The state of Missouri has the third largest number of book bans in the country, with 333 bans during the 2022-2023 school year alone. Overwhelmingly, books that are banned deal with topics related to race and racism, sexuality, identity, grief, and death, restricting access to these subjects for students across Missouri’s school districts. However, as a private institution, Washington University in St. Louis is unaffected by legislation restricting this material. Read it Anyway is an index designed to help students find books in WashU’s libraries that are banned or suppressed in other locations across Missouri.
As of May 2024, the Read it Anyway index was purchased and currently resides in the Washington University Libraries Special Collections.
Of the 333 banned books, 75 are available across five of Washington University’s libraries as well as in its online catalog. Each page of the book includes information about a banned book, including its title, author, illustrator (if applicable), and cover art. Additionally, it includes the district or districts in which the book is banned, the challenge that led to its banning, and where to find it on the WashU campus.
Bound together, the Read it Anyway index is a dense handheld accordion book that stretches up to 22 feet long. The size and volume of the book are emphasized to create a visual representation of the ubiquity of book bans across the state.
In addition to the index, a set of bookmarks was created to add to the project’s interactivity. These bookmarks are placed inside banned books on library shelves so that readers of the index can more easily locate them. The color system of the index indicates the libraries in which each book is located, corresponding with the different bookmark colors.
