Ironically, Nick and I seem to be doing the same novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. I chose to write about this novel because it had a heavy influence on me as a reader when I first read this as a teen. Many of the things that the characters went through were things that I could relate with, and I felt that Chbosky did a phenomenal job of creating those characters and relaying their experiences. What made me particularly interested in writing on this for the censorship paper was that it was banned for its homosexual content. This book was first published in 1999, a time when the gay rights movement was beginning to receive mainstream acknowledgement. We can see that as the gay rights movement progresses, more and more people want to push back against the “gay agenda” and prevent books/films/media like this from receiving exposure, particularly exposure to children. For this reason, I want to focus on how the gay rights movement inadvertently caused more push back against young adult novels like Perks to be banned in schools and libraries.