A Librarian, a Mayor, a Suggestion, and a Search
It started when my school librarian insisted I return a book I had borrowed that my school had “banned.” She called me to her office so formally, I felt embarrassed when she asked if I had read the book and I lied. Reflecting on the experience that upset me, why should I be ashamed of reading? I started to search online, wondering if other schools were also banning books and the results of this search shocked me. According to PEN American in the 2023-24 school year, there were “more than 10,00 book bans across the country. . . more than triple the year before and more than in the three years prior combined.” I wanted to do something about the shocking amount of books currently being banned, and I wanted to bring the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, which takes place September 22nd-28th, to my local library.
However, when I wrote to my mayor to ask if my local library could participate in the event, his response was a resounding no. While he thanked me for volunteering, he told me he wouldn’t support this program and doubted that any person on my city council would either as the use of the term is designed to advance a political agenda.
Are Banned Books Advancing a Political Agenda?
Was my mayor correct? Is Banned Books Week a political agenda? I dug deeper. According to The Week, Pen America’s definition of a ban is overly broad without actual state or federal laws prohibiting the purchase of ownership of such books. In his article “Questioning the Dogma of Banned Books Week,” Elliott Kuecker argues that book bans manipulate censorship to increase the popularity and cannon-worthiness of a book, writing “Authors and publishers know the formula for how to make a book the right amount of controversial in order to make it on BBW, which helps position a book to become part of the new canon.” Kuecker also finds that book bans “function to promote progressive identity” and use vilifying language toward their conservative opposition, stating “it is very troubling that we make an enemy out of the person who is merely contesting public school curriculum.” While Intellectual Freedom blogger Kate Lechtenber agrees with Kuecker’s stance on the vilifying language used to describe censorship, she also notes that much of his article is made without evidence. It was this last point that sent me on a mission to find evidence behind these claims.
An Unexpected Source of the Political Agenda
The article “Book bans in political context: Evidence from US schools” looks to add missing empirical evidence, compiling actual statistics on banned books. The empirical study on banned books conducted by Marcelo Goncalbes, Isabelle Langrock, Jack LaViolette, and Kate Spoon between 2021 -2022 reveals “bans tend to target books with relatively low sales and interest to begin with, suggesting that the goals of traditional forms of censorship (i.e. suppression of oppositional information) are not the most important practical outcome of book bans.” What is then? The researchers find that as the target for modern-day books bans are “children’s books and nonfiction books about historical figures. . .disproportionately likely to be written by women and authors of color, particularly women of color” the political agenda is one being created by conservatives looking to “galvanize an apparently shrinking voting bloc by appealing to ‘culture war antagonisms around race, gender, and sexual identity.” So it seems Banned Books Week is, indeed, protecting books and actually working against a political agenda.
Participation
With politics keeping me from participating locally in a Banned Books Week event, I started to call bookstores in neighboring cities. It was a challenging task. While most bookstores were not forthcoming with why they were not participating, thirteen miles away, I finally managed to locate a Barnes and Nobles who had a Banned Books Week display. Hoping that this store could offer me some insight into their decision, I traveled to Huntington Beach, California.
As soon as I walked in, I spotted the display on the right. There were some banned books I recognized, but many more I didn’t. When I asked a passing employee who I could question about the display, she brought me to another employee named Ms. Priscilla, who could help answer them.
I asked what led to the decision of having a banned books display at this particular Barnes and Nobles. Ms. Priscilla stated that the staff are open to banned books and the store just ‘had it.’ I also asked if it took a certain amount of signatures from citizens to make the display possible. No, that wasn’t it. She said, especially this year in Huntington Beach, banned books are a very hot topic and there was an increase in people reading them. Many English teachers were recommending or assigning them to their students.
When I asked her thoughts on whether banned books were a political topic or not, she responded by saying banned books are sort of a political topic because the content inside those books cover things that are or were illegal such as racism and about different backgrounds and topics of LGBTQ+. Banned books also have content containing sensitive political topics.
Ms. Priscilla offered a few tips to bring awareness about banned books in my city such as getting involved, volunteering at my local library, and having a friendly relationship with my librarians.
Getting Local Online
Unfortunately, I was already following Ms. Priscilla’s suggestions, so I resigned myself to waiting for local Banned Books Week until next year. Despite this setback, I deeply believe in my right and other’s rights to choose what to read. So in the meantime, I have taken my participation online, signing up for the Los Angeles Public Library’s Read Freely digital library card which gives students 13 and older only access to the ALA’s most challenged books and I encourage all students to do the same!
