Margaret Atwood is no stranger to book banning. According to the American Library Association, her 1985 masterpiece “The Handmaid’s Tale” was the 29th most banned book of the 2010s. When the ALA does its assessment of the 2020s, I expect it to rank even higher since we’ve never been closer to the patriarchal dystopia Atwood imagined 41 years ago than we are now. And the people who want “The Handmaid’s Tale” to come true control all three branches of the U.S. government and have loads of birth-rate-obsessed billionaires in their corner. In their view, women need to step up their game and bear genetically pure white babies. And the last thing they want is for young readers to be exposed to Atwood’s relevant cautionary tale.
Atwood isn’t shy about speaking out when her work is removed from shelves, either. Last year, she addressed the PEN Congress in Krakow soon after “The Handmaid’s Tale” was banned by the Edmonton school board. Two years prior, in the wake of “The Handmaid’s Tale” being banned by Madison County, Virginia school board, she wrote an essay for The Atlantic titled “Go Ahead and Ban My Book.” In both cases, the book’s removal was due to its explicit sexual content. In her Atlantic article, Atwood correctly observed, “This episode is perplexing to me, in part because my book is much less sexually explicit than the Bible, and I doubt the school board has ordered the expulsion of that.”
Atwood has always been quick to remind us that once books are targeted for banning, readers, particularly young ones, want nothing more than to see what all the fuss is about. But in her 2025 speech, she was more concerned than she’s ever been due to what she views as the likely collapse of the United States.
Margaret Atwood sees dark times ahead for writers and readers in the United States
As Margaret Atwood put it in 2025:
“Externally, the U.S. seems to be abdicating its position as the dominant world power. Internally, it appears to be turning its back on its one-time much celebrated status as an open, liberal democracy — the torch-carrier for freedom, a beacon of light to oppressed Soviet satellites during the Cold War — and flirting with the very kind of autocracy that it once stood so firmly against.”
This collapse is being hastened by the deeply unwell President Donald J. Trump, who caters to wealthy men desperate for more white babies to stave off the so-called “Great Replacement.” This naked white supremacy neatly dovetails with reproduction-fixated evangelicals. And this is all speeding forward while the United States is engaged in a pointless war with Iran where Trump has at least once threatened to wipe out the Middle Eastern country with a nuclear strike.
So, yes, it’s different this time. Per Atwood, “One of the harbingers of autocratic takeovers is an attempt to control writers and artists, either by censoring them and dictating to them what sort of art they should produce.” She then added, “The levers are money and lawsuits, but these have been quite effective. Most people with jobs are by nature fearful of challenging authority, or at least any authority with the power to fire them.”
Will it become a crime to possess subversive material (à la “Fahrenheit 451”)? If so, reading “The Handmaid’s Tale” or Atwood’s equally terrifying novel “MaddAddam” and other controversial books could cost you your job or worse. This is a frightening moment in U.S. history, and Atwood is sounding an alarm. Listen to her. And watch the “Handmaid’s Tale” TV series while you can.
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