It's Right to Read Day, celebrating libraries, highlighting the relentless attacks against them, and encouraging folks to take at least one action to defend them! The American Library Association's data on the most banned books from 2024Â is now out; after 3 years in the top spot GENDER QUEER came in at second on the list with George M Johnson's beautiful queer memoir ALL BOYS AREN'T BLUE at number one. If you haven't read it yet, please go pick up this book.
Unfortunately, instead of dying down, we are now seeing the book ban movement morph into an effort to defund and destroy ALL public libraries and ALL public education, as exemplified by the Trump Administration aiming to dismantle the Department of Education and placing all employees of the Institute of Museum and Library Services on administrative leave. The IMLS is an independent federal agency that provides grants to libraries and museums across the country. According to the American Library Association, the IMLS provides âthe majority of federal library funds.â The IMLS says it awarded $266 million in grants and research funding to cultural institutions last year. This money goes to help staff, fund maintenance, and create new programs. If you are curious how the termination of this grant funding will effect the state of California, here is a press release from the California State Library. Please call your state governor and representatives asking them to demand support for the IMLS!
I also wanted to share some resources to help you talk about book bans/book challenges if the topic comes up in conversation. There are a set of really common bad faith arguments which book banners make, and I helped write up a set of responses for Authors Against Book Bans (much of this was also written and compiled by superstar author and AABB leader Maggie Tokuda-Hall). Below the responses to bad faith arguments are a list of resources you can contribute to, especially if you live in a blue state and don't have a current legislative battle over books and libraries in your own backyard.
What to Say When They Say What They Always Say: an Authors Against Book Bans resource
I havenât read this book but I donât think itâs appropriate for children!Â
Please read the full book before you judge it. Passages are often presented without context.Â
So you want kids to have access to porn?
No. And if that is a concern of yours as a parent, install browser filters such as Google SafeSearch on your childrenâs devices to keep them from accessing the wealth of pornography available to them on the internet. Itâs already illegal to bring pornography into schools. There are robust safeguardsâ from laws, to industry standards in publishing and librarianship and educationâ to safeguard our children from obscene materials, as determined by the Miller Test.Â
What about parentsâ rights?
Parents already have robust rights in their childrenâs education. When that means limiting access to certain books parents can do so; nearly all schools have policies to this effect. But what about all the parents who WANT their kids to have access to books? Their children should not be limited by what another parent in the community decides for their own family. And what if a parent wants to limit their childâs access to something that child would benefit from? What about the childâs rights? Children are people, not possessions of their parents.
If my taxes fund the schools and libraries, I should have a say in how theyâre used.
Schools and libraries serve entire communities, not just those who agree with you. Libraries and schools have professional educators and librarians with PhDs who are trained to curate collections that serve diverse populations, not just one viewpoint.
LGBTQ+ books confuse kids or make them gay/trans. They push an agenda.
LGBTQ+ representation is not an âagendaââitâs simply a reflection of real peopleâs lives. If books featuring LGBTQ+ characters are âpushing an agenda,â then books featuring straight relationships or cisgender characters are as well. Reading about something does not automatically change a personâs identity, just as reading about astronauts does not turn every child into an astronaut. Reading about LGBTQ+ characters can both help kids understand themselves and build empathy and understanding towards others.
I live California. Why should I care about book bans if theyâre not happening here?
We are fortunate to live in a state where book banning on the basis of discrimination has been outlawed through AB1825, which passed in 2024. However, California has still seen numerous book challenges in cities like Huntington Beach, Burbank, Lodi, and Chicoâsome of which continue efforts to overturn these protections. While bans are worse in red states, they still happen in blue states. Book bans are about controlânot protecting children. The people banning books today will censor other forms of speech tomorrow. The right to read is a fundamental civil liberty, and we should protect it accordingly.
How Can I Help from a Blue State? For the biggest bang for your buck, we recommend that you donate to the grassroots organizations making a difference in the places where the bans are happening all the time. All the ACLU chapters listed here are currently involved in lawsuits against book banners.Â
We suggest:
Florida Freedom to Read Project: https://www.fftrp.org/donateÂ
Texas Freedom to Read Project: https://www.txftrp.org/donateÂ
Honesty for Ohio Education: https://www.honestyforohioeducation.org/donate.htmlÂ
Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization (DAYLO) in South Carolina: https://patconroyliterarycenter.org/donate-today-to-pat-conroy-literary-center/Â
Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT): https://www.studentsengaged.org/donateÂ
San Franciscoâs Books Not Bans!: https://givebutter.com/booksnotbansÂ
Coeur DâAlene Public Library in Idaho: https://cdalibrary.org/donate/Â
Let Utah Read: https://www.fundlibraries.org/letutahread
Fight for the First helps start grassroots groups all across the country: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fightforthefirstÂ
EveryLibrary (is a national org, but they financially support many of the groups listed here, as well as AABB): https://www.everylibrary.org/donateÂ
You can also call your state reps to express your commitment to protecting the freedom to read. Protections in blue states are just as contagious as bans in red states. The more of us who have them, the more states will follow suit. Use the 5Calls app do this, or find your rep here: https://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/Â
And of course- if you are an author, editor, illustrator, cartoonist, translator, anthology editor, self-published author, please join Authors Against Book Bans! We could use the help! If you want to help recruit to AABB, feel free to print and pass out my recruitment zine at any literary event you attend <3
Alright, so, Tr*mp's no longer pretending to not know what project 2025 is and they're still planning to go full steam ahead into that. I'm on a mailing list for Authors Against Book Bans and for Every Library, both fighting against book bans, fighting against project 2025, and protecting libraries and the freedom to read. There are obviously a lot of other really really scary things in project 2025, but I know where to send people to sign petitions and how to email legislators to fight for our freedom to read and write and share. So, if you're in the US, could you please help us out by signing and sending the emails?
The era and area in which I was raised, in addition to disallowing critical thought, believed in a literal word of God (specifically, the Abrahamic God, YWH, or Yahweh, or Jehovah.) The more I learn about my partner and their Judaism, and *their* cultural values and traditions, the more I'm beginning to see my own culturally Christian traditions and upbringing in a new light. From my understanding, many Jewish people donât take their myths and stories as literally as Christians take theirs. They use stories to pass on their knowledge and history, and itâs opened my eyes to a new way of preserving information.
People are often focused too much on physical preservation, writing things in stone, or on hard drives, imprinting these stories and histories onto physical mediums that, as with all things physical, are subject to decay. My partner tells me âArt is a conversation,â and holy books, whether you believe in some literal divine being or not; whether you hold them in high regard or not, are undeniably forms of art and self-expression. These stories told about the golem; or a man walking on water; or floods that seem to end life on Earth as we know it; while they have a grain of physical truth to them, are largely figurative (imo). Because thatâs how weâve passed on information for thousands of years, before the invention of hard drives or silicon or even writing, we told abridged/poetic stories that contained what we as people took from that experience. We passed on that information from person to person, from generation to generation. Unfortunately, that method of preservation is not foolproof either.
The first kick in the ladybits with regards to this methodâs fallibility is that art, by its very nature, is EXTREMELY subjective, and each personâs interpretation of that information is equally as subjective.
Religious Trauma Side quest: I believe Christianity (among others Iâm sure, but my experience is with evangelical Christianity) has attempted to resolve this by punishing critical thinking and attempting to establish a dogmatic belief that authority should not be questioned. To them, there is only ONE way to interpret the world, and you can NEVER stray from the accepted mythos. Itâs taken a lot of time, but I no longer believe this approach was meant to harm others, but to establish harmony between all peoples. The good intentions still pave the road to Hell, however. But as Iâve said in one of my previous posts, one force of nature will never ever fully succumb to the other. And that brings me more comfort than dogma ever could.
âBeing and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.â
This dogmatic, authoritarian approach to belief; while inevitable, being a contrary force to harmony; is unhealthy and not in keeping with the Tao (at least in my own subjective opinion.).
Here's the other punt to the gnuts (girlnuts uWu): our minds are *also* physical mediums. Our minds are *also* subject to decay. *Collective* consciousness, however, while still a collection of physical mediums, is less subject to physical decay than any individual. As one generation of minds decay, the other takes its place as the foremost bearers of knowledge and humanityâs history. Humans, at our very core, are archivists of our own history, and the best way to preserve that history is to have several copies of it spread out among different libraries and archives across existence. This is why the burning of The Library of Alexandria and Der Institut fĂŒr Sexualwissenschaft were so tragic; some books were the only copies of themselves. That's why weâve only just now caught up with and rediscovered trans healthcare as a concept, for instance.
This is why the federal attacks on libraries and archives are not only awful, but genocidal. This is why erasing Marshaâs name off of a National Monumentâs website is so fucking monstrous. This is why burning books and erasing information is a bigger deal than most people think it is. They are not only erasing our history, theyâre erasing our humanity; and it is our job, as the curators and archivists of our own humanity, to make sure that doesnât fucking happen. Doom and gloom aside, I can safely assure everyone that this will NEVER happen, at least not fully. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how many of us they kill, no matter how many books of ours they burn, we will still be here. We have already made an impact on the world by merely existing when others believe we shouldnât. While harm reduction is still *essential* to our duties, our history is now a part of human history. Take pride and comfort in the fact that, if nothing else, theyâll never take that away from us.
librarians own my heart and soul more than literally most other jobs on this planet. they already did, but my respect went higher today when i was at the library with my family and i was checking out my books. i had one on hold, and as she was scanning it, i slipped her a dust jacket for the book and asked her to put it on. she did it, no questions asked and was so kind.
because of that, i was able to check out queer literature without my family noticing. it kept me safe and she didnât even look at me different. and keep in mind, i live in the deep south. so this is even more of a kind feat than youâd realize.
