5 Great Readings for Banned Books Week
Posted on October 05, 2026
An annual event celebrating the freedom to read, Banned Books Week seems more and more relevant each year. We've pulled together five short readings that celebrate free expression:
- “For the Love of the Books”: A memoir of a girl growing up in Iran's most religious city, exploring a world of forbidden literature through her brother’s secret trove. These books become her Garden of Eden, and she must find ways to persist once banned from her literary paradise.
- Also a memoir, “An Iranian Metamorphosis” features a cartoonist's own take on a transformative cockroach, only his version lands him with a Kafkaesque jail sentence—over a single slang word.
- The striking Chinese graphic fiction “Sharing,” which is banned in China, grapples with the pitfalls of consumerist culture and the experiences of isolation and alienation from it.
- Also banned in China, “An Interview with Wu Wenjian” tells the story of a young artist-turned-protester who joined the student movement at Tiananmen Square. (For a deep dive into censorship in China, try the Taboo Topics section of the country collection.)
- From Russia, the essay “On the Moscow Metro and Being Gay” is a defiant call for social equality and a poignant examination of homophobia and the queer experience—through both a Soviet-era and contemporary lens.
Although these readings come from three countries, free speech is currently endangered in many different parts of the world; students can find information on global censorship in the Context and Playlist tabs next to each of the stories.