck me that I had just taken my daughter to see a show of Americana where no one looked like us. We were not a part of the Americana.” She noticed “Robert McCloskey had cast his own daughter in Blueberries for Sal and by doing so, in a way, cast her as the all-American girl.” Hence, she wrote A Big Mooncake for Little Star and cast her own daughter as the main character “to claim that she, too, could be an all-American girl.”
When book banners target A Big Mooncake for Little Star, the real reason isn’t CRT or any other outlandish claims banners make about children’s books. It’s all about the little girl Lin chose to cast as the “all-American girl.” Lin explained banners likely targeted her book because “If BIPOC children never see themselves as heroes in a book, they will have a harder time imagining they can become one. If white children never see BIPOC characters in a book, it will be easier for them to believe that BIPOC people are of no importance. You can extrapolate from there.”
What can we do about book bans?
Regarding combating book bans, Lin commended the efforts of PEN America and Authors Against Book Bans, which especially concentrate on “the books that have been targeted most viciously.” They do much work “with calls to representatives and statements.” However, smaller efforts matter, too, especially when it comes to encouraging people to defy the atmosphere of fear that banners have created. She wrote, “Those gentle pushes to encourage educators to choose the diverse book as a read-aloud, to share the video of a BIPOC author with students and not to give into pre-emptive fear—those actions matter, too.”
It’s easy for writers and authors to feel hopeless as the Trump administration threatens to heighten book bans, even though they’re already largely out of control. Lin admitted, “Honestly, I’ve been fighting off my own depression about all this, so I have been reading and listening to a lot of books and podcasts to combat it.” However, she did have some inspiring words of encouragement to leave readers and writers with: “Be as kind as you can. All of this can make you angry and scared, and that leaves little room for kindness, but we need it if we are going to have hope. And hope is what you need to make a change. So be kind, have hope, and do what you can— small or big—to make a change.”
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