Hope And Defiance ― Amid Surge In Banned Books, 3,923 Titles Challenged

In the midst of Banned Books Week, Oct. 1 to 7, the American Library Association or ALA reports the number one issue for libraries is the surge of book challenges. 

Every year, ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom or OIF compiles a list of the “Top 10 Most Challenged Books” to inform the public about censorship in libraries and schools. However many book challenges are not reported to the ALA or covered by the press. And what ALA compiles represents only a snapshot of bans. Between January and August 2023, OIF reported 695 attempts to censor library materials and services and it documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles. Preliminary data show, during the same time, there were 531 attempts to censor books with a total of 3,923 titles challenged in those attempts. The vast majority of challenges were to books written by or about a person of color or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

ALA found this information provides evidence of a growing, well-organized, conservative political movement, whose goals include removing books about race, history, gender identity, sexuality, and reproductive health from America’s public and school libraries that do not meet their approval. Using social media and other channels, these groups distribute book lists to their local chapters and individual adherents, who then utilize the lists to initiate a mass challenge — that can empty the shelves of a library.

Further, over the summer, state libraries in Montana, Missouri, and Texas severed ties with the ALA, imperiling their libraries’ access to funding and training. The Texas decision was taken after state Rep. Brian Harrison (R) wrote to library leaders saying that, “The ALA works against parents by fighting to keep pornographic materials in public libraries.” 

Additionally, conservative legislators in at least nine states are urging their state libraries to follow, and disaffiliate.

Random Lengths News spoke to two local bookstores about banned books. Chris Giaco is the owner of Page Against The Machine bookstore in Long Beach; and artist Rodrigo Barreto is the art director of Sunken City Books, San Pedro’s newest bookstore.

Giaco carries a few books about banned books and all the traditionally banned titles.

“What I’m looking at right now are older out-of-print ones that are interesting,” said Giaco. “I have one called Banned! Book Censorship in the Schools (1988). I have a broader one called Censorship in America which gives a history. I have an even broader history of banned books just called Banned Books: 387 BC to 1978 AD (Anne Lyon Haight, 1978) and What Johnny Shouldn’t Read: Textbooks Censorship in America (Joan Delfattore, 1992). And there’s a nice little hardback that I’ve been carrying just called Banned Books, [there’s no] author attributed to it but the publisher is D.K. Press. It goes through the top 100 banned books and it gives a nice reproduction of the covers and a brief one-page history of the books and why they were banned. 

“Unfortunately, it’s a subject with renewed relevance, obviously. Sadly, in America in 2023, we have to be discussing this. And then, of course, we have brand-new, by the month new selections of banned books to add,” Giaco quipped.

This is one way that the bookseller is fighting back. He also discussed other means to do that. Giaco’s “idealistic” notion of reading and informing yourself … is that people have to be given the tools. He compared it to the first rule of any kind of self-help program; first recognize you have a problem. 

“The first issue for people who might not be paying attention, or might not have kids in school is to let people know,” he said, “just by carrying the books in the store and by giving them a history. Especially for younger people.” 

He noted the other component of book censorship in America is that it’s something we think we’re exempt from. 

“We think that it’s totalitarian or religious regimes elsewhere that ban texts that don’t meet their approval,” Giaco said. “People have to first realize that we have a history of it and that we have to be vigilant about it. And … take action, obviously, the standard forms of protest.”

The nonprofit arm of Long Beach Public Library, Friends of the Library, held a tabling and events for Banned Books Week last year in front of Giaco’s store. This year, they’re expanding it.

“Public awareness is one thing, but then people have to take it to the next level,” Giaco said. 

“But we have to get sane, informed people to do what ‘the right’ is doing … to run for school boards and make sure that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen. Or at least make intelligent arguments at these meetings where things are being discussed before they yank things out of schools.” 

Former ALA President Lessa Kanani’opua Pelayo-Lozada is also the adult services assistant manager for the Palos Verdes Library District. In an interview on ALA’s website, Pelayo-Lozada explained rather than it being parents challenging these books, “It’s often individuals who are part of Moms for Liberty who are just filling out forms and making it seem like there is much more support for this than there actually is.” 

Pelayo-Lozada echoed Giaco’s sentiment; library workers cannot do it alone. They have to do it with the public and with those who also support the right to read. She noted, that’s why ALA has a campaign called Unite Against Book Bans that provides people who may be not as entrenched in this work as ALA is with the tools to write letters to their editor, to speak up at board meetings, to run for an elected office to be able to support library workers and schools that are going through these challenges.

Giaco discussed an event that hit home for him at a Friends of the Library event on banned books and censorship. Students from the high school discussed a book they were reading that happened to be banned.

“It was stunning because, in one of the books, All Boys Aren’t Blue, a queer black teen tries to come to terms with [their sexuality]. “The person … [speaking] was also a gay black teen,” Giaco said. “To hear what the book meant to them in terms of representation and what it made them feel … All of the books … [were] banned for ‘graphic elements, or frank descriptions of sexuality.’ But it was clear that they were not reading these books just for the prurient interest of sexual content … like sneaking [off with] a Playboy magazine. No. It was that the subject matter of the books meant something to them because it explained their own predicament and confusion and feelings and somebody was articulating that.”

Giaco recalled wishing every adult who was involved in book banning or restricting a book, without having read it, could hear what the actual students think of the book, the people who are exposed to it and what it means to them. It might give them pause. 

“The purpose of books or the library is to let people know the power of the written word and hearing other people’s stories, and empathy,” Giaco said. “It does impact the people and the students or the community that get those books taken away from them. It’s really detrimental.” 

In closing, Giaco recommended viewing a documentary titled Judy Bloom Forever. In it, the author discusses how all her books dealt with real issues and about the power of having those books. 

Barreto, of Sunken City Books said, “First and foremost, we combat this by carrying banned books.

“The Harper Lee books, the Maus [series], I follow what’s being banned specifically and I collect them because I follow what is going on politically in the country,” said Barreto. “I believe people are more than capable of reading what they choose.”

Sunken City Books will be making a display in the store of banned books, to make them easy to find. Barreto said in an effort to make a statement, he likes to put them front and center.

The bookstore does not receive any announcements about new book bans or on what’s happening with bans but as the person doing social media, when Barreto hears about bans he wants to know about the book because, he said, it’s very telling.

The Sunken City staff takes pride in its passion for books. As an artist, Barreto indicated many psychology and philosophy books that he’s been reading since he was a child were books that “made him.” Sunken City sees it as their duty to ensure banned books are available. 

“We may not control what happens in schools, in public spaces where our tax dollars [go]; but as a private business, as a force for good, we are a cultural powerhouse,” said Barreto. “We preserve artists from the ages, [their] minds and ideas.”

Barreto highlights books on the store’s social media that are for the “common good — inspiring, positive books to pique people’s interest.” He strives to make the bookstore appealing to generations that are caught up in social media; he believes books are the silver bullet to dwindling attention spans.

“If you can sit in silence with a book, you’re doing well. And if that is not true, there’s some work to be done internally,” Barreto said. “The truth is something that stands on its own. No book ban is going to erase history that will always be passed down orally, and visually. It lives on in whatever medium you can think about. All it does is shine a light on an agenda.”

Barreto looks at this philosophically. Observing the national landscape, he is filled with hope. He said the self-help, and psychology sections, which he personally curates, are booming.

“We’re called to step up in moments like these because there needs to be a common good and I feel we’re in the midst of having that be reestablished. I see what [people] read and there’s a story being told just by the masses coming in here. That’s one of hope.”

Barreto considers book banning an opportunity. He said books aren’t being destroyed. They’re finding their way from schools to shelves in every bookstore in the nation. People understand the moment and are rising to meet it. 

“In the wake of the pandemic …[more than 300] bookstores opened,” he said. “That is the eternal balance of good and evil, yin and yang. I believe that the more self-aware we become as individuals the more healing we do. By extension, we heal others. And I feel that’s [what] bookstores are. 

“Someday it will dawn on people, books don’t have a battery life,” Barreto said. “You’ll never have to plug in a book. It might hit you in the face, like an iPad when you’re sleepy, but a book is never going to fail you.”

Details: https://www.patmbooks.com and https://bookshop.org/shop/sunkencitybooks