Books Unbanned

Episode Transcript

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Gabas It was shocking to find out that that was banned in some states because I was like, I was looking back at the book and I was thinking, what's wrong with the book?

Adwoa Adusei That was Gabas from New York City, talking about Toni Morrison’sThe Bluest Eye. A few weeks ago, we sat down with a small but growing group of teens dedicated to promoting intellectual freedom here in Brooklyn and across the US. It’s called the Intellectual Freedom Teen Council and its main purpose is to give other teens access banned books. Here’s Gabas again.

Gabas I mean, yes, it touches up on sensitive topics, but I wouldn't see a reason why to ban it because it like prompts you to really think deeply and think about how like outside factors, especially during that time period, affected people and their thought processes.

Adwoa Adusei Banned and challenged books are nothing new in America, with some of the earliest challenges to what we now think of as classics starting in the early 20th century, with Jame’s Joyce’s Ulysses being burned in America and Ireland staring in 1918.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And several of Morrison’s books have graced banned books lists almost as soon as they were published. So that's over 100 years of people censoring library collections. But, the young people on this council are asking hard questions of the validity of banning books and thinking of solutions to push back against this for future generations. Here’s Anay, also from New York.

Anay In one of our previous councils, we talked about how books can be sort of challenged, not because it's political thing, but maybe because, like, someone thinks the content is outdated or misleading or factually inaccurate. And those are valid concerns. So, I think that rather than censoring them, there should be sort of a warning instead. And this could apply to like, oh, if the book has violence or maybe something that could be inappropriate, just make sure that it's like told to the audience. Hey, this book may be a bit sensitive.

Adwoa Adusei Yeah. Like how there's a rating with movies, that sort of thing?

Anay Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. 

Adwoa Adusei One teen calling from Tennessee said that she wanted to be able to have access to different perspectives so that she could understand them. That way, if she came across a person with a different identity or perspective that is different from hers, she wouldn’t say the wrong thing or give offense without meaning to.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And here’s Beatrix, calling in from Georgia.

Beatrix I sort of grew up—I feel like for me, at least half or more of the books that I've ever read have probably been banned at some point, or at least challenged. But my local library system, which is the DeKalb County Public Library, has done a great job in incorporating a lot of different books and diverse voices. And I think I was just sort of curious about this from a personal perspective. Obviously, it's a big trend across the country and wanting to learn about ways that I could contribute and help and learn more about the issue.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras The narrative on banned and challenged books has been gaining wider traction in the news lately, with an uptick in banning happening across the US. And the Teen Council on Intellectual Freedom here at BPL is just one of the ways libraries across the country have been responding.

Adwoa Adusei Today on Borrowed, we’re looking at the current state of censorship at public and school libraries, taking a look back at our own response to banned books over the past 125 years, and how BPL can help flip the script on censorship. I’m Adwoa Adusei.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And I’m Krissa Corbett Cavouras and you’re listening to Borrowed: stories that start at the library.

Nick Higgins What really got under my skin was that it was all the narrative was being driven by the people who were doing the censoring. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras This is Nick Higgins, Chief Librarian at Brooklyn Public Library. 

Nick Higgins The ones who wanted to pull books off the shelves of the library were getting all the attention, were driving the narrative about why these voices shouldn't be represented in their communities. And libraries were always quoted in those articles or whatever, but they were always responding. So, it was really kind of important to all of us, was like, this conversation needs to be driven by libraries.

Adwoa Adusei So Nick, along with other staff at BPL, decided to create a program that actively worked against the effects of banned books. They decided to make Brooklyn Public Library eCards available, for free, to teens and young adults across the country between the ages of 13 and 21. All they had to do to get a free eCard was write to us at BPL about their situation and why they believed in the freedom to read. Then, we gave them access to our digital collection of over 500,000 eBook and audiobook titles.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras To be clear, eCards are always free for all New Yorkers, and anyone can get a Brooklyn Public Library eCard if you live anywhere in the world, it just costs $50 a year. But what this project did was waive that fee specifically for young people who wanted to protest censorship.

Adwoa Adusei In order to name the project, young adult specialists at BPL gathered a group of teens in what would become the first meeting of the Intellectual Freedom Teen Council, the group we heard from at the start of this episode. Those teens chose the name “Books Unbanned,” and soon, the idea became a reality.

Karen Keys When the project launched, the story started to slowly filter in through email and through direct messages on Instagram. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras This is Karen Keys, the Coordinator of Young Adult Services at Brooklyn Public Library.

Karen Keys And then, you know, after a couple days, it was just like chaos as the word started to spread.  

Adwoa Adusei The response from the public was explosive. Pretty soon after Books Unbanned launched, the story got picked up by major national news outlets like NPR ...

Reporter Let’s say you’re a 14-year-old kid living in a school district that’s just banned the YA memoir ... You can email the Brooklyn Public Library system over in New York and explain to them the situation.

Adwoa Adusei ... 1010 WINS ...

Reporter With book bans growing around the country, the BPL wants young people across the nation to know they can check out eBooks for free ...

Adwoa Adusei … and Good Morning America.

Reporter The initiative called Books Unbanned will allow anyone ages 13 to 21 to get a free eCard that will give them access to the library’s virtual collection of 350,000 eBooks and 200,000 audiobooks...

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Not to mention in print in media outlets such as The Washington Post, Seventeen Magazine, and Teen Vogue. We even made national radio in Canada and popular TikTok accounts. I think it’s fair to say the project went viral! 

Karen Keys Teens were writing in with all sorts of reasons about why they needed a card. You know, sometimes they were in a very small conservative town and stories about people like themselves, they weren't finding on their shelves, whether it was LGBTQ stories or stories that touch on racism and police brutality. 

[Music]

I know that we've processed somewhere between three and four thousand cards, but we've gotten way more emails than that and messages and we're still filtering through everything. So I would say over 5,000. 

Adwoa Adusei That’s a lot of cards! And I think this tells us pretty strongly that there is a need for this project. Because, in many school districts and counties, intellectual freedom really is under attack.

Nick Higgins Particularly in places like Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, you know, some places that are trying to essentially criminalize, you know, librarians and principals for providing this content to members of the community. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras In the Idaho State Senate earlier this year, a bill was proposed that would have made it illegal for librarians to “disseminate material harmful to minors” and that doing so would be punishable by $1000 fine or jail time. And the kinds of materials that were deemed harmful were any books mentioning sexual acts or even masturbation, such as Judy Blume‘s classic book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. In the end, lawmakers decided the bill would not get a hearing in the State Senate.

Adwoa Adusei And, this past fall in Llano, Texas, a public librarian was fired when she refused to remove books that had been deemed inappropriate, mostly titles that included LGBTQ characters and topics, and race and sex education. The library system then proceeded to overhaul its board of directors and completely remove access to its eBook collection for all patrons.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras This is why it’s important to talk about censorship with young people, the generation that will be most effected by book bans and also the generation who will have the power to do something about it very soon.

Adwoa Adusei Karen Keys at BPL said that the Intellectual Freedom Teen Council will continue to meet monthly, gathering participants from across the country. She said that right now, this group of teens wants to educate themselves on what’s going on with censorship in America today, and then teach their peers about it.

Karen Keys For now the project is just going to focus on creating some teen centered, curated resources. Like we're going to be librarians to these teens across the nation and, you know, point them towards articles and videos and anything else that might help them to sort of understand what's going on. 

Nick Higgins That gives me a lot of hope. 

Adwoa Adusei Here’s chief librarian Nick Higgins again.

Nick Higgins I mean, they know what they need. They know what makes a great community function. And, you know, they're demonstrating such a tremendous amount of courage by just reaching out, asking for support, and then joining other voices in this conversation. So I couldn't be more thrilled, excited, hopeful. I don't know. It just it makes me really proud to be a librarian. 

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Adwoa Adusei Krissa, we’ve been looking back at 125 years of library history this season. So I started thinking about our own history of censorship. We’re a big institution and we’ve been here a long time, so there are certainly moments that we’ve had to confront challenges to intellectual freedom. We asked Nick Higgins whether he knew of moments in our history when BPL has actually removed a title from our shelves. Here’s what he said.

Nick Higgins I'm aware of two. It doesn't mean that there are there are not more. But one of the more high profile removal of a title was a Tintin book, Tintin Au Congo, in 2000, I believe it's 2007 or 2008 it was challenged, very reasonably challenged by a member of the public because the illustrations in the in the book were, you know, flat out they were racist, they were derogatory. And the administration at the time decided to to remove the book from public access and put it into a reserve collection so you could still access that if you had an appointment. But it just made it very difficult.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras The other instance Nick told us about happened in the 1960s with a book that was being challenged across the nation at the time: Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Originally published in 1934 in Paris, the book was banned in the US because of its sexually explicit content. Nearly 30 years later, when the book was published in the US, the New York State Court of Appeals deemed it obscene and Brooklyn Public Library sent out a memo in July of 1963 asking all branches to remove copies of the book from their shelves and send them to the assistant chief librarian’s office. About 400 copies of the book arrived on Margaret Freeman’s desk.

Adwoa Adusei It wasn’t a decision made lightly. The year before, Margaret Freeman had appeared before a grand jury in Brooklyn to defend the book and the library’s policy of intellectual freedom. It was a dramatic courtroom appearance, which has been written about on our library’s blog. We’ll link to that on our show notes if you want to read the full story.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Eventually, the supreme court weighed in and ruled that Miller’s book was not obscene, and the book returned to circulation. You can still check it out from BPL and many libraries across the country. Here’s Nick Higgins again.

Nick Higgins I can understand in 1963 that a large library system would want to protect itself by removing the book. But, you know, we're not in that place now. So we do have some power and authority to help people stand up for for the freedom to read in other parts of the country, where in 1963 we were in a different place. So, the very real impact of this for libraries facing these challenges, where they don't have that kind of formal authority or support from the broader community, I totally understand it. We were there in 1963 with the challenge to Tropic of Cancer. 

Adwoa Adusei Over the past few decades, the nation and our library system have continued to evolve and adapt their stance on intellectual freedom. To explore that idea a bit more, we wanted to end this episode by revisiting one of our first episodes on Borrowed because it includes the story of a book that was challenged more recently in our collection, and how we made a decision as to whether or not it should remain on our shelves.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras So, heres a bit of a blast from the past. You're going to hear our first co-host, Felice Belle, and me, on this excerpt from our 2019 episode titled “Something to Offend Everyone.”

[Music]

Krissa Corbett Cavouras There’s a quote from a librarian named Jo Godwin that’s often thrown around in library school. It goes like this: “A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.”

Felice Belle Which basically means that if a library is truly committed to representing different viewpoints, then there are going to be books on the shelf that you don’t agree with. And that just means it’s a really good collection of books.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras At Brooklyn, we have a ton of materials. 4.1 million, by our last count. And here’s the thing: library collections change all the time.

Angie Miraflor It’s not just like once they’re on the shelf, that’s it. We have to relook at things we have to purchase all the time. Because the times change, culture changes, you know, history moves around. And even though the books don’t talk and don’t scream and yell and ask for help, we have to pay attention to them. 

Felice Belle Angie Miraflor is the director of customer experience at Brooklyn Public Library. And she told us about an event that doesn’t happen often at BPL.

Angie Miraflor So, a few months ago we had a request for reconsideration, which is what our form’s called, turned into us. And it was challenging a children’s picture book. 

Felice Belle A patron found a book on our shelves that they thought shouldn’t be there. So, the patron challenged it. And the challenge ended up with Angie, whose job it is to figure out what to do.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And by the way, books get challenged all the time in libraries. Harry Potter gets challenged for witchcraft, To Kill A Mockingbird gets challenged for violence and racist language, and a children’s book called And Tango Makes Three about two male penguins raising a baby penguin together at New York’s Central Park Zoo… that one gets challenged a lot. But this particular book challenge stuck out to Angie.

Angie Miraflor The challenge was that some of the images and the text had some comments towards certain racial groups that were inappropriate… or pictures depicting certain ethnic groups in ways that could potentially be offensive. It was traditionally an author that people really go towards when we think about children’s literature, and then to find that one of the author’s books had content that was very questionable... I think that’s what made that specific thing unique and what started such a complex discussion.

Felice Belle The book was If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss. And just to say, this isn’t the first time that the issue of Dr. Seuss’s racist drawings has come up. It’s a pretty well-documented phenomena. But it might be surprising because his books are full of rhymes and whimsical drawings, and kids are still reading them today.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras But it doesn’t matter what the title is. Whenever a book is challenged at the library, it is taken seriously. The patron’s challenge sets off a pretty involved process to review the book.

Angie Miraflor Our first step is that we have a collection development committee, and part of their job is to look at these forms and just do the research. They look at things like our collection development policy, our collection maintenance procedures—so the procedure of how we deselect materials from our collection. So they look at internal stuff but they’re also looking at more national types of research. So they all looked up if that book had been challenged in other libraries and what their response was.

Felice Belle After all the research, the committee makes a recommendation to the chief librarian, and then he and Angie make a final call. And, for this particular challenge…

Angie Miraflor The decision was to keep the title on the shelves. And I think in this case also there’s a historical part about it, too. In the past, these groups were viewed in a certain way and we need to learn from what happened in the past. We can’t delete it. Deleting it is probably really dangerous, you know, because that means that the potential of it happening again is very high.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras This gets at a core belief held by many libraries, not just ours. The idea that libraries should challenge censorship. That libraries should be saying: We know you’re not going to agree with everything in the library, but it’s still important to reflect different viewpoints and different moments in history.

Felice Belle Right, and this value is actually in our Library Bill of Rights.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Which is something that most people might not know about, that there is a bill of rights for libraries. And it’s an interesting document. It was created by the American Library Association, the ALA, in 1939. The 1930s, if you remember from history class, was a pretty terrible decade for many people, but also a terrible decade for intellectual freedom. Fascism was on the rise in Europe, book burning was happening in Germany, and in the United States, a tariff act was passed that included a ban on importing “obscene or immoral” articles.  

Felice Belle And in the midst of all this, a bunch of people who ran libraries across the United States got together and decided to do something about what they saw as a dangerous erasure of ideas. You can get a sense of the time period in the preamble to the original 1939 document. It reads: “Today indications in many parts of the world point to growing intolerance, suppression of free speech, and censorship affecting the rights of minorities and individuals. Mindful of this, the Council of the American Library Association publicly affirms its belief in the following basic policies.”

Krissa Corbett Cavouras A very impressive start.

Felice Belle For sure. And as necessary today as it was in 1939. The proclamation was followed by a series of values. Today, there are seven principles in the library bill of rights. And what’s interesting is that sometimes, values within the bill of rights conflict with each other.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Specifically, the two that we want to talk about are the idea that public libraries should be for everyone, no matter your “origin, age, background, or views”—and the idea that libraries should be challenging censorship.

Felice Belle So, if you you have a patron who is offended by material—like the patron in Crown Heights who didn’t want to see demons in a book display, or the patron who didn’t want If I Ran the Zoo on the shelves… then we have to question whether those people feel welcome in the library.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras It’s sometimes a murky line to walk between making sure that our collections represent a wide array of viewpoints, and also ensuring that patrons feel they are actively welcome here.

Felice Belle One way that libraries have answered this question is by making sure that the library collection has books with contrasting narratives. That’s something Angie brought up.

Angie Miraflor How much of a democratic institution are we if we are not giving people all the information they need to make an educated decision? Right, and I think that’s where libraries come in. we are the ones that need to provide as much information as we can about a topic on both sides, whether you want to hear it or not. And then it’s up to you to make that decision about what your opinion is or what your vote is … or whatever.

Adwoa Adusei That was an excerpt from an episode we recorded in early 2019, and since then, so many things have happened.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Right — so, that specific book that Angie brought up, the Dr. Seuss book that a patron challenged ... in March of 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which overseas the publication and licensing of all Dr. Seuss books, announced that it would cease publication of If I Ran the Zoo, among other titles which include racist depictions of people.

Adwoa Adusei And. of course, we’ve seen an uptick in book banning, as we mentioned at the start of this episode. That’s made a lot of libraries, including our own, reconsider whether libraries should be neutral spaces or if we should take a stronger stance against censorship. At BPL, our answer was the Books Unbanned program. We’re saying that libraries have to be places where everyone, especially young people, have access to every kind of book, so that they can make their own choices about right and wrong, and about what they want to believe.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras So, our book match today is a challenge to you, listeners. All three library systems in New York City—Queens, NYPL, and yours truly—came together to recommend a selection of ten banned or frequently challenged books. The challenge is to read, or re-read, all of them. Shall we read the titles, Adwoa?

Adwoa Adusei Yes! We’ve got: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, a dystopian novel about an Indigenous teenager fighting for independence.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan, about the relationship between one gay and one straight teen navigating loyalty and love. 

Adwoa Adusei Being Jazz by Jazz Jennings, a memoir about the author’s experience transitioning at a young age.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir Manifesto by George M. Johnson, about one journalist’s experience growing up Black and Queer.

Adwoa Adusei Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds, a nonfiction book about the roots of racism in the United States.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the classic novel about the damaging effects of double consciousness on a young African American girl.

Adwoa Adusei 1984 by George Orwell, a dystopian novel about intellectual freedom.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez about two teenagers, one Mexican and one Black, dealing with segregation in Texas in the 1930s.

Adwoa Adusei This One Summer by MarikoTamaki and illustrated by Jillian Tamaki, a graphic novel about two teenage girls dealing with family drama and conflicts with peers.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And finally, Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo, about a girl in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950s, who falls in love with another girl and has to navigate her family’s citizenship status. That book has been made “always available,” so you can check it out with no wait times as an eBook or eAudiobook.

Adwoa Adusei All of these books are on the Banned Book Challenge reading list, and we’ll link to them in our shownotes.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Borrowed is brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library and is hosted by me and Adwoa Adusei. You can find a transcript as well as the full book list for this episode on our website: BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts.

Adwoa Adusei This episode was produced by Virginia Marshall and written by Virginia Marshall and me, with help from Fritzi Bodenheimer, Jennifer Proffitt and Robin Lester Kenton. Our music composer is Billy Libby. Meryl Friedman designed our logo.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Borrowed will be back next month. Until then, stand up for intellectual freedom. And read banned books!