Weird But Okay! vol. 4: How to stop book bans at your library
Arthur tattoos will not save us
A book doesn’t make a sound when it is banned from the library. The book doesn’t cry out, “No, please, stop!” or, “I could change someone’s life” or “I have 5 stars on GoodReads!” The book simply vanishes. It gets sold at the booksale, the catalog entry disappears, and you wouldn’t know it was ever there, unless you’re sitting in the meeting room where those decisions get made. To stop book bans, you have to go to boring meetings. (I will not say you have to be in the room where it happens the room where it happens the room where it I'M SORRY)
I wish tote bags would save us. I wish cute Arthur “having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card” tattoos would save us. I wish checking out the books would save us. They will not save us.
It sucks, because tattoos are cute and meetings are satan. Psychotic that this is the way we have to do things. But here is what’s happening and why we have to go to the dumb psychotic boringass meetings as laid out in The Bitter Southerner’s piece, WHAT IS A LIBRARY.
“Across the country, a movement to have LGBTQ+ books removed from both public schools and public libraries has been gaining traction over the past couple of years. Sometimes these efforts are presented as recategorizing books into adult sections, as campaigns against “obscenity” or “pornography,” but they are unmistakably clear efforts to have LGBTQ+ books removed from library shelves. It is an incremental movement in which one “reconsideration of materials” form escalates higher and higher, ensnaring library boards, city councils, and state governments into complicated, protracted fights over what book gets to sit on a library shelf.
Despite the fact that even a couple of city council members in Alabama on any given night of the week could tell you that local governments shouldn’t “be in the business of censoring what books are and aren’t in the library,” that is exactly what this movement is working to accomplish. In many places, it has.
Keeping books on your library shelf takes something people aren’t used to equating with libraries: noise. It takes being LOUD. It takes standing up and saying, as Angie Hayden did in response to the removal movement when it came to her library:
“I’m here because I felt it important that everyone know, including the previous speaker … that there is more than one kind of concerned parent in Prattville. As a mother of a gay child … I fear we run the risk of letting a very small, loud minority [run the library] who find offense in the fact that gay people not only exist but no longer have to be relegated to the shadows.”
And that? Simply attending a meeting and standing up and speaking? Was the snowball that started an avalanche. Eventually Hayden would team up with the American Library Association, and other people in her town, and they went head to head with the group behind the ban attempts. Eventually, they went to court. Here’s Democracy Forward senior counsel Jessica Morton speaking about the case:
[Pushing back and winning against book ban attempts] requires plaintiffs being willing to stand up and put their names on something that may not be popular in a community, requires bravery and time. What we see around the country with the proliferation of similar [book banning] enactments are people who feel emboldened. They are saying, ‘Call my bluff.’ Is someone going to stand up?
Stand up. Push back. Call. Their. Bluff. Because the books can’t speak. You have to speak for the books, and for the communities they represent, for the children who desperately deserve to see themselves reflected in the books their library has on its shelves. Because it really is the PUBLIC library. We are the public. Don’t let censorship groups act like they own the library. They don’t. We all do.
One more thing, too: if the books you want to see on your library shelves aren’t there, ASK. People can ask for library books to be removed, but you can also ask for library books to be ADDED. And now? When funding is perilous? Yeah, now is the time to start asking deliberately for what you want to see on the shelves. Libraries serve their community. If the community asks, that’s a sign of community need. The books can’t ask to be purchased. Sometimes you gotta help them get in the cart and into the catalog and onto the shelf and onto your nightstand where you forget about them for several weeks. There are two easy ways to do this:
Look on your library’s website for how to get a book the library doesn’t own. They may have a form called a Purchase Request, or Suggest a Title. It may not be easy to find (libraries, make these easier to find!!!) but that is your first stop. The great thing is these are often anonymous; you do not automatically have to say who you are to ask for a book. So if you’re asking for say, Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects, in an attempt to keep history from being erased, you do not have to have that connected to your name if your library is worth its salt.
Ask the librarian how to suggest a purchase. This is another way, though more direct. Your library may have a chat function, but they may (hopefully) also still have real live people like meeee who can point you in the right direction either of the above online form, or (curses) a paper form (why god why), but your library SHOULD ABSOLUTELY have a way to ask for materials. It isn’t a promise of a purchase but it is absolutely your right to suggest it.
Outside groups COUNT on people not coming to meetings to oppose them. They count on silence. They count on you not even knowing when the meeting is. Beat them at their own game. Be at the boring psychotic dumbass meeting. Use your voice. Be loud as hell for your library. I really want to keep my job. And I really, really want you all to keep reading what you deserve to read, which is: anything you goddamn want.
(And still get the Arthur tattoo. It’s cute af.)
CROW TRINKETS
What I’m watching/listening to: THERE’S AN AXOLOTL ON THE PINK STAIRS (you’re welcomeeeeee)
What I’m reading: The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration by Brianna Nofil. Oh! And these are some of the books that I recommended recently on my library’s Staff Suggestions ordering page (if you’re looking for ideas for your own library ahem ahem):
New paid subscriber shoutouts (crow calls): All new paid subscribers get a personal shoutout here! I love everyone equally, but I love you most 🥰 If you become a paid subscriber and have your own Substack I’ll link it here next time. Thank you to: Michelann, Elizabeth, Jessica and Allison for becoming my newest paid subscribers
yee haw, etc,
hayley
p.s. I’d love to know in the chat what books you’re asking your library to purchase. I’ll consider it an afternoon well-spent if this little newsletter prompted you to do that (or put a public board meeting on your calendar!)
Do you recall Dr Seuss and James and the Giant peach being banned, and even eBay refusing to list them for sale? Was that sensible?
I requested All About Love by bell hooks!