What does it mean to call a book 'racist,' and what sort of work does this allegation perform? In the field of cultural production, accusations of racism have become a routine occurrence, judgments upon which a wider range of practices – censorship, reimagination, reclamation – can be legitimated. Challenging the self-evidence of these charges, How Books Become Racist takes up three episodes in America's post-Civil Rights literary culture, instances in which competing conceptions of racism have reshaped how Americans write, publish, sell, read, criticize, and teach books. Across these episodes, 'literary racism' emerges not as an objective feature of texts or the outcome of critical appraisal but through active struggle – contests between actors and institutions for whom adjudicating racism remains a significant source of cultural capital. In retracing these struggles, this Element illustrates the conditions that have both animated and stymied critics' efforts to excise racism from their objects and practices.