What It's Like to Be a Librarian in the Age of Book Bans
At the recent American Library Association conference, librarians shared their frustrations and received encouragement from Judy Blume
Amanda Jones has a book deal. She's the recipient of a national award from school librarians for intellectual freedom. Her Twitter handle reads "Defender of Libraries and Wonder." A documentary crew is making a film about her experience.
But she's been on medical leave. She's in therapy. She was on anxiety medication for a while. Her hair fell out. And when I catch her for an interview at the American Library Association conference in June in Chicago, where she's been received with warm applause, she wrings her hands for a long moment before she stops.
"They wanted me to be silent. I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to speak out."
The vitriol, the violent threats, and the relentless targeting on Facebook from parents who excoriate Jones for opposing bans on books in public and school libraries in her hometown of Livingston, Louisiana, have left an indelible mark.
"When it first happened last July and August, I was a shell of the person I had been. I didn't go out in public, I've got groceries delivered, I bought Mace and a taser, we've got security cameras," she said.
Jones also obtained a license for carrying a gun "for when I have to travel in back roads because I live in a rural area."
"They wanted me to be silent. I'm going to do the opposite. I'm going to speak out."
'When You Become a Voice, You Become a Target'
Fifteen thousand librarians met in Chicago in late June, where, a week earlier, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker went to a public library to sign the country's first legislation banning book bans.
"We are showing the nation what it really looks like to stand up for liberty," he said.
There's an urgency to the gathering, a sense that although efforts to ban books in the US have existed since the mid-1600s, the blending of the issue with a Republican-led "parents' rights" movement and the highest number of book challenges in twenty years, has elevated the risk.
"We are showing the nation what it really looks like to stand up for liberty."
The ALA conference schedule is full of workshops offering policy and legislative strategies for opposition to books bans and advice for librarians who are meeting parents genuinely concerned about the inclusion of some books on library shelves.
In Norman, Oklahoma, school district librarians are given small index cards with talking points on them to coach them through an encounter with a parent or group of parents who want a book removed.
In Arizona, librarians are resisting, not just attempts to ban books, but also legislation to permit the concealed carry of guns into public libraries.
Erin McFarlane of the Arizona Library Association told me librarians have had to become more accustomed to "the public demonization" of their work.
"The conversations we're having at an administrative level of how to protect our staff in the library are something I don't think I would've ever considered five years ago," McFarlane said.
Becky Calzada, the District Library Coordinator in Leander, Texas (near Austin) has also been singled out for harsh public criticism by organized groups who have sent lists of more than a hundred books they want removed.
After one workshop, where she warns the librarians in the room that proponents of book bans have become highly organized, Calzada tells me, "When you become a voice, you become a target because there's an agenda."
She acknowledges that when went to school to become a librarian, "there was just nothing like this," adding that she's sympathetic to new librarians who "didn't sign up for this."
And yet Calzada, who helped to rally librarians nationwide to become FReadom Fighters, is encouraged by a group of students who approached her to ask how they could help and ended up creating a banned books club.
'We Are Going to Fight, Fight, Fight'
Author Judy Blume is greeted with wild cheers when she appears on stage for an interview on the first night of the conference. Blume, whose 1970 book "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" has recently been made into a movie, is a veteran of the book banning wars.
"Margaret" has been challenged for years because of its themes of female adolescent puberty, including in the primary school her children attended.
"Margaret" has been challenged for years because of its themes of female adolescent puberty, including in the primary school her children attended. Her 1975 young adult novel "Forever" was recently removed from middle and high schools in the school district of Martin County, Florida. And her book "Deenie" was "so successfully" removed from library shelves "that kids didn't know it had been published."
Blume, who is 85, and now owns a bookstore in Key West, Florida where she lives, confides that, as a kid in Elizabeth, New Jersey, she wanted to be a librarian "so I could have a pencil with a stamp on it." She tells the crowd that if she had a few minutes alone with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, she would ask, "What are you afraid of?"
But Blume's mission here is to stir the spirits of librarians who are feeling besieged and often isolated and it works.
Excited applause erupts as Blume looks out into the crowd and tells them, "We are not going to let this happen. We are going to fight, fight, fight!"
