Book Sanctuaries, Buttons, and Bouncy Houses

Episode Transcript

Kathleen Houlihan We're really concerned here in Texas with some of the silent censorship that seems to be spreading. 

Adwoa Adusei This is Kathleen Houlihan, a teen librarian at Austin Public Library, where they’ve worked for the past 15 years. 
 

Kathleen Houlihan I'm sure we're not the only place where this is happening, but we're seeing a lot of fear in our teachers and our school librarians and our public librarians who are afraid for their safety or afraid for their job. And so being more cautious about the books that they select to purchase, about the books they select to put in their curriculum or to put in their classroom libraries.
 

Fritzi Bodenheimer We’re a year out from our Borrowed and Banned podcast series, where we explored the concerning rise in censorship and book bans across the country. And we’re two years out from the launch of BPL’s Books Unbanned program, which opened up our digital catalog to teens across the country, particularly those in states where their reading is restricted. 

Adwoa Adusei And if we go back farther than that, we’re four years out from when we started to see a stark rise in the number of book titles challenged and banned in states across the nation. So, we’re at a moment where we can start to look back and see the impact this increased censorship has had on our society.

Fritzi Bodenheimer Right. And aside from the big news stories of books being put in locked rooms or kids getting their library cards revoked, censorship has had ripple effects like the one Kathleen was just talking about: silent censorship and a culture of fear, which prevents books from ever being put on shelves in the first place. And then there’s the impact on library workers and teachers. 

Kathleen Houlihan We're seeing a ton of librarians and teachers leaving the profession because of some of the fears around this particular topic. And so the draining of the talent pool is also something that I'm really concerned with. When we make it not a safe place for teachers to teach or librarians to share books and their love of reading with students, it really has a profound impact on young people for years and years and years. 

Adwoa Adusei There are a lot of sobering statistics out there. We had Banned Books Week just a couple of weeks ago, when schools and libraries across the country drew attention to the urgency of this issue, and the sobering number of book titles banned and challenged last year. 

Fritzi Bodenheimer Given all of that, some of us here at Brooklyn Public Library decided that what we need now is a pick-me-up. A day of action. A rally. A celebration to bring people across the country together behind this pretty simple idea: that we believe in the freedom to read.

Adwoa Adusei So, after months of planning, that rallying day of action is finally here. This Saturday, October 19th, Brooklyn Public Library, along with libraries, schools, and partner organizations in 40 states and counting … will take part in the first annual Freedom to Read Day of Action. And it all started here, didn’t it Fritzi?

Fritzi Bodenheimer It certainly did. We’re really excited to see this come together. So for this episode, we called up some of our fellow public libraries in Texas, California and New Jersey, to hear what they’ve got planned for the Freedom to Read Day of Action. I’m Fritzi Bodenheimer.

Adwoa Adusei And I’m Adwoa Adusei. You’re listening to Borrowed: stories that start at the library.

[Theme music]
 

Adwoa Adusei First, let’s get back to Austin, Texas.

Kathleen Houlihan What Austin Public Library is planning to do for the October 19th Day of Action is we're inviting our colleagues at Move Texas to come and do a workshop on organizing and advocacy and how to get involved in topics that they care about. Other things that we’re doing is we're encouraging people in our community to show their support for banned books by checking them out by doing a “Stuff Little Free Libraries” campaign that we're working with our colleagues at Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, which is a statewide youth-led organization. And we're working with them. 

Adwoa Adusei Austin Public Library has really been a leader in elevating teen voices around this issue. And Kathleen mentioned a project called Save the Books, a statewide youth network dedicated to protecting the freedom to read. The group launched in Texas earlier this year, and they just launched a podcast called Save the Books. They’ll have a special episode out for the Freedom to Read Day of Action, so we’ll put a link to that in our show notes.

Fritzi Bodenheimer Next stop on our Day of Action tour is Los Angeles County in California.

Heather Firchow Hello, my name's Heather Firchow. I am the Library Administrator in charge of Youth Services for LA County Library. 

Fritzi Bodenheimer The LA County Library system is enormous, serving 3,000 square miles and 3.6 million people. They’re launching a teen banned book challenge on the Day of Action and hosting watch parties at multiple locations across the county to hear directly from authors whose books have been banned.

Heather Firchow And then after the screening, teens that are participating will dive into a conversation about our new law in California, the California Freedom to Read Act, the law that ensures all kinds of books can continue to be available in public libraries, whether it's books that challenge the way you think or ones that feel like they're written just for you. I myself, as a person of color, a little bit older, I remember when there weren't a lot of books with protagonists that I felt represented me. And, you know, as the head of youth services, it's really important for youth to have access to books where they see themselves. Having a law just sort of lets our communities know that our government and our voters take access to books and information very seriously. You know, I think it's an area of hope.

[Music]

Jennifer Jenkins I feel like I can sleep at night.

Adwoa Adusei That’s Jennifer Jenkins, the Deputy Director of Customer Experience at San Diego Public Library.

Jennifer Jenkins When we found out just recently that Governor Gavin Newson signed the bill into law, we all in the library system here, we celebrated because I have a lot of colleagues that are in library systems in the Southeast where I worked and grew up as a librarian and who don't have the support of their administration or their elected officials. And it's very discouraging, very disheartening, because I know people who are being faced with the choice to abide by censorship, to participate in censorship in order to keep their jobs. 

Adwoa Adusei This is the silent censorship that happens when there’s a culture of fear and intimidation. Jennifer said she’s not seeing that as much in Southern California, but even in the San Diego community, they’ve had to contend with people who want to censor library collections.

Jennifer Jenkins Our director got a letter one day, and it was from two women up in the northern part of San Diego County, and they had gone to the Rancho Peñasquitos branch library and checked out all of the LGBTQIA-plus books that were on display and essentially sent a ransom note to our director saying that they had checked out all these books and had no intention of returning them until we changed our policy and no longer offer these books in our libraries. That backfired on them quite spectacularly this actually made it to The New York Times. So not just locally, but nationally, we got tons of letters, donations. I think eventually we had $30,000 in donations from folks who wanted to not just replace the books that were checked out and held for ransom, but also, we were able to build onto that collection with those donations.

Adwoa Adusei Jennifer sees the October 19 Freedom to Read Day of Action as an opportunity to gather the community.

Jennifer Jenkins Not only are we going to hold a rally, an outdoor rally at one of our library locations, we're going to have civic and local city leaders from different groups. And we're also going to have a lot of fun family activities, everything from bouncy houses to a sign making station, and hopefully we'll have a really good crowd so that we can show everyone that San Diego cares about intellectual freedom, cares about the freedom to read and cares about protecting that future for our youth. 

[Music]

Fritzi Bodenheimer We’ll end this episode with a library system a little closer to home. Just across the Hudson in Hoboken, New Jersey, Jennie Pu, Director of Hoboken Public Library, has a lot of things planned for the October 19th Day of Action.

Jennie Pu We are going to be taking this outside the library. That day is the city's harvest festival, and it happens to fall on that day. So we thought, wouldn't it be beautiful to bring this out into the community? We're going to get a lot of people, a lot of foot traffic. We’re going to have, of course, a banned books display, we're going to have a banned books list. We are going to have banned book trivia that you can play and our trivia is very good, it's very hard banned book trivia.

Fritzi Bodenheimer And it’s not just a day of action for Hoboken. This fall is a significant anniversary for the New Jersey city. 

Jennie Pu So in Hoboken, we became the first Book Sanctuary library and city in the state of New Jersey. That was a year ago. And a year later, this has really grown into a grassroots movement. We're up to 34, soon to be 35, Book Sanctuary Libraries four Book Sanctuary Municipalities, and it's continuing to grow. 

Adwoa Adusei That’s incredible. But, what is a Book Sanctuary City, exactly?

Fritzi Bodenheimer I had the same question! Let’s let Jennie answer.

Jennie Pu So, simply, it is a declaration of values. Here in Hoboken, the Library Board of Trustees passed a resolution. So three things in our resolution:  We oppose censorship of any kind. We believe in the First Amendment. We believe in the freedom to read. Two, we actively collect and make accessible what we call endangered stories, any kind of books that are being banned anywhere else, we actively collect them, we display them. And three, we hold events and programs and ongoing education about this. So it's a beautiful thing. What I like about it is that it's very community-driven, and it speaks to what a lot of people think and actually believe. 

We have national studies, we have polls, right, that show, generally, 70 percent of Americans oppose censorship. We don't have a way in the profession of surfacing that, and the Book Sanctuary movement is doing that. Community by community is taking this and saying, this is a tool, it's positive, and it's local. And there's certainly times to protest and to picket and to be really loud, but as we know in this work, often and the most impactful way to affect real change is through relationships and the quieter ongoing work. And that's what gives me hope.

We have Book Sanctuaries in Texas, in Florida, in Kentucky. You know, our library sister in Paris-Berman County is a rural, rural library. We are an urban library. They're a small rural library and their community is, you know, it's largely conservative, but they overwhelmingly voted to become a Book Sanctuary. Most of us don't believe in censorship. Most of us believe in the fundamentals of an open democratic society. So that's what our celebration is going to be about. It's really uplifting. Hey, you know, free to read, free to be. I love living in a book sanctuary city. That just rhymed. I just made that up.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei What a great way to end the episode, on a note of celebration and hope. So, come rally with us at Brooklyn Public Library this Saturday, October 19th! Festivities kick off at 11am at Central Library.

Fritzi Bodenheimer And if you don’t live in Brooklyn, there’s probably an event near you this Saturday! Like we said, this is happening in 37 states. Head to UniteAgainstBookBans [dot] org [slash] DayOfAction to see all the events across the country.

Adwoa Adusei To learn more about Book Sanctuaries, about Hoboken Public Library, Austin Public Library, LA County or San Diego public libraries, head to BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts. We’ll have links to all these events we mentioned in this episode… and more.

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Adwoa Adusei Borrowed is brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library. This episode was hosted by Fritzi Bodenheimer and me, Adwoa Adusei. Virginia Marshall wrote and produced the episode. You can read a transcript of this episode and our show notes at BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts.   

Fritzi Bodenheimer Brooklyn Public Library relies on the support of individuals for many of its most critical programs and services. To make a gift, please go to BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] donate.   

Adwoa Adusei Our Borrowed team is made up of Virginia Marshall, Ali Post, Fritzi Bodenheimer, Robin Lester Kenton, Damaris Olivo, and me, Adwoa Adusei. Jennifer Proffitt and Ashley Gill run our social media. Our music composer is Billy Libby. John Snowden designed our logo.