Yes, Shout Is Banned!

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout is the companion piece to her groundbreaking novel Speak. Where Speak told a fictionalized version of Anderson’s experience, Shout tells the real one: her own rape as a teenager, her silence, her eventual decision to write about it, and the twenty years of letters she received from readers who told her that Speak saved their lives. The memoir is written in verse, alternating between personal narrative, response to critics, and an unflinching examination of rape culture. Anderson writes with the authority of someone who has spent decades listening to survivors.

Shout was challenged 10 times in the 2024-2025 PEN America data, with bans in Florida and Tennessee school districts. Anderson is already one of the most banned authors in America for Speak, and Shout extends her target profile by adding memoir-level specificity to the same themes. The challenges cite sexual content and mature themes, which in this case means a woman’s account of her own rape and its aftermath. Anderson has been the most prominent literary voice against book banning for years, frequently testifying before school boards and legislatures. Banning her memoir about being silenced is the kind of irony that writes itself.