Doña Ana Community College (DACC) brought Banned Books Week to its campus Oct. 7 and Oct. 9 with a Banned Books Carnival, informing students with carnival-style events such as ring-toss, popcorn, and book related games.
Banned Books Week is an annual event hosted by the American Library Association (ALA). Started in 1982, their goal is to draw attention to the harms of censorship and highlight the importance of free access to information, according to their website.
The theme of this year was George Orwell’s “1984”, including the slogan, “Censorship Is So 1984. Read For Your Rights.”
Tiffany Schirmer, instruction librarian and programmer at the DACC Library, shared the goal behind Banned Books Week.
“I don’t think others have the right to tell others what they can and can’t listen to, what they can read,” Schirmer said. “It’s freedom of speech, it’s intellectual freedom.”
The ALA states that 38% of book challenges take place in public schools. Mak Jones, DACC librarian, shared why she thinks this is taking place.
“From my understanding, people who want to be challenging these books don’t believe it should be a personal choice and instead should be something that is mandated or comes from their own sense of what people should and should not be reading,” Jones said.
According to the ALA and DACC website, 2,452 unique book titles were challenged this past year. The annual average from 2001-2020 is 273 unique titles, significantly lower than this past year.
Vannessa Peay, librarian at the DACC Library, shared why she thinks sharing these titles is crucial for the community.
“I think it’s important for literacy for kids,” Peay said. “It opens their minds, gets them thinking, and brings to them other perspectives that they may not have. [And] there are some families that…don’t want their kids exposed to things that fall outside of their ideology.”
At the event, students were able to find information on and easily locate the “10 most challenged books of 2025,” along with personal recommendations on challenged books from the librarians; including titles such as “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, and “Captain Underpants” by Dav Pilkey.
Peay shared that her favorite was “This Is My America” by Kim Johnson, a novel highlighting the inequality of the criminal justice system. Peay included that it was published in 2020, the summer of the George Floyd protests.
Both Schirmer and Jones highlighted “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe, an autobiography exploring Kobabe’s identity. Schirmer shared that many of these books are being challenged for homosexual and transgender content.
“I think part of the problem is that others expect librarians to do the censoring, and that’s not what we’re about,” Schirmer said. “One of our main tenets is that everybody has the right to read.”
In New Mexico, select schools have banned books such as “Bless Me, Ultima” by Rudolfo Anaya and “Daughters of Eve” by Lois Duncan for profanity, anti-Catholicism, and general disagreements surrounding the books content.
The DACC Library stands against the censorship and banning of books and will continue to carry challenged books on its shelves.
“We do not discriminate based on the content of what books we have in our library, and it’s up to individuals to decide whether or not that [content] is appropriate for them.” Jones said.
