'We've Moved Backwards': US Librarians Face Unprecedented Attacks Amid Rightwing Book Bans
- The Guardian, Sept. 20, 2022.
- From active shooter trainings to cancelled bookmobiles, librarians are caught in the crossfire of a conservative censorship craze. -
If there’s one thing that Jason Kuhl has learned in the 23 years since he earned his degree in library sciences, it’s that the reality of being a librarian hardly squares with the storybook fantasy. “You tell people you’re a librarian and they think you spend your days reading and recommending books,” he said. Most of his time running the St Charles city county library in Missouri is instead spent tending to administrative duties and big-picture strategy. His library hosts quilting classes, mental health seminars and events where patrons can read aloud to a dog.
This summer, Kuhl and a group of colleagues planned to launch a bookmobile – a library in a bus that would visit various sites across town, including three schools. But when a law criminalizing anybody who makes visually explicit materials available at a school went into effect in late August, they decided to keep the bookmobile away from schools.
“This is a brand new law and it hasn’t been tested,” said a shaken-sounding Kuhl. “It’s not worth it.”
The statute began as an amendment to Senate Bill 775, an anti-child trafficking and sexual exploitation measure. Using the bill to target books was the innovation of Republican state senator Rick Brattin, an opponent of gay rights and welfare recipients using government aid to buy cookies. When asked to provide examples of sexually explicit materials, Brattin’s team named All Boys Aren’t Blue, George M Johnson’s critically acclaimed account of growing up a queer Black man in Virginia and New Jersey, and Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir of her own and her father’s homosexuality.
Violators of the new, nebulously worded law face up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000 (£1,754)...
- More, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/20/librarians-banned-books-attacks-library
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- Also: 'Rapid Acceleration' in US School Book Censorship Leads to 2,500 Bans in A Year,' The Guardian, Sept. 19, 2022,
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/sep/19/us-school-book-censorship-bans-pen-america
= new reply since forum marked as read
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Since last fall, Tasslyn Magnusson has tried to track individual cases of book challenges through a spreadsheet. The aspiring young adult author’s elaborate document has multiple tabs that unfurl like sea scrolls. Works by authors Jesmyn Ward and John Updike appear in its columns, as does a Michelle Obama biography for young readers, and a book called Between Shades of Gray, a middle-grade historical novel that Magnusson imagines some people are confusing with EL James’s racy Fifty Shades of Grey.
Initially passed around privately among librarians, the document now lives on the website of EveryLibrary, a political action committee for libraries. “The information is coming at me faster and faster,” said Magnusson.
Even people who don't read don't like the sound of banning books.
The GOP politicians have been trying to out-conservative each other for decades now, so it's not surprising they don't know when or how to turn that off. They passed conservative a long time ago & now it's a race to the bottom. Who can be the meanest & nastiest to the people the cult doesn't like.
I think a lot of non-political people are waking up to what the Republican Party has become. At least I hope so.
I know our Pittsburgh Carnegie Library does, and it's been a lifesaver since the Covid hit.
But my point is that it shouldn't matter if idiots in MAGA hats are banning books, since books can be downloaded and read by anyone and everyone. I mean, that's the point of public libraries, to make published works available to everyone and the cost is shared by the community.
