6 Things I've Learned Covering Book Bans

Everything you say will be taken out of context and make you famous in right-wing social media.

Over Banned Books Week earlier this month, I was invited to give two keynote presentations. I always think of keynotes as the motivational kind of talk that can reach anyone in a room, whether or not they’re invested in the particular passions or expertise you might have. I also find them infinitely more difficult to develop for this reason. But, I had a singular ah ha moment in drafting the keynote for one conference, and took the opportunity to talk about connection and collaboration. It came to me after being asked again–with kindness and love, to be clear–how it is I keep on going when everything is so bleak. When I subject myself to hours per week reading terrible news stories, when I talk with people about how dire their censorship situations are, when I see my own books becoming targets.*

The answer is both that I do not know and that I also absolutely know.

There’s no letting up in book banning, and I am not optimistic there will be for a long time. The lack of action by publishers, including bigot button creator Scholastic (that story, by the way, was brought to my attention at one of the conferences I talked at during Banned Books Week), and the lack of clear and direct action from legislators means that once again, we’re expecting individual answers and solutions to what is huge systemic issue.

All of that said, I thought it might be worth sharing a handful of things I have learned in the two solid years of cataloging and commenting on book censorship news across the USA. My roundups launched in October 2021, but they were not my first foray into book banning or censorship. I tackled it in my work in libraries, and it became a topic I returned to again and again in writing.

Find Your Accomplices

I knew this phrase came to me through Mikki Kendall, and I could not for the life of my figure out where. It wasn’t in Hood Feminism and it was not in the piece she wrote for me in Body Talk. But a quick Twitter search landed me with several hits on that phrase, and two of them are above.

Early into the process of developing a weekly roundup, I knew that I needed to seek out other people doing similar work or work that would nicely dovetail with what I’d hoped to do. I quickly found Dr. Tasslyn Magnusson, who’d begun tracking book bans in October 2021. Her work was then given space at EveryLibrary in January 2022, then PEN America in 2022. I’d have relationships with both organizations before–particularly PEN, who’d done a lot of sharing knowledge about prison censorship with me–but all of us began to connect, share, and collaborate even more.

We’d not only share tips or insights, but we had and continue to have face-to-face calls to just talk. I vividly remember a call in early 2023 where we had zero agenda but instead just did a lot of sighing and making noises. Was it fruitful? Absolutely. To take time with people also doing the work and simply allow yourselves to be angry and annoyed and frustrated is sometimes the most important thing you can do. None of this is in a silo, and none of this should be in a silo.

Accomplices are bigger than allies. They do work and share those tips with you so everyone can amplify one another’s work.

What Keeps You Up at Night Is Not What Gets You Out of Bed in the Morning

That was a comment John Chratska made at the Mulnomah County Public Library banned books event we did together (one that was recorded and shared across book banner media–calling it “far right” would be incorrect, as one of the instigators so kindly informed me).

There are a lot of things related to book bans that keep me up at night. I worry all the time, and I find myself getting extremely pessimistic about the state of things. The proof is right there, so it might not even be fair to call it pessimism but instead, realism.

But those things do not get me out of bed in the morning. What gets me up and excited are the stories of people not only who are listening and digesting the information about the state of censorship but who are showing up and doing something about it.

I often point to Gavin Downing. He brought his story to me at Book Riot in January 2022, as he noticed that administration at his suburban Seattle school was trying to remove queer books from the middle school library. It was a very ugly fight, start to finish, with Gavin finding himself a target throughout. He ultimate triumphed by the summer of 2022 and the biggest battle he fought–to keep Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) on shelves–ended with a win for intellectual freedom. But by then, he’d put in his resignation and moved onto another school district.

He also earned an intellectual freedom award for his work, is the chair-elect for the Washington State Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Section, and is running a campaign to be elected as a school board member in Federal Way (against an opponent who herself has attempted to ban a book in that school district).

Gavin and I have never met, and we have only ever had one chance to be on a panel together. But I consider him not only an incredible accomplice in protecting intellectual freedom, but I look forward to everything he tells me like a friend. Even the tough stuff he shares is tempered by knowing he’s not just passively sitting by. He’s stepping up and putting himself out there again and again.

He is not the only library worker or educator doing this, of course. I could name a dozen others I also know. But he’s such a stellar example of why I keep going. Folks might record me and spread my talks in spaces where I become a target, but at the end of the day, I know the work helps people like Gavin keep showing up to their schools and doing more and more to make sure the kids are supported, seen, and heard–even when their parents are very loud.

Just Listen

Sometimes, there’s not a story to write.

Sometimes, what a person wants to do is ask you some questions or brainstorm or simply share that they’re in pain, scared, or hurting.

They are not a source. They are a human.

This week, for example, I had someone ask if we could get on a call to talk about a story I’d written. I had some time in my schedule and we connected. She had a vested interest in the story because it was local to her and she’d found herself deep in a research rabbit hole.

We didn’t have an agenda or plan, and I don’t have a story to show for this. But it was a powerful opportunity to talk about different ways to research an idea…and more, it was an opportunity for her to hear that her thoughts were not wild conspiracies.

For years, I’ve had to punctuate so many things with “okay, this might sound like an exaggeration,” only to see it come to light shortly after. The right doesn’t care how out there an idea might sound because they’re too busy getting to work to care.

We need to sometimes simply state that no, you’re not out of line in thinking that or seeing this connection or wondering about this question.

To do that, though, we need to listen.

One of the key things I have learned at this point in my counseling master’s program is the power of listening. So much of good counseling isn’t in the interventions. It’s in being an era for someone who doesn’t have that and simply wants to have their thoughts or feelings validated. These skills have been so tremendously game changing in how I have approached talking about censorship–sometimes, I don’t have a story to tell, I don’t have an agenda to write, and I don’t have an end to meet. Sometimes, I just need to be that ear for someone.

Those moments are often the ones that buoy me.

Nothing You Say Is Off Limits to Critics

Kind of enough said, right? But until the last several months, I operated under the assumption that book banners did not care about me or what I said, did, or encouraged. I feel and know differently now.

One of the cornerstones of this censorship battle is context. Book banners don’t want it, and they don’t care about it. Moms for Liberty goes as far as to say they develop their book ratings at BookLooks without any concern for the Miller Test:

The Miller Test requires caring about the context of a thing, and these people itching to ban books have no interest in that. Why would they care about the context or full meaning behind what anti-censorship people like me have to say? It’s far catchier to fuel your audience with a quote that sounds salacious than to actually give them the entire story.

Fun fact: in the 53 word long Miller Test that legally defines the meaning of “obscenity,” there are three words used twice. They are “as a whole” (see part 1 and part 3).

Absolutely None of This Is New

This week’s subcommittee hearing about “combating graphic, explicit content in school libraries” is exactly the same as the subcommittee hearings in the 1950s over the dangers in comic books and how comic books encourage juvenile delinquency. There is absolutely nothing new or compelling; it’s simply new names making the same tired series of lies in front of a new panel of biased politicians.

These are the exact same arguments which led to the Hayes Codes and the film industry’s ratings systems.

These are the exact same arguments Tipper Gore used because she was concerned about Black people making music.

They might think we’ve forgotten about history, but history is documented for a reason. I want people to know in 30 years when censorship comes around again to know that it’s not new, too. We live in a paywalled information environment, and that, too, needs to be documented. History won’t look back fondly on any of this and it damn well shouldn’t.

People Are Kind

I’ve had to step back over and over and over. This stuff hits too close to home sometimes. It hits close to home not just because I spend so much work time with it but also because it impacts my books, too.

But more, it makes me worried sick about my own child entering a world that wants to tell her what and how to think, rather than granting her the rights to do so on her own.

She and I sat, both our ankles crossed, together on my couch in December 2021. I had not yet read Gender Queer and that was currently the hot topic of the book banners. I read it with her beside me, nudity and dream sex scene and gender queer characters and all. She was of course too young to understand any of it, but that memory is one I come back to again and again when things get tough. I want others to be with her like this, to not only permit but encourage her to see. To feel. To think.

I come back to this, too: the outpouring of love I see every time something terrible happens. Every time another thing shoves a dagger into my heart or I feel completely overwhelmed by reading all of these terrible stories. Every time another reporter writes a story I’ve already written and begged to be heard and they don’t bother to credit my early work.

I launched this Substack early this summer, with the intention of moving away from Twitter. But Twitter remains a powerful tool for sharing information, especially of stories that impact so many educators and library workers who make up the bulk of the people who follow me and who I also follow. I can’t get away entirely, but I have found there is power and reward in creating another community here. One where the writing can be longer, a bit more personal, a bit more reflective of the bigger picture.

And somehow, people pay for it. This week, when my family had completely drained our bank account, it was the subscribers here who helped us wether that surprise.

It’s not the money, though that helped in a real life situation (we’re fine–we completely underestimated just how much the cost of groceries and other regular small spending added up in addition to rising childcare costs, rising taxes on our mortgage, and so forth). It’s the fact so many people I don’t know or know only in social media spaces have told me kind things or encouraged me in ways they may never know.

It’s the reminders to step back and breathe, to take a break. To stop when the reading and compiling gets to be too much.

It’s the reminders from coworkers that the expectations I put on myself are impossible to replicate.

It’s the reminders that there are countless people who are engaged and activated over this in ways that are impossible to quantify. To see.

A college friend who has not been engaged in this kind of stuff and who has more than once shared something that rubbed me wrong–the unexamined privileges one shows of themselves is difficult to see, even and especially in people you respect–posted something this week that grew my heart so big it nearly burst from my chest. After careful consideration, she was running for her small town school board in Iowa because ensuring her kids and every other kid have the ability to learn, think, and grow in the public school system was so important to her.

I could not think of a person more well suited to be a school board member. Especially in Iowa. Especially now.

She may have seen some of this from me, but more likely, the call came because she saw what was happening in her own backyard. Rather than sit by, she’s elected to step up.

The words for that decision aren’t just brave or strong or important or necessary.

Another word is kindness.

May we never underestimate just how vital it is to lean into it, to share it, and to appreciate it when it comes our way. She–and so many others–are indeed what help me keep getting up in the morning, even when my entire being wants to shut the door and give up.

Notes:

*I just this week finally read the complaints lodged against Body Talk at a small school district in New Hampshire from late last year. You can read them, too. You probably can guess how much I waiver between being utterly infuriated and completely flattened with sadness. The two complaints came from school board members in this district. Just imagine how they think of the children they see as a course of their role in these positions. So much for “protecting” them.