Introduction to the Special Collection: Contextualizing Censored Literacies: Pursuing Freedom and Examining Threats

This Editorial Introduction details how rapid increases in book bans and censorship across the United States are impacting literacy practices in the form of censored literacies. Whether redacted or removed from schools or other spaces of literacy learning, censored literacies are shaped by context, and stakeholders are responding through literacy practices of freedom that are rooted in collective action. Whether chronicling censored literacies or literacy practices of freedom, the articles in this special collection are organized around three thematic clusters: (1) The Space & Time of Book Bans, (2) Banned Community and Uncensored Allies, and (3) Disrupting Colonialist Censorship and its Afterlives. Together, the articles offer conceptual and practitioner strategies for recognizing and resisting censored literacies in pursuit of intellectual freedom and free expression.