Many journalists, including myself, have recently reported on the increasing number of attempts to ban children’s and young adult books with LGBTQ characters or ones with other marginalized identities. In this column, however, I want to focus not on the bans themselves, but on the ways people have mobilized to stop them—and to ensure that students continue having access to books that reflect their identities and experiences and those of our diverse world.
After Texas Rep. Matt Krause (R) sent a letter to state education authorities in October 2021, asking if school libraries stocked any of 850 “divisive” books on a list he had compiled, a group of librarians calling themselves #FReadom fighters flooded the #Txlege (Texas legislature) hashtag on November 4th with images of diverse, positive books, inviting authors, librarians, teens, and parents to join in. They are continuing actions to support librarians, teachers, and authors facing book challenges, according to their website, freadom.us.
The Round Rock Black Parents Association in Texas also led a successful effort last year to keep Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (Bookshop; Amazon), by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, in their district’s curriculum, circulating a petition in support of the book and getting people to speak at a local school board meeting, reported NBC News.
In Ridgeland, Miss., the Friends of the Library group launched a crowdfunding campaign this January after their town’s mayor said he is withholding $110,000 in library funds unless LGBTQ books that people had complained about are removed from the shelves. The campaign has raised more than $106,000 in 11 days.
In Rhode Island, when some parents called for removal of Maia Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer (Bookshop; Amazon)
And Red Wine & Blue, a national organization for suburban women voters, created an interactive online map of book bans across the country, and is mobilizing its network to report bans, get trained on how to combat them, and donate banned books to communities in need.
Students are also taking action. In Round Rock, two Black middle school students, Jaiden Johnson and Kharia Pitts, started the Round Rock Black Students Book Club, where students of color can read books about characters that represent them, NBC News reported. Similarly, in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, Joslyn Diffenbaugh, a White eighth-grader, formed a Teen Banned Book Club for middle and high school students and is partnering with a local bookstore to run and host the club, according to local paper the Reading Eagle.
Students in Texas’ Granbury Independent School District spoke out at a school board meeting at the end of January after the school board began to review the appropriateness of books in the schools, with Rep. Krause’s list as a guide. After the board decided to remove 130 titles, high school student Kennedy Tackett and other students began selling anti-censorship t-shirts, with all proceeds going to the Freedom to Read Foundation, a First Amendment legal defense organization affiliated with the American Library Association. They raised over $2,000.
In Pennsylvania, Christina Ellis, Renee Ellis, Edha Gupta, and Olivia Pituch, students at Central York High School and members of the school’s Panther Anti-Racist Union, led protests last fall that helped reverse their all-White school board’s ban on a list of diversity resources, all by authors of color, reported the York Dispatch.
Nationally, Voters of Tomorrow, a youth-led non-profit that engages young people in politics, announced February 2 that they are distributing hundreds of copies of Toni Morrison’s Beloved (Bookshop; Amazon) and Art Spiegelman’s Maus (Bookshop; Amazon), which have been the target of bans. Executive Director Santiago Mayer, a college student in California, said in a press statement, “Understanding history is critical to being civically active citizens. As young people ourselves, we recognize that equipping students with the historical education they need is one of schools’ most essential functions.”
Bookstores are also taking part. Nirvana Comics in Knoxville, in response to the ban of Maus, a graphic novel about the Holocaust, in McMinn County, Tenn., gave free copies of the book to any student who asked. After an overwhelming number of requests, they launched a crowdfunding campaign to purchase additional copies, garnering over $110,000 as of this writing. Across the country, Ryan Higgins, owner of Comics Conspiracy in Sunnyvale, Calif., tweeted that he would donate 100 copies of Maus to families in and near McMinn county; he has made similar offers for other banned comics.
And writer shea wesley martin has launched The Unicorn Express, which will send a free LGBTQ-inclusive book to any LGBTQ student in a state or district with book bans, or who otherwise has trouble accessing them. (Other nonprofit programs offering free LGBTQ-inclusive books to schools include Hope in a Box, Pride and Less Prejudice, Gender Nation, GLSEN’s Rainbow Library, and the Make It Safe Project.)
These are just a few of the many ways people have been fighting back in the face of the almost-daily onslaught of new bans and challenges. May they inspire us to further action.
Originally published as my Mombian newspaper column.
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