Beloved Star Trek actor, author and LGBTQ+ icon, George Takei is fighting against the rising censorship of books, in particular LGBTQ+ literature, during this year’s Banned Books Week. Takei who has authored books including: They Called Us Enemy, a graphic novel about his experiences during the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII; and It Rhymes with Takei, a memoir about his life as a closeted gay man and his coming out at the age of 68, will help spread awareness of book bans. He serves as the honorary chair for The American Library Association’s (ALA) annual Banned Books Week, held this year from 5th to 11th October.
Takei is joined by youth honorary chair Iris Mogul, a teenager from Florida who created a Banned Book Club. The theme for this year’s 43rd Banned Books Week is ‘Censorship is so 1984. Read for Your Rights’, using the title of George Orwell’s famous novel on censorship and extreme surveillance.
“I remember all too well the lack of access to books and media that I needed growing up. First as a child in a barbed-wire prison camp, then as a gay young man in the closet, I felt confused and hungry for understanding about myself and the world around me,” Takei explained in a statement.
“Now, as an author, I share my own stories so that new generations will be better informed about their history and themselves. Please stand with me in opposing censorship, so that we all can find ourselves — and each other — in books.”
Seven of 10 of the most banned books in American libraries featured LGBTQ+ characters, according to the latest banned books report from ALA, who have tracked censorship of literature since 1990. 2024, also ranked as the third-biggest year for book-banning efforts in the U.S. since the ALA started tracking them, with 72% of those book challenges launched by organized movements or government entities.
“Books are an essential foundation of democracy,” Takei adds. “Our ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ depends on a public that is informed and empathetic, and books teach us both information and empathy. Yet the right to read is now under attack from school boards and politicians across America.”
