Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a young adult historical novel set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1954. It follows Lily Hu, a 17-year-old Chinese American girl who starts questioning who she is after she meets a classmate, Kath Miller, and discovers a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. All of this happens while the Red Scare and suspicion of Chinese Americans hang over her family.

Critics loved it. The book won the 2021 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and later picked up the Printz Award, among other honors. Even so, it keeps turning up on lists of the most challenged books in America.

Why do people want it removed?

Most complaints come from parents and local groups who say the book does not belong in school libraries because of its LGBTQ+ romance and a few sexual scenes. Librarians, teachers and many teen readers see it differently. To them it is carefully researched history, and one of the few stories about queer Asian American lives that young people can actually find on a shelf.

Which schools have pulled it?

This is not a nationwide ban. The book has been removed or restricted in school libraries and classrooms in several US school districts. PEN America, which tracks these cases, listed it among the most banned books of the 2024–25 school year. LGBTQ+ titles like this one appear on those lists almost every year.

Want to see how other titles compare? Browse our full list of banned books, or head to the TabooWorld homepage for more stories on what governments and institutions try to keep out of sight.

Can you still read it?

Yes. Outside the districts that restricted it, the novel is sold in bookstores and stocked by many public libraries. Inside those districts, access depends on what the local school board decided.

If you like reading about censorship, see more entries in our banned books section to find out which other stories have been challenged and why.