Author Jesse Andrews addressed efforts to ban his novel Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in a column for Deadline.
Andrews’ young adult novel, published in 2012 by Amulet/Abrams, follows a high school senior and his friendships with a fellow aspiring filmmaker and a girl who is battling leukemia. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised its “inventiveness, humor, and heart.”
In the column, Andrews reacts to news that his book has been removed from school library shelves in Leon County, Florida, after complaints from the right-wing activist group Moms for Liberty.
“The book banners, once again, have banned my book,” he writes. “Every time this happens, I’m not sure whether to find it funny or sad.…It seems to have been banned mainly because there’s a lot of swearing and a two-page passage where the main character and his only friend do a long jokey riff about eating pussy.”
Me and the Earl and the Dying Girl has been one of the most challenged and banned books in American schools and libraries in recent years. The American Library Association included it on its lists of most frequently banned book in 2021 and 2022.
“For the last two years, a national movement of right-wing activists has been busily bleaching the bookshelves of hundreds of books they’ve targeted as unfit for teenagers to read,” Andrews writes. “My novel has been banned dozens of times and challenged dozens more; I don’t see this ending anytime soon.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
