[As rightwing campaigns for censorship sweep the US, opponents are
finding ways to keep books on the shelves ]
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HOW TO BEAT A BOOK BAN: STUDENTS, PARENTS AND LIBRARIANS FIGHT BACK
 
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Adam Gabbatt
September 21, 2022
The Guardian
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_ As rightwing campaigns for censorship sweep the US, opponents are
finding ways to keep books on the shelves _

Banned books at Books Inc in Alameda, California. , Photograph: Smith
Collection/Gado/Getty Images

 

The censorship of books in the US has reached crisis level.

More than 2,500 different book bans were enacted in schools across 32
US states during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a new report
[[link removed]] by
Pen America. And attempts to ban books from libraries are on track to
exceed
[[link removed]] 2021’s
already record-setting figures, the American Library Association said
on Friday.

But still, there is cause for hope.

Across the country, parents, students, teachers, librarians and
community groups have successfully fought back against attempted bans,
defeating well-funded, rightwing attempts to remove books that address
issues of race, sexuality and gender.

Their experiences provide a model for others who may want to stand up
and defend free speech, racial equity and the rights of gay and trans
youth.

Martha Hickson: ‘Let readers be leaders’

Martha Hickson, a librarian at North Hunterdon high school in
Annandale, New Jersey, was watching her district’s school board
meeting from home in September 2021 when she found herself dragged
into the center of a battle over book banning.

A small but vocal group of parents had attended the meeting to demand
the board remove several books that address LGBTQ+ experiences,
including Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison,
from school libraries. Then one particularly emotional speaker called
Hickson out by name.

“She described me as a pedophile, a pornographer, and a groomer of
children,” Hickson said.

[hickson holds books]

Martha Hickson, a high school librarian, found herself at the center
of a battle over book banning. Photograph: Nick Romanenko/Courtesy of
Rutgers University/Photographer Nick Romanenko

“I was absolutely stunned. My heart was beating out of my chest, I
was queasy, I didn’t know what to do. I was just beside myself.”

But once Hickson “regained her composure”, she realized she did
know what to do._ _In 2019, she had been part of an effort
to restore
[[link removed]] the
book Fun Home, a memoir by Alison Bechdel that addresses, among other
things, sexual orientation, to schools in her district. “We’d been
laying low since then, because things were fine. But I still had all
that contact information. So I reactivated that network,” she said.

While the board meeting was still taking place, Hickson got out her
phone and got to work. She contacted people who had taken on the Fun
Home ban, as well as organizations including the American Library
Association [[link removed]], the National
Coalition against Censorship [[link removed]], and the Comic Book
Legal Defense Fund [[link removed]]. She also reached out to the
Genders & Sexualities Alliances at both high schools in her district.
These student-led groups
[[link removed]] provide a safe space for
students to build communities and speak out against injustice.

At the next school board meeting, in October
[[link removed]], about 400
people, all opposed to the bans, turned up.

“The most compelling speakers were the kids,” Hickson said. “My
motto right now is ‘let readers be leaders’, because these kids
did an amazing job of standing there, withstanding the taunts and
jeers of the people on the other side.

“They were models for public discourse. They were just excellent.”

As the fight dragged on, Hickson faced a torrent of hate mail,
precipitating what she described as a “breakdown”. Opponents of
the book bans came out in force again at the November school board
meeting, and by the new year a school board advisory committee
announced its decision: four of the targeted books would be allowed to
remain in libraries, but one – This Book is Gay, by Juno Dawson –
was to be removed.

A nonfiction book tackling issues of sexuality and gender for a young
adult audience, This Book is Gay was one of the 10 most frequently
challenged titles
[[link removed]] in
the US in 2021.

“I just have so much admiration for the kids who pick that book off
the shelf, walk through a library full of other teenagers, and come up
to the circulation desk, to me, this 62-year-old woman, who they
probably don’t know very well, some might not know me at all,”
Hickson said, noting that the book’s cover illustration is a pride
flag.

“Every time a kid hands you a book that they’ve chosen to read,
they’re handing you a little insight into themselves. I admire the
backbone that it takes for a 14, 15, 16-year-old to hand you This Book
is Gay.”

Hickson and the anti-censorship groups weren’t about to settle, and
they demanded that the book be reinstated.

At the January school board meeting, opponents of the book ban again
flocked in. One student read out a letter from David Levithan, a New
Jersey-born author whose young adult novels include Two Boys Kissing
and Boy Meets Boy. Levithan argued that This Book is Gay should be
reinstated, and 55 others put in requests to speak.

The board listened, and the book was retained.

“I fell apart crying,” Hickson said. “I was so relieved and so
happy and so grateful for all the support from the community. I’m
so, so proud of my students, both current and past.”

It reinforced Hickson’s belief in the importance of books in helping
children understand themselves and their place in the world.

“For somebody to come and try to snag [This Book is Gay] or any of
the other four books on LGBTQ topics, I think is a tremendous insult
to those kids, to their relationship with the library, and to their
relationship with the community. All of our kids deserve to see
themselves represented in the library books.”

Keiawnna Potts and Natosha Daniels: ‘You’re going to need to band
together’

At the Round Rock school district, near Austin, Texas, it was a
teacher who initially sounded the alarm.

A small group of people had complained to the school board about the
presence of Stamped (For Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You – a
history of racism in the US by the Black authors Jason Reynolds and
Ibram X Kendi – on the school curriculum, and there was a risk it
could be removed.

[pitts holds the book Stamped]

Keiawnna Pitts fought the removal of the book Stamped (For
Kids). Photograph: Kharia Pitts/Courtesy of Keiawnna Pitts

The teacher had started a petition to keep Stamped, and Keiawnna
Pitts, Natosha Daniels, and the other parents of Round Rock Black
Parents Association [[link removed]] quickly
got involved. For them, the removal of a book that tells of the Black
experience in the US fit into a wider pattern of discrimination in the
district – one which they had battled before.

Round Rock has a diverse population, with white students making up
just over a third of the student body, alongside Latino, Asian
American and African American students. But Black students were more
likely to be disciplined, including suspended, than white students,
according to data
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by the school district in 2019. Black students made up 25% of those
who received in-school suspensions, despite comprising only 8% of the
student population.

Pitts and others had previously organized and campaigned on that
issue, so when the attempts to ban Stamped began, an existing
coalition was called into action.

“We immediately were able to activate our network and say: ‘Hey
y’all, this is what’s happening,’” Pitts said. “And because
of putting in groundwork, of building relationships in our community
– and because other people know that this is not right, this is not
something that should be happening in 2022 – everyone rallied
together.”

The parents who were lobbying loudly for Stamped to be removed were
white, according to Pitts, who saw in the attempted ban an attempt to
strip Black children of the chance to see themselves reflected in
their studies.

“I felt as if they were trying to ban the existence of Black
children and Black people. Because my kids seek out these books where
they can see themselves in the material they were reading,” Pitts
said.

One of Pitts’s children, with a friend, started their own book club,
Pitts said, “because they wanted to read books about characters who
look like them.

“So for me it was a direct blow to my existence and my children’s
existence,” she said. “That was when I realized I had everything
in my power to support the work this teacher had started.”

Members of Round Rock Black Parents Association showed up at board
meetings, along with students and other community members, Potts said.
They forced the issue to the school board, which ultimately voted
against removing Stamped.

[Daniels holds the book The 1619 Project]

Natosha Daniels: ‘I’m just waiting for what’s
next.’ Photograph: Robert Daniels/Courtesy of Natosha Daniels

“I was so proud of our youth,” Pitts said. “Because that took a
lot of courage, to get up and say: ‘This is not OK.’”

Daniels was proud too, but she found it difficult to celebrate.

“I don’t think I felt relief, because I was just waiting for
what’s next,” Daniels said. “White families do not comprise the
majority of this district, yet their interests are always held at the
center. So yes, when that book ban was struck down, I felt like this
was a victory we can celebrate for now but they’re still over here
planning for more.”

The saga, along with the treatment of Black students, so disheartened
Daniels that she and her husband began looking at other places to
live, researching potential moves to Costa Rica, Mexico or Canada.
That changed, Daniels said, after a conversation she had with her
daughter’s grandmother.

“I was telling her what I was thinking, and how it’s just so
stressful living here, and she said: ‘You know, my grandmother
picked cotton on this land.’ She said: ‘I’m not going anywhere,
I deserve to be here, and they owe me. They owe me more than what
they’re giving me.’ And it kind of reframed the fight.”

At least when the next challenge comes, the Round Rock Black Parents
Association will be ready. The organization is becoming increasingly
influential and has partnered with other non-profits and groups in the
area to advocate for increased equity.

“Now is the time to start building those communities and building
those networks, because this is not isolated, it is happening across
the United States,” she said.

“You’re going to need to band together to fight what is coming
down.”

Christine Kron: ‘Find students and teachers who can help’

[Kron closeup]

Christine Kron helped organize the fight against a book ban in
Ohio. Photograph: Courtesy of Christine Kron

In Milford, Ohio, it was In the Time of Butterflies that caught the
attention of would-be book banners. The critically acclaimed novel, by
Julia Alvarez, tells the story of four sisters in the Dominican
Republic and their opposition to the country’s dictatorship.

“Our 10th-graders are being forced to read this pornography in
school,” one wrote on Facebook, in a post which had cherry-picked
certain sentences from In the Time of Butterflies.

“I am disgusted beyond words,” the parent continued. “There are
more perverts out there than we would even imagine. And they are with
our kids every day. Beware!!”

The book had been part of the curriculum since 2014, the Cincinnati
Enquirer reported
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and the school district already allowed parents to opt their children
out of reading certain books, yet this group wanted In the Time of
Butterflies removed from the entire curriculum.

Christine Kron, who has children in the second and fifth grades in
the Milford Exempted Village school district
[[link removed]],
was among those who took notice.

“There’s a small group of us who have similar values, wants and
needs for our kids and our community and our school district, and we
kind of keep an eye on the neighborhood social media,” Kron said.

“As soon as we saw a few parents – literally two to three parents
– complain about this 10th-grade book in the curriculum, our ears
kind of perked up. We said: ‘This is probably going to become a
thing, so let’s get ready to defend this.’”

Kron and others decided to take action. When the school board posted
its agenda for that month, they assembled a group of parents and
students and headed down to speak.

“Students have been reading this book for years,” Kron said. “So
the students even said: ‘This book really affected me in a positive
way, I don’t find it offensive.’ It was really great to hear
student voices speak up.”

The board listened, and in May decided that the book would remain on
the curriculum. It was a big win for the parents, but like others,
Kron fears what might come up in the future.

“I think the book bans are done. I do not think it will come up
again to that level in our district,” she said. “But you know, the
battles are not over.”

Kron anticipates a fight over the rights of trans students, after
certain parents began complaining that some teachers in Milford asked
students for their preferred pronouns. “That’s our next battle: to
make sure all the kids feel supported and welcomed and it’s an
inclusive environment,” Kron said.

Kron said the most important thing parents facing book bans should
know was not to try to tackle this alone.

“You have to find a little bit of a group, a community, that’s
definitely key,” she said. “You can shoot ideas around, plan,
organize. Find current students or even teachers who can help out.”

Parents in this situation should also learn about the processes and
protocols of their school board meetings, she said, so they can
confidently address their concerns to the board.

Beyond that, Kron said: “The key point is to get involved. Even if
it’s just an email, if it’s baby steps. Use your voice, whether
it’s an email or in person. Just get involved.”

_Adam Gabbatt is a writer and presenter for Guardian US, based in New
York. Click here
[[link removed]] for Adam's
public key. Twitter @adamgabbatt [[link removed]]_

* book bans
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