From the ACLU, this is at Liberty.

I'm Kendall Seasmeyer, your host.

Over the past two years, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of books being banned or challenged in school districts across the country.

While there's a long history of book banning and censorship in America, over the 2021 to 22 school year, book banning

reached an unprecedented high. What's even more worrying about this increased censorship is

which stories are being censored. The majority of the books being

targeted by these bans contain LGBTQ plus storylines and protagonists of color. Here today to talk

with us about book banning and how we can all show up in the fight against censorship is George M.

Johnson. Their memoir, All Boys Aren't Blue,

explores themes of gender identity, sexual orientation, and race, as Johnson shares their experience

growing up black and queer in New Jersey and Virginia. All Boys Aren't Blue was published in 2020

and has become one of the top five most banned books in the country.

George, thank you so much for joining us.

We're really excited to speak with you today.

Thank you for having me today.

So your memoir, All Boys Aren't Blue, has really taken on a life of its own.

But I want to begin by just kind of going back to the beginning when you first started thinking about writing All Boys Aren't Blue. What motivated you

initially to write this book? Yeah, my initial motivation, I have been a journalist for several

years and I have been writing my story in bits and pieces throughout those years. But there was a death of a young kid named Giovanni Melton. And when the initial reports came out, there was something stated that alluded to the fact that his father said that he would rather have a dead son than a gay son. Hearing that, I continue to write about that story and cover that story, but I also knew

that it wasn't enough, that more had to be done, more needed to be done.

And that really became the catalyst for me to make the decision to put all of those little bits and pieces into a full body of work.

I still at that point, I had read many memoirs and I had read many books where parts of me felt seen and parts of me felt heard,

...