Op-Comic: 3,362 book bans in the U.S.? What year is this, anyway?

By Bryn Durgin and Navied Mahdavian

Feb. 20, 2024 3 AM PT

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My dad taught high school English for 42 years. Now that he's gone, I'm left with boxes of books from his classroom.

Shelved side by side, some of these classic books make up a genre all their own: banned or challenged.

One of my favorites, "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut, starts with Billy Pilgrim unstuck in time. I also feel this way.

Billy is abducted by aliens who can see past, present and future. We humans can only see so much.

When we restrict access to books or entire subjects, we remove a way to see in new dimensions.

It took Vonnegut 23 years to write about the firebombing of Dresden in "Slaughterhouse-Five." The least we can do is listen.

Bryn Durgin, a writer in Florida, is the director of programming at Bookstore1Sarasota and leads its Banned Book Club. Navied Mahdavian, a cartoonist and writer in Utah, is the author of the graphic memoir “This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America.”