Banned Book Club cover

Banned Book Club

by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada (art by Ko Hyung-Ju)

A secret reading group. A dictatorship. Real arrests.

For you if

you suspect reading together is more dangerous, and more useful, than reading alone.

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Kim Hyun Sook is a college student in 1983 South Korea who wants to stay out of politics, until she joins a secret reading group. This graphic memoir follows the club through the books the dictatorship forbade, and through what happens when a spy gets inside: arrests, beatings, interrogations. It treats reading as something you do with other people, with consequences. It ends decades later with members back in the street.

In effect right now

Somebody decided you shouldn’t read this. Read it this week.

It only works if nobody notices. Get a copy, pass it on, and tell the people who made the call that you did.

The record

  • Indian River County, FL

    2023

    Removed from school libraries · Indian River County school libraries

    Initiated by: parent or community challenge

    In effect nowLast verified Oct 18, 2026Source ↗

  • Clay County, FL

    2023

    Removed from school libraries · Clay County school libraries, during the challenge

    Back on the shelves within days

    Initiated by: parent or community challenge

    ReversedSource ↗

  • Daviess County Public Library, KY

    2023

    Removed from a public library · Daviess County Public Library patrons, during the review

    Returned to its collection after review

    Initiated by: parent or community challenge

    ReversedSource ↗

See every banned & challenged book on our shelves →

Where This Book Lives

Setting
South Korea
Voice
Written by a South Korean author

Conditional pick: chosen for the reading club itself as the act of resistance. Color edition. Gritty (arrests, beatings), so better for teens and adults. Not itself a banned book; it is about banned books under a dictatorship.

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Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.

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Crip Camp(2020)

dir. Nicole Newnham & James LeBrecht

Same themes: Solidarity, Youth Activism

A summer camp that started a rights movement.

In the early 1970s, a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities near Woodstock, Camp Jened, ran on hippie rules: no adults in charge of the kids' lives. The campers, among them co-director James LeBrecht and the future activist Judy Heumann, went on to organize the sit-ins and protests that helped win the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was produced for Netflix and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Why it’s here: The film shows that a movement can begin as a summer. What's punk is that the people it follows organize without asking permission, and refuse to be treated as objects of pity. What's pedagogical is the through-line from a place where kids ran their own lives to a federal law that changed what was possible. It's a rare entry on disability and civil rights, and a natural fit for DoCR's self-organization principle.

Where to watch: Streaming on NetflixLetterboxd ↗

Fahrenheit 451 poster

Fahrenheit 451(1966)

dir. François Truffaut

Same themes: Book Banning, Censorship

Burning books to keep everyone happy.

In a future where books are outlawed, fireman Guy Montag burns forbidden literature for a living until a young woman's curiosity about reading unsettles his loyalty to the system. Truffaut's only English-language film, adapted from Ray Bradbury's novel.

Why it’s here: Punk in imagining resistance as an act of memory — the "book people" who become the books they refuse to let die. Pedagogical in showing censorship dressed up as compassion, a government that burns literature "for everyone's peace of mind."

Where to watch: Rent/buy: Fandango at HomeLetterboxd ↗

Same event, different angle

The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.