A list of 25 books in total have been banned by the Marietta School Board as of December 2023, with the appeal of the ban being rejected by the Marietta School Board in January 2024.
In a recent statement, Chris Ragsdale, the superintendent of the Cobb County School Board has indicated that they will be following suit, stating that “we are familiar with the 23 books and the sexually explicit content that Marietta has found and are currently reviewing to see which locations have any of the books, and the same process will be taken.”
The list of 25 books began with two books banned in September of last year. The first two were Flamer by Mike Curato and Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews, later followed by 23 more books in December.
Flamer, one of the first books to be banned, follows the story of a young Filipino boy who struggles with his sexuality at a summer camp. Besides this, the book discusses feelings of alienation, the issues of bullying, homophobia, and suicide. The only arguably “sexually explicit content” is in the form of an accident in a community shower, and a kiss on the cheek given to another boy.
Karla Jacobs, one of the board members of the non-profit organization Marietta in the Middle that worked on the appeal of the books banned in Marietta said that Flamer is “a suicide prevention book.”
“It’s the kind of book that any kid, gay or straight, black or white; anyone who has experienced feeling different, who has experienced bullying, would find themselves in that character,” said Jacobs. “And yet, they banned it. As far as we can see, the only problem that they have with that book is there was the same sex attraction.”
The books that were banned in Marietta were reviewed by members of Marietta in the Middle, an organization that was formed in response to the initial bannings in September of last year. Kayla Sargent, the board president of Marietta in the Middle said that “we read all the books over the break. We read them all.”
“We spent hours, appealing them all, each one of our appeals average about 25 pages of evidence of why each book should be allowed to stay,” said Sargent. “The school board voted them down within just a few days of getting them.”
On the other hand, a librarian who has asked to remain unnamed said that “yes, some of the content might be considered sexually explicit or even difficult, but it’s not our job as librarians or as media professionals to prevent people from getting that information.”
The reasons cited for the banning of these books is because of their content, with all books banned said to contain explicit sexual content. The blanket term now being used by both school boards is that these books are “harmful to minors,” as determined by the school board after review and based on complaints from parents.
Almost half of the list is books that focus on LGTBQ+ stories, as well as stories from diverse ethnic backgrounds, such as Flamer.
PEN America stated in a recent article that “the superintendent of Marietta schools told reporters in January that one of the methods they use to determine if a book is inappropriate is to check lists circulated by the group Moms for Liberty,” which is now considered an extremist far-right group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that acts as a watchdog for extremism, racism, and white supremacy in other groups.
The power to remove materials from schools was given to parents in 2022 in the form of the Parents’ Bill of Rights. Among other things, the bill gives parents the ability to file complaints against certain books in schools in order to have them removed.
tristanlewis 
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