Yes, Man o' War Is Banned!

Cory McCarthy’s Man o’ War centers on River McIntyre, a nonbinary competitive swimmer dealing with the collision between athletic ambition and gender identity. When River’s swim coach and divorced parents pressure them to compete on the boys’ team, River pushes back against a binary system that doesn’t fit. A budding romance with a new teammate adds another layer of complexity. McCarthy, who is nonbinary, writes from lived experience, grounding the story in the specific, physical reality of inhabiting a body that the world keeps trying to categorize.

Man o’ War was challenged 12 times in the 2024-2025 PEN America data, with bans concentrated in Florida school districts including Broward, Hillsborough, and Palm Beach County. The challenges cite LGBTQ+ content, specifically the book’s depiction of nonbinary identity and same-sex attraction. Books featuring transgender and nonbinary characters have become the fastest-growing category of banned books, reflecting a political environment in which trans rights have become a central culture-war battleground. Man o’ War is a sports novel about a kid who wants to swim. That this is controversial says more about the challengers than the book.